A long-hidden piece of film history trivia has finally been uncovered. On April 5, New York Times visual investigator Aric Toler announced on Bluesky that he and British academic Alasdair Spark found the original photo that was doctored for the ending of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.
Despite the fact that this photo is one of the most famous images from any horror movie, its actual origins, and the real-world location where it was taken, were technically unknown for years, which made tracking it down a particularly intriguing project.
As Toler explained on Bluesky, the earliest success the pair of investigators found was a suggestion that the original photo, before Jack Nicholson’s head was pasted onto it, was thought to come from the Warner Brothers archives. The only problem is, that archive doesn’t actually exist. This led them (and several Reddit users) to start digging through other archives instead. According to a quote from Toler posted on the Getty Archive Instagram account, facial recognition software was used at some point in the process to identify UK dance instructor Santos Casani in the photograph, which helped the team narrow their search down to photo archives in London specifically.
Eventually, their quest led them to the BBC Hulton Archive, now owned by Getty Images, thanks to the advice of Murray Close, a photographer who actually worked on The Shining. After a long search, Toler says that the Vice President of the London archive, Matt Butson, finally located the photo and discovered it was taken at The Empress Ballroom in the Royal Palace Hotel in London, during a Valentine’s Day dance held on Feb. 15, 1921.
While Toler’s thread does an excellent job giving a brief overview of the project, he suggests that anyone who’s interested should check out Spark’s recounting of the journey through his Reddit posts as well. Of course, this being The Shining , there’s always another mystery to be uncovered. In this case, Toler asked his Bluesky followers to let him know if anyone can find any other photos of the Royal Palace Hotel’s Empress Ballroom at the time — which it turns out are pretty hard to come by.
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