Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of The Shining is renowned for its chilling final scene, which features a haunting photograph from the Overlook Hotel’s 1921 Fourth of July ball, prominently displaying Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) amidst a crowd from a time before he was born. The image used in the film was a manipulated version of a real photograph, which had remained elusive until recently. Exciting news for fans of the film: the original 1921 Fourth of July ball photograph has been discovered 45 years after the movie's release.

Alasdair Spark, a retired academic from the University of Winchester, shared the journey of finding this iconic image on Getty's Instagram. He explained, “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. Valentine’s Day Ball on February 14, 1921, at the Empress Rooms, the Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington.” The post also featured a new scan from the original glass-plate negative along with supporting handwritten documents.

Spark, along with New York Times staffer Arick Toller and a dedicated community of Redditors, embarked on a challenging quest to locate 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,” Spark noted on 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 further detailed that on-set photographer Murray Close, who captured the image of Nicholson superimposed over Casani for the film, had mentioned that the original photo came from the BBC Hulton Library. Knowing that Hulton had acquired Topical Press in 1958 and that Getty later took over in 1991, Spark decided to search through Getty’s vast collection. This search revealed 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 discovery is sure to delight fans of The Shining. Stephen King’s novel, released in 1977, has been adapted into two notable versions: Kubrick’s iconic film and Mick Garris’ faithful 1997 miniseries.