ORIGINALLY, HOOPER WAS MEANT TO DIE When the shark attacks Hooper's cage, there's live footage of a real Great White with a rope hanging from its mouth. This shark's mouth is clearly much smaller than the shark's mouth when it attacks the boat moments later. These scenes were filmed by noted shark photographers Ron Taylor and Valerie Taylor with the help of shark expert Rodney Fox specifically for the movie. Because the Great White sharks they filmed would be smaller than the mechanical shark in the movie, they constructed a smaller version of Hooper's shark cage. Inside the cage they alternately used a small mannequin or a little person. One of the sharks they attracted got caught in the cage's cables and tore it apart trying to escape. The footage was so good that they changed the script to reflect the destroyed cage and Hooper escaping by hiding on the ocean floor. However, the small person used in the scene refused to go back in the miniature cage, wh...
This photo was taken in 1890 inside the Whitechapel Workhouse in London — the same street where Jack the Ripper killed just 2 years earlier. Look at the women on the benches. They are not prisoners. They are poor. In Victorian England, if you had no money, no husband, no job, you were sent here. Their job today is picking oakum — tearing apart old, tar-covered ship ropes with their bare fingers to make new ropes for the Royal Navy. Their fingers bleed. The tar burns their skin. But if they stop, they get no food. The woman in the black dress with the cane is the matron. She will hit any woman who talks. Silence was the rule. From 6 AM to 8 PM, they sat here in this freezing stone hall with one tiny window, tearing ropes. See the children next to them? They are 6, 7 years old. In 1890 London, a child in a workhouse had to work too. No school. If a mother entered the workhouse, her children were taken from her and sent to a different room. She could only see them on Sunday for 1 hou...