A Shark Attack Of A Different Kind

Our member Arun Bhatia has led a life that could be a movie on its own. Here he shares the story of a shark attack in 1953, straight off Hollywood.

Back in the days when I was 17, I was an expert swimmer. I was the Western India under 18 Men’s champion in freestyle. Swimming led me to many an adventure, more so diving, which I learnt from the American National Red Cross while a freshman in the University of California, USA (UCLA). In fact, I was almost a pioneer in diving in those days using Scuba gear (the underwater breathing apparatus) that is commonplace now.

Here’s an adventure that’s even captured on celluloid, circa 1953.

I paid my way through college doing a number of odd jobs. Thanks to the student advisor at UCLA, I was even part of some Hollywood shoots. Very few people knew to dive in those days and I was chosen as part of the crew in an underwater shoot, in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Los Angeles.

We sailed for three hours to Santa Catalina Island for the shoot. A vision of the incredibly blue sea, devoid of undercurrents to stir up the ocean floor sand and obscure vision. It meant 300 feet visibility amid schools of fish, a wonderful multicolor view through our glass-fronted masks. This shoot was for one of the very first underwater shoots in Hollywood—a black and white B grade affair titled The Sharkfighters, though YouTube will now show you the colored version that doesn’t carry the scene we shot. The star of the film was Victor Mature, famous as Samson in Cecil B DeMille's mega-movie, Samson and Delilah.

The movie was based on real-life incidents (The US Navy did create a shark repellent called the Shark Chaser, whether it really worked or not was debatable). Victor was playing a navy hero, doing research in shark-infested waters. We were to do an 18-second shot featuring six sharks circling and attacking him. By today’s standards, the technology available was truly primitive. Special effects were unheard of. Everything needed to be manually prepared. The production guys took six dead sharks, froze them with their mouths agape but left their tails limp. I was hired to act as a shark.

How did I turn into a convincing shark? The production team drilled two holes on one flank of my frozen shark and tightly fitted a wooden peg in each hole. I had to grab the pegs and maneuver my shark with the ‘limp fish body’ hiding me from the camera lens. The idea was to circle the hero and hover menacingly around him along with my fellow sharks.

On paper, everything was planned. But this was the very first underwater shooting experience and there were many glitches. Often, the hero placed his hand clumsily in the sharks' open jaws, causing retake after retake. The upside of all those glitches? Our 18-second shoot stretched to three days in those azure blue waters, making us a bunch of happy sharks! During breaks, there were barbecued lunches at the oceanfront. The dinner-time campfire had two of the sharks playing the ukulele while belting out pop numbers, folk songs, and popular ditties of the time.

Did we sharks mind 18 seconds stretching to three days? Absolutely not. We were paid by the hour. It was, to tell you the truth, a paid vacation!