The photo used as the iconic final shot of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining has finally been discovered, 45 years on from the horror film's release. The only difference being, of course, that Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrance isn't front and center in the original print...
"At last, it has been found," retired University of Winchester academic Alasdair Spark wrote on Getty's Instagram, alongside a new scan of the image from its original glass plate negative. "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." Check it out below...
In his breakdown of the once seemingly "impossible" search, Clark went on to recall the "many hours of hard brute force effort" himself, NYT's Aric Toler, and passionate Reddit users spent trawling through newspaper archives to try and find matching photos of the people or venue. "All without success," he admitted.
In the post, Clark continued on to explain how The Shining's set photographer Murray Close – who took the shot of Nicholson that was later superimposed into the snap – had once informed him that the original photo had been sourced from the BBC Hulton Library. "This reinforced a remark by Joan Smith, who did the retouching work – she had said in interviews that it came from the Warner Bros photo archive, which proves never to have existed. However, she also said in passing, and often unreported, that it might have come from the BBC Hulton Library," he went on.
Armed with that, and the knowledge that the Hulton bought Topical Press back in 1958, before Getty bought its archive in 1996, Clark and his team took it upon themselves to check the agency's 94 million images. Eventually, they learned the photo was licensed to Hawk Films on October 10, 1978.
"Joan Smith had said the photo dated from 1923. Stanley Kubrick had said 1921 and he was correct," concluded Clark. Now that's some period accuracy... "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."
Based on the 1977 novel by Stephen King, The Shining also starred by Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, and the late Shelley Duvall. It follows the Torrance family as writer Jack moves his family into a remote hotel, after he's hired to look after it over the winter while finishing his latest book. Their break takes a dark turn, though, when they start to sense a supernatural presence in the building, and Jack begins to lose his grip on reality.
Over the years, fans have shared their theories as to why Jack appears in a photo taken at the Overlook dated July 4, 1921. Does it mean Jack wasn't real? Is it a symbol of the hotel successfully absorbing his soul?
"Well it was supposed to suggest a kind of evil reincarnation cycle, where he is part of the hotel's history," Kubrick once told Japanese author Jun'ichi Yaoi. "Just as in the men's room when he's talking to the former caretaker – ghost of the former caretaker – who says to him, you know, 'You are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker. I should know. I've always been here.' One is merely suggesting some kind of, you know, endless cycle of this evil reincarnation. And also – well, that's it. Again it's the sort of thing that I think is better left unexplained."
For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.
