Last week I shared a bucket-list adventure with my wife when we traveled to Estes Park, Colorado to spend the night at The Stanley Hotel, inspiration for Stephen King’s Overlook Hotel in his classic horror novel The Shining. We both give The Stanley a thumbs up. But the trip got me to thinking, what about the movie? How did it hold up after our visit? I would advise anyone to read the book first before watching the movie, the TV miniseries, or the sequel (Yes, there was a sequel — you better look it up!). Although I have watched the movie many times, I remain ambivalent about it after all these years. Jack Nicholson was great but the character he portrayed (Jack Torrance) was a psychopath. In the book, Stephen King portrayed Jack as a nice guy placed in a bad situation in constant battle between good and evil. The only casting decision I could get behind in Stanley Kubrick’s film was Scatman Crothers as Hotel employee Dick Hallorann. No matter.
I wonder, what ever happened to all of those actors from that film? Okay, we know about Jack Nicholson. He had been nominated for five Oscars and won one for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and would win two more. For Nicholson’s part, he once said, “To me, the great irony of this film is that it marks the first time I’ve ever played a husband and father in a movie.” If you want to know how he did it, Google “Jack Nicholson preparing for The Shining” and you’ll be amazed at the many YouTube videos divulging his methods.
But what about the rest? Shelly Duvall played Wendy Torrance in the film. Duvall was riding high coming into the movie. She had won Best Actress awards at Cannes, L.A. film critics, and the British Academy and was considered a star on the rise. During filming, she got word that she would play Olive Oyl in the Robert Altman Popeye film, a role she seemed born to play when based on looks alone. While at the airport leaving for The Shining filming in England, Musician Paul Simon broke up with her after three years of dating (1976-1979). The breakup sent Duvall on an emotional rollercoaster — she cried 12 hours a day, which may have helped her in her role as the vulnerable wife of Jack and mother of Danny. Eventually, Duvall left Hollywood to return to her home state of Texas. She took with her a very special souvenir from the film given to her by director Stanley Kubrick: the infamous “July 4th Ball-1921” final party scene photo.
Six-year-old Danny Lloyd played Danny Torrance. Lloyd was born on October 13, 1972, in Tremont, Illinois. He got the role for his uncanny ability to maintain concentration for extended periods. He learned he got the part on his 5th birthday. During filming, Lloyd never realized he was in a horror film, instead, he thought it was a movie about a family living in a hotel. Lloyd was thrilled he got to drive a tricycle indoors and was promised that he could keep the bike when filming was over. He never got the tricycle. Jack Nicholson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “He’s an astronaut among child actors,” adding “That business of him crooking his finger when his imaginary friend, Tony, speaks, that was his idea.” He retired at the age of ten after portraying Nixon Watergate Burglar G. Gordon Liddy as a child in the 1982 film Will: G. Gordon Liddy. In 2004, Lloyd became an associate biology professor at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. In 2019, now a farmer, a happily married man, and a proud father of four, Lloyd appeared in a cameo role as a spectator at a baseball game in the Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, his first acting role in 36 years, making him the only actor to appear in both films.
Benjamin Sherman Crothers, better known as “Scatman,” was born in Terre Haute, Indiana on May 23, 1910. He began his musical career as a teenager playing in speakeasies in Terre Haute. He sang and was self-educated on guitar and drums. He rose to acting fame in the mid-1970s as Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show Chico and the Man. After voicing Scat Cat in the 1970 Walt Disney film The Aristocats, Scatman provided the TV voices of Meadowlark Lemon in the Harlem Globetrotters, Jazz the Autobot in The Transformers, and Hong Kong Phooey. Most importantly, for the sake of this article, he portrayed Dick Hallorann in The Shining. It was his fourth film with Jack Nicholson. Director Stanley Kubrick was notorious for filming a lot of takes without ever telling his actors why or what they were doing wrong. Of all The Shining actors, Crothers may have taken it the toughest. Crothers had to reshoot over and over the physically demanding scene where he gets axed down by Jack. In a 1980 Detroit Free Press interview with Jack Matthews, Crothers said it was the “toughest thing I ever had to do. But that’s OK. Stanley knew what he wanted. I’m just glad I’m in the movie.” In the same interview Scatman did what he knew best, he scatted about it: “’He might work you days and days, you’ll find out it surely pays…A perfectionist, you know, it’s gotta be right before you go, shu-beem-de-boop, shu-beem-de-boop, shu-beem-de-boop.” On November 22, 1986, Crothers died at the age of 76 at his home in Van Nuys, California, after a four-year battle with lung cancer.
