Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of The Shining is renowned for its haunting final scene, which features a photograph from the Overlook Hotel’s 1921 Fourth of July ball. The image prominently displays Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson), despite the fact that Torrance would not have been born at the time. This iconic shot was created by superimposing Nicholson onto a real historical photograph, which had remained unidentified until recently. The original photograph, taken during the 1921 Fourth of July ball, has now been discovered 45 years after the film's release.
Alasdair Spark, a retired academic from the University of Winchester, shared details about the discovery on Getty's Instagram. He revealed that facial recognition software had previously identified an unknown man in the photograph as Santos Casani, a London ballroom dancer. Spark explained that the photo was one of three taken by the Topical Press Agency at a St. Valentine's Day Ball on February 14, 1921, at the Empress Rooms in the Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington. Alongside his post, Spark included a new scan from the original glass-plate negative and other supporting documents.
The search for the original photograph was a collaborative effort involving Spark, New York Times staffer Arick Toller, and many enthusiastic Redditors. Spark noted the challenges they faced, saying, “It was starting to seem impossible, every cross-reference to Casani failed to match. Other likely places that were suggested didn’t match. 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.”
Spark also mentioned that on-set photographer Murray Close, who captured the image of Nicholson used in the film, had informed him that the original photograph was sourced from the BBC Hulton Library. Knowing that Hulton had acquired Topical Press in 1958 and that Getty took over in 1991, Spark decided to search through Getty’s vast collection of images. This led to the discovery that the image was licensed to Hawk Films, Kubrick’s production company, on October 10, 1978, for use in *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."This revelation should delight fans of the film. Stephen King’s novel The Shining was released in 1977 and has been adapted twice: Kubrick’s iconic film and a 1997 miniseries directed by horror maestro Mick Garris, which stayed closer to the original book.
