SOLVED: Decades-old mystery of the ballroom photo that featured in one of the most famous films of all time… but do you remember where you’ve seen it?

By IAN GALLAGHER

Published: 23:28 BST, 7 June 2025 | Updated: 13:17 BST, 8 June 2025

It is a mystery that has perplexed fans of The Shining, one of the greatest horror films ever made, for 45 years.

Just what is the truth behind the haunting final scene? In it, the camera slowly closes in on a black and white photo of 1920s partygoers in a grand ballroom. But where was the photo taken and who were the revellers?

It has always been known that the photo was an original, albeit one that was doctored slightly. The face of Jack Nicholson, who plays a deranged caretaker in the 1980 film by Stanley Kubrick, was superimposed over that of the man at the front of the group, suggesting he is a reincarnation of an earlier hotel employee.

It was once suggested the photo showed a secret gathering of the US elite, former president Woodrow Wilson among them. Others thought they were devil worshippers. 

But thanks to British researcher Alasdair Spark, who spent months poring through archives, it has been revealed the picture was actually taken in a hotel next to Kensington Palace.

It captured a Valentine’s dance held on February 14, 1921 at the Empress Ballroom in the Royal Palace Hotel, west London. 

Kubrick, who died in 1999, had planned to use extras for the shot but found the image in an old photo library and thought it more authentic. But what of the man airbrushed out for Nicholson?

It turns out he was South African-born Santos Casani, who was described in his day as ‘the man who taught London to dance’.

Slide for before and after: The original photo was doctored with the face of Jack Nicholson superimposed over that of the man at the front of the group, suggesting he is a reincarnation of an earlier hotel employee

The mystery has perplexed fans of The Shining, one of the greatest horror films ever made (Pictured: Jack Nicholson in his role as Jack Torrance in the classic)

It has been revealed the picture was actually taken in a hotel next to Kensington Palace, the Royal Palace Hotel (above)

A pilot during the First World War, he was shot down and suffered terrible burns. He left hospital with an artificial nose ‘and the determination to become world’s greatest exponent of the fashionable new dances’.

Casani, who died in 1983 aged 85, wrote regularly on dance for the Daily Mail and broadcast dance lessons for the BBC from his Mayfair nightclub.

The Royal Palace Hotel was demolished in 1961 to make way for the Royal Garden Hotel where England’s World Cup winners celebrated in 1966.

Mr Spark said his discovery had put an end to all the ‘nonsense’ theories about the photo.

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SOLVED: Decades-old mystery of the ballroom photo that featured in one of the most famous films of all time… but do you remember where you’ve seen it?

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