Prop scrapbook from The Shining.
The scrapbook is filled with yellowed newspaper clippings chronicling sordid events from the Overlook Hotel’s past, as well as violent crimes in the Colorado area.
One page bears the handwritten phrase: “And they took his balls with them” - a line paraphrased from Stephen King’s novel.
Many of the articles in the scrapbook were written by journalist Alexander Walker. Walker wrote for The Evening Standard, and was also a friend of Kubrick’s. Kubrick gave Walker copies of the Rocky Mountain News and other local Colorado newspapers on microfilm, along with a microfilm reader, and had Walker study the language and details of real articles so he could compose fictitious articles for the scrapbook.
This scrapbook figures prominently in the novel of The Shining, though it appears very little in the film. A number of sequences were shot with the scrapbook, including a scene where Jack finds it in the hotel basement, and a later scene where Jack shows the scrapbook to Wendy. Both scenes were deleted from the finished