What's Your Name Again?

Although she says only seven words (not counting the screaming) and dies in the first three minutes of the movie, Susan Backlinie gets her name in the opening credits. Neither Joanthan Filley, who plays the young man drunkenly pursuing her along the beach, nor Lee Fiero, who - as Mrs Kintner - acts bitter and anguished on the Amity dock, get a name check until the end of the picture despite the fact that both of them have more dialogue and screen time. This was most likely due to contractual reasons: Fiero and Filley were cast locally whereas Backlinie was a professional stuntwoman.

Backlinie was cast primarily for her swimming ability and her physical attributes (five foot eight with an hourglass figure of 37-25-37) although to ensure a PG rating her skinny-dipping scene had to be carefully shot in silhouette. Ironically, the classic image of Chrissie executing a langurous stroke on the surface of the ocean is not Backlinie but a body double, the uncredited Denise Chesire. Both women were the same height and had the same body shape and both wore their dirty blonde hair in long straggly tresses. Without access to the casting call sheets, it's difficult to know who played which part that went to make up the composite Chrissie. Certainly, it's Backlinie who we see in close up by the campfire, but the silhouetted figure that runs along the dune shedding her clothes could be anyone. And what of the naked figure that runs into the sea? Is that Backlinie or Chesire?

In fact, it's probably safe to assume that all the beach scenes and the above surface shots of Chrissie swimming are Backlinie. The underwater shots from the shark's point of view are Chesire - these would most likely have been filmed by a second unit crew, probably in a different location. Backlinie is on record talking about the filming of the attack when she was pulled to and fro in a makeshift harness. There are also photographs of her in the water with Spielberg and a camera crew.

In 1977 Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel used two actresses to play a single role in That Obscure Object of Desire, and, in doing so, he was making a point about the objectification of women. Spielberg's decision to use two stuntwomen to play one character was pragmatic rather than artistic. Hitchcock had done the same when filming the shower scene for Psycho: not only did Janet Leigh have a body double to preserve her modesty, but the iconic silhouette of the crazed Norma Bates was stuntwoman Margo Epper, not actor Tony Perkins.

Spielberg, who -technically, if not artistically - is on a par with Hitchcock, made sure that we can't see the join, and in doing so ensured that Susan Backlinie became one of the select few performers in the history of cinema whose fame rests on just a few seconds of screen time.