With the broadcast on BBC Four of ‘Talking Jaws’, New Year’s Eve 2025 we were giving an insight into what sat in the archives regarding Jaws and the BBC. Seeing Jaws out in style on the last night of what had been the film’s 50th Anniversary, we had some treasured nuggets from the never repeated 1970 Omnibus “Robert Shaw: The Actor as Novelist”‌ an edition of the programme first broadcast in November 1970.

 

In the programme’s aims, this was to compare the character Quint and Robert as alike. What is of note also, we get a real taste of Robert the writer. Despite the BBC’s limited coverage of this edition, the interview snippets that come to light reveal Robert’s zeal, disappointment, and rage regarding the perception of him as a talented actor by some and a less recognised novelist.

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The need to act to support his family, who at the time of this recording numbered eight children, is ever apparent in the interview. He expresses within the parameters of his own battle against exhaustion that his novels, which he estimates at nine, sit on a bookshelf and that nobody will read anymore after his death. This is where the battlefront sits. Writing something of note that would sustain, but eludes one. This is all wrapped up in a writer’s limits, what comes to be necessary in achieving a book that crosses over eras and what undermines that goal.

 

Shaw describes himself as lacking success in his mind. To see this Omnibus programme in its entirety is, as ever with the BBC, a tall ask. In the archives, under these Jaws-related content circumstances, we had a glimpse into. As a writer and as an actor, his honesty is apparent in his self-description.

 

​“I believe in the parable of the talents. I really do believe in that. I also believe in honesty. As much as it is possible. Even on this bloody television, I believe in it. I know perfectly well by the way, all the time I’m talking to you, that it’s always 50-50. Half the people who are listening to what I’m saying are going to think, what an egocentric, aggressive, loud-mouthed stupid, charmless man. And there are others who are going to think, oh god at least he’s refreshing, he’s got some energy, at least he’s trying. It’s always like that.”

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Highlighting the existence of turmoil that lives within the writer or as the actor, where a 50-50 split lives with those who judge his work, reflects a competitiveness within himself as well. It’s as if he is trying to beat the split, weight equation. Shifting the odds in his favour while being honest in what he conveys is of course a high-energy endeavour.

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In an early interview for The Saginaw News, November 24th, 1968, we see a more at-ease understanding of where his thoughts are, as the writer. Even a settlement far removed from where he would find himself before the 1970 Omnibus broadcast. Although being seen as a writer, and remembered as one, is again forefront in his mind.

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“I often think I’m an encouragement to any poor struggling 36-year-old. It seems to me I’m just getting into my prime, and that can’t last forever.”  The interview continues and is a precursor in sentiment but not in delivery in what he would later convey with honesty and some anger in the 1970 BBC broadcast.

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“I’d like to be remembered as a writer, inevitably. I would rather write one book, or God willing, two - well, I am superstitious. That would really last, that’s what I’d like to do”.

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His becoming a writer was on the advice of a friend, who suggested he write novels. In needing to find a change of pace from acting and venturing into another dramatic form, he speaks of himself as a late developer. Shaw’s reflection on his age from the 1968 interview, at this time he was 41, could be an inspiration to others.

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These two contrasting interviews are from different periods in his life but are consistent in highlighting Robert’s drive to be a novelist of note. The one or two books to be lasting in readership after his death is oddly at some level achieved in a combination of his abilities as an actor and as a writer in his most known role as Quint, in Steven Spielberg’s directed film ‘Jaws’.

 

Employing his writing skills and his acting talent in reworking the ‘Indianapolis’ monologue, he then delivered a chilling performance of that monologue. Shaw’s performance as Quint is riveting. Recounting the horrors witnessed by him as a crew member of the Indianapolis and what he and his crewmates endured after the initial sinking of the USS are of an intensity. Not unlike his forceful accounts of himself as an actor and writer.

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