Few images in cinema history pack more psychological punch than the final photograph in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. This black-and-white snapshot of Jack Torrance grinning among 1920s partygoers has haunted audiences for over four decades.

Kubrick’s horror masterpiece transforms the genre through deliberate pacing, narrative ambiguity, and unsettling sound design. The film elevates horror beyond jump scares into the realm of psychological terror.

The director’s genius culminates in the film’s final moments. After Jack Torrance freezes to death in the hedge maze, Kubrick cuts to a vintage photograph hanging in the hotel lobby. The caption reads, “Overlook Hotel July 4th Ball, 1921.”

And there stands Jack, impossibly present at an event that occurred decades before his birth.

This photograph ranks among cinema’s most disturbing final shots. What audiences didn’t know was that behind this fictional moment lay a real photograph with its own fascinating history.

The story of how Kubrick discovered and transformed this forgotten image reveals the meticulous craft behind one of horror’s most enduring mysteries.

Analyzing The Shining’s Story

The Shining follows Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a recovering alcoholic and aspiring writer, who moves to the Colorado Rockies with his wife and son, Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and young Danny (Danny Lloyd), after he accepts a job at the Overlook Hotel as the winter caretaker.

Upon their arrival at the Overlook, the hotel manager, Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson), warns Jack about a previous caretaker, Delbert Grady (Philip Stone), who killed his family and himself a few years ago.

Meanwhile, the hotel’s cook, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), realizes that Danny is clairvoyant. He warns him about the presence of evil in Room 237 of the hotel, and asks him to stay away from it.

As winter sets in and the family becomes increasingly isolated, the Overlook Hotel’s supernatural forces begin to prey on Jack and his family. Danny experiences terrifying visions while Jack becomes increasingly unstable and violent. Tormented by the spirits of the Overlook Hotel, he is convinced to kill his family.

‘The Shining’Credit: Warner Bros.

Jack attempts to murder Wendy and Danny with an axe, but they manage to escape into the hotel’s hedge maze. In the end, Danny outsmarts Jack, allowing Wendy and Danny to escape. Jack, lost in the maze, eventually freezes to death.

After Jack dies, we smash cut to a photograph, dated 1921. In the photo, Jack stands right in the center, surrounded by the hotel’s earlier guests against the backdrop of a full-blown party that’s being hosted at the hotel.

Analyzing the Fourth of July Photo in The Shining

The photograph prompts us to reconsider Jack and his arc in the film. Kubrick told French film critic Michel Ciment about how he envisioned the character of Jack.

“[Jack] doesn’t have very much further to go for his anger and frustration to become completely uncontrollable. He is bitter about his failure as a writer. He is married to a woman for whom he has only contempt. He hates his son. In the hotel, at the mercy of its powerful evil, he is quickly ready to fulfill his dark role.”

Kubrick also said that “the ballroom photograph at the very end suggests the reincarnation of Jack.”

The photograph raises multiple questions in our minds. Was this massacre destined? Does his death mean his end, and the end to this evil?

Kubrick has left the film open-ended, but the last photograph presents a sinister conclusion amidst the narrative’s ambiguity.

The suggestion of reincarnation is a direct hint at the absence of an end. The hotel will continue to claim victims and keep them trapped in its purgatory.

How Did Kubrick Get the Fourth of July Photo in The Shining?

Kubrick did not shoot the photo, although that was the initial plan.

Kubrick told Ciment that initially, he was all set to capture the in-film picture, with Jack Nicholson posing with the extras as the partygoers. However, Kubrick was not pleased with the way the pictures turned out.

Luckily, he found an old photograph in a picture library that matched his vision.

“So I very carefully photographed Jack, matching the angle and the lighting of the 1921 photograph, and shooting him from different distances too, so that his face would be larger and smaller on the negative. This allowed the choice of an image size that, when enlarged, would match the grain structure in the original photograph. The photograph of Jack’s face was then airbrushed into the main photograph, and I think the result looked perfect. Every face around Jack is an archetype of the period,” Kubrick told Ciment.

Who Are the People in the Photo at the End of The Shining?

It was not easy to track down the origin of the photograph. Forty-five years later, a retired academic from the University of Winchester, Alasdair Spark, found it. Spark got help from Arik Tolar, a New York Times journalist, and some extremely passionate Redditors (via IGN).

Spark said that for years, people believed that the image came from the Warner Bros. archive. Spark spoke with Murray Close, the photographer who took the photo of Jack Nicholson for the edit.

Close revealed that a Warner Bros. photo archive didn’t even exist (via CBC Radio)

In 2025, when Reddit user Connor Plunkett attempted to identify the real person in the photo using facial recognition, he found a match. It was Santos Casani, a renowned 1920s ballroom dancer from London (via CBC Radio).

With that clue, Spark and Tolar dug deeper and finally stumbled upon the man’s real name, John Golman. “Casani” was Goldman’s stage name. He was in an aircraft accident that left him with a lot of facial scars, after which he underwent plastic surgery.

“That accounted for the strange look of his face,” said Spark.

Spark and Tolar were finally able to confirm the identity of the man whose face was edited to create the infamous Fourth of July picture.

On an Instagram post for Getty Images, Spark revealed that the photograph was “one of the three taken by the Topical Press Agency at a St. Valentine’s Day Ball, 14 February 1921, at the Empress Rooms, the Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington.”

He also revealed that during their search, they discovered that Kubrick had licensed the film under his production company, Hawk Films, two years in advance, in October 1978, for use in The Shining.

Amidst all the jump scares and cerebral terror, The Shining is a bold commentary on the deterioration of American society.

Please share your other favorite visual motifs from the film!