I've tried to post this to Youtube, but it won't take - perhaps it's moderated, perhaps it's too long.

I am Alasdair Spark, the person who found the original of the 1921 July 4 photograph. Thank for you for the compliments; let me return them, Woody Allen style, and say I like your work, particularly the early stuff…

My article on this will be published in 2027 in a new edition of Centipede Press’ Studies in the Horror Film: The Shining, edited by Danel Olson. Sadly, print takes time to publish. I have publicised my work on Reddit and it’s easily findable in Kubrick and Shining sub-reddits as well as in Kubrick Facebook groups.

Anyway, allow me to make specific points in reply:

The BBC Hulton library - correct, but it’s not a place and really, it isn’t hard to find out about, it shouldn’t have been puzzling when Joan Smith mentioned it to you (the problem was that in interviews she also mentioned the more plausible Warner Bros. Publicity archive, that was the red herring.) Edward Hulton (the newspaper owner and publisher), assembled a photo library which was later absorbed into the BBC photo library, which was in turn was bought by others and eventually by Getty Images. When Joan Smith mentioned  it - as she also did in an interview with Justin Bozung that he recorded for the first edition of Studies in the Horror Film - it was easily findable because it’s well known. I contacted Murray Close, who took the photo of Jack Nicholson that was composited in, and he confirmed it - he went there to pick up large prints of the photo for Smith to work on. What wasn’t easy was finding the original plate negative and more details about the photo as Getty hadn’t digitised it. I had to ask one of their senior people, Matthew Butson, to go and look. He didn’t find it at first as in the multiple changes of ownership of the Hulton library, the photo index numbers had become confused. But he looked diligiently and found it. It was digitized and put online in 2025. But if you want a coincidence, it was taken by a photographer, first name Hal.

Joan Smith is still alive, and I contacted her family, but they don’t wish her to be bothered. 

If she does have a copy of the doctored photo in the attic, it wouldn’t be remarkable. She used copies of it to lecture on her techniques in art colleges for years after and this how a crop of the original found its way into print. She made many attempts at the photo until Kubrick was satisfied and so several survive, some with the inscription, some not.  Some have been sold at auction. Emilio D’Alessandro, Kubrick’s assistant, has one as a souvenir. 

Archetypes - yes as Kubrick said, they are, but not in the way you interpret. They are very 1920s faces - lumps, bumps, bad teeth and all. If you compare black and white images of Kubrick’s extras in the ballroom scene with the original photograph it’s immediately clear - they just don’t look right dressed up and hair slicked back. As Kubrick also said in that quotation “it proved impossible to make them look as good as the people in the photograph.” Simple enough. 

The hotel was the Royal Palace in Kensington, but the photo was actually taken in the next-door dance hall, the Empress Rooms, so guests at the hotel wouldn’t necessarily have attended. The Royal Palace was a significant hotel in London, built 1892, demolished 1961, but it was not quite the place for the international set - it wasn’t the equal of The Savoy or Claridges. The dance was on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1921. It was a ticketed Monday evening event, one of many that took place as part of the dance craze of the post WW1 years, and was nothing special at all. James Nott, the premier historian of this, has described the “democratisation” of dancing that took place after 1919 and the “affordable luxury” that dance halls like the Hammersmith Palais and the Empress Rooms (newly re-decorated in 1921 for the craze) gave the urban middle and lower classes. The people in the photo are almost all those people.

The dance itself was reported on by only a few newspapers (something easily researched via the online British Newspaper Archive) and none of the correspondents noted anyone famous and American, because it’s extremely unlikely anyone famous and American was there. There were a few British notables as dance competion judges, but that’s it. Philip JS Richardson, the editor of The Dancing Times, attended and wrote a multi-page account of it - no mention of Americans, famous or otherwise. I repeat, it was a perfectly ordinary, typical dance of the time. As you say, I have looked for other people in the crowd (not local shop-keepers though, I don’t know where you got that) and have only been able to identify one, Mrs Green, the dance partner of John Golman, the man who was “erased” by Jack Nicholson. I suspect a few others visible might have been West End theatre stars and perhaps the manager of another hotel, but it’s impossible to be certain. 

So it’s extraordinarily unlikely that bankers or other members of the US financial establishment were there on that rainy night in February. But it’s not my job to disprove the people you allege are there, it’s your job to prove they are there - and you haven’t. Incidentally, in your original video on this you said “Kubrick could have tampered with the picture in all kinds of ways, wigs or mustaches could have been added and famous people could have been placed in the photo but with mismatching variations of age.” but now you seem to be saying these people really are there and their faces can be matched? If you want to name the people you still say are there, I will happily track down their movements.

I think you made (and continue to make) the fatal flaw of letting your research proceed from your conclusions and not the other way round. I mean really, the Gold Room was gold-coloured and Kubrick bought some gold, is that it? Because like you, I’ve been to the SKA and I’ve examined the other photos on the Overlook’s walls. The argument about why they exist after the fire or why Kubrick didn’t destroy them after filming is specious (and of course, 20 - not counting the composite - are in the final shot…) They weren’t unique - as you must know, there are many which exist in duplicate there and they are prints after all, not negatives.

They seem to have come from Warner Bros. Publicity, likely via Julian Senior. Yes, an examination does show there are photos of famous people, including movie stars, generals and politicians. Many show the studio head Jack Warner meeting such. They do include a photo of JFK. And for that matter, Elvis. Neither were screen-used as far as I or anyone else can determine. There are random photos of big game fishing and they were screen-used - they are in Ullman’s office. As this suggests, the reason we never see them close up is not sinister, it’s because they are set-dressing. It’s silly to say the presence of photos of celebrities and famous people proves some Gold establishment theory or other - seriously, what else would you expect to find in Warner Bros. publicity stock? Again, you let your conclusion run ahead of the evidence.

Nevertheless, I have taken the time to identify the people in almost all of the other 20 photographs surrounding the 1921 photo on the wall in the final shot. There are no photos of early 20thC financiers, etc. - but there is a photo of Lou Costello. They are all from the 1940s or at the latest early 1950s. Three feature Ronald Reagan, two showing the 1940s movie star at the Academy Awards and one on an unidentified publicity tour. Kubrick obviously would have recognised Reagan, but his presence, if it means anything, is an ironic comment on Reagan’s run for the Republican nomination (he wasn’t selected as candidate until July 1980, after The Shining was complete.) But if you want to explore something cryptic, the presence of photos of the members of the obscure early 1940s girl singing group The Navy Blues Sextette is more interesting than any Gold Room nonsense. One shows them in a watermelon eating competition in Albuquerque, another shows them arriving at Penn Station. Who knows, maybe Kubrick was a 13 year old fan…  



THE SHINING - Kubrick's gold standard. Rob Ager. PLUS my reply - I am the person who found the original photo and I am cited in the video