Barry Nelson played Stuart Ullman, the general manager of the Overlook who hires Jack Torrance to be the winter caretaker but warns him about the isolation and the hotel’s gory past. In an interview with Premiere magazine, Nelson recalled the rigorous retake habit of Kubrick this way: “I had never done that many takes before. Kubrick was a genius with the camera, so it wasn’t all whether the actor was pleasing him or not.” He acknowledged that was simply Kubrick’s style but admitted that “it presents a problem to keep spontaneity after you do sixty, seventy takes.” Nelson, born in San Francisco on April 16, 1917, was an accomplished Broadway star but is remembered by OO7 buffs as the first actor to portray Ian Fleming’s secret agent James Bond on screen. Nelson played Bond in a 1954 adaptation of Ian Fleming’s novel Casino Royale on the television anthology series Climax! eight years before Sean Connery appeared in Dr. No. In 2004, Nelson said, “At that time, no one had ever heard of James Bond…I was scratching my head wondering how to play it. I hadn’t read the book or anything like that because it wasn’t well known.” The TV program also featured Peter Lorre as the villain which was the reason he took the role. Originally broadcast live, the production was believed lost until a kinescope emerged in the 1980s. Nelson died on April 7, 2007, while traveling in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, nine days before his 90th birthday.
British actor Philip Stone played chilling former Overlook caretaker Charles Grady in “The Shining.” As the only actor to appear in three consecutive Stanley Kubrick films, Stone never minded Kubrick’s countless takes. He even “somehow managed to get the drink to lodge in the crook of Jack Nicholson’s arm without it spilling: twice! Still, you had to have a tremendous amount of patience. If you did a film with Stanley, you were married to him. There was nothing else in your life.” Stone also appeared as the father of Malcolm McDowell in the gruesome Clockwork Orange, and also appeared in Flash Gordon, and as Captain Blumburtt in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Stone died in 2003 at the age of 79. Strictly as an aside, Rhonda and I were at The Stanley Hotel on Father’s Day from 11:00 a.m. on, remaining there for the next 24 hours. We noticed a handsome young man working behind the counter from our arrival until 1:00 to 1:30 the next morning. Since Rhonda and I were the ONLY guests (well, living guests anyway) in the lobby and the young man was still behind the counter, I said to him, “Man, you’ve been here all day.” To which he replied without missing a beat, “I’ve always been here Mr. Torrance” with a wry smile on his face. (Grady’s famous line in the movie.) Well played young man, well played.
Joe Turkel played ghostly Overlook “trusty” bartender Lloyd and like Phillip Stone, he too appeared in three Kubrick films but not consecutively. After The Shining, Turkel didn’t take on many more roles, but a few years later he further cemented his place in popular culture as corporate overlord Eldon Tyrell in the 1982 film” and by voicing the character in the Blade Runner video game in 1997. Ironically Lloyd the bartender died of liver failure in 2022 at the age of 94.
Aside from the characters above, many still equate the ghostly twin daughters of caretaker Charles Grady, played by real-life twin sisters Lisa and Louise Burns, as the stuff that nightmares are made of. Lisa recalled how it all started to the pop culture Web site It Came From… ”When we auditioned we both said, ‘Hello Mr. Kubrick’ at the same time and he really thought that was freaky.” They didn’t have a lot of screen time, but their plaintive suggestion “Hello, Danny. Come and play with us. Come and play with us, Danny. Forever…and ever…and ever…” haunts us to this day. Louise recalls “wearing the most uncomfortable costumes that eventually became over-soaked in ‘Kensington Gore’ fake blood.” They told the Daily Mirror that they were a near-constant presence on the set and even celebrated their 11th birthday with the cast and crew. “Every day felt like we’d been invited to a very exclusive party and we were the youngest, luckiest people to be there.” The girls briefly thought of pursuing an acting career but Louise said she “decided to be a scientist instead” while her sister Lisa became a criminal lawyer. The two have occasionally reunited with fellow cast members at conventions.
The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park Colorado seems the perfect setting for a Stephen King horror story. However, study the history of the resort and you will find a much tamer story. There were no sensational deaths and certainly no gruesome murders taking place during its century-old lifetime. True, there was an explosion causing death (in room 217 no less) but nothing nefarious. The Shining is simply a story that fermented in the mind of a visiting author who was at the hotel with his small family at a time when it was closing for the season and they were the only guests at a venue built to house hundreds of people. King was struggling with his own alcohol demons at the time (he no longer drinks) and The Stanley simply served as fertile ground for his legendary literary imagination.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
