Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of The Shining has arguably one of the most memorable final shots in all of genre cinema: the utterly unsettling photograph from the Overlook Hotel’s 1921 Fourth of July ball featuring a Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) who simply had not been born yet front and center in the image. Nicholson had been added to a real image that was altered for the movie — but the original faded into obscurity after its use in the film. That is, until now. That’s right, Shining-heads, the original 1921 Fourth of July ball photograph has been found a whopping 45 years after the film’s release.
Retired University of Winchester academic Alasdair Spark opened up about the process of sourcing the image on Getty's Instagram. “Following the earlier identification by facial recognition software of the unknown man in the photograph at the end of The Shining as Santos Casani, a London ballroom dancer, I can reveal that the photo was one of three taken by the Topical Press Agency at a St. Valentines Day Ball, 14 February 1921, at the Empress Rooms, the Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington," he explained. The post also included a new scan from the image’s original glass-plate negative, as well as other handwritten documents supporting the photo.
Spark revealed that he and New York Times staffer Arick Toller, as well as many passionate Redditors, went on a wild goose chase trying to source the image. “It was starting to seem impossible, every cross-reference to Casani failed to match. Other likely places that were suggested didn’t match,” he wrote via Getty. “There were some places we could not find images for and we started to fear that meant the photo might be lost to history, and never be found.”
The historian went on to explain that he had previously been told by on-set photographer Murray Close, who took the image of Nicholson that was superimposed over Casani for the film, that the picture had been sourced from the BBC Hulton Library. Spark was aware that Hulton purchased Topical Press in 1958, and that Getty later took over in 1991, which gave the former professor the idea to scour through the agency’s millions of images. From that search, they discovered the image was licensed to Hawk Films, Kubrick’s production company, on October 10, 1978, clearly for production of The Shining.
“Joan Smith had said the photo dated from 1923. Stanley Kubrick had said 1921 and he was correct,” Spark concluded. “The photo doesn’t show any of the celebrities I had speculated on — the Trix Sisters for instance — nor the bankers, financiers or presidents others like Rob Ager have imagined there. No devil worshippers either. Nobody was composited into it except Jack Nicholson. It shows a group of ordinary London people on a Monday evening. ‘All the best people,’ as the manager of the Overlook Hotel said."
Now if this doesn’t warm your movie-loving heart a bit right now, I don’t know what will. Stephen King’s novel The Shining was released in 1977 and has been adapted twice: Kubrick’s iconic film and horror maestro Mick Garris’ book-accurate 1997 miniseries.
Photo by Warner Brothers/Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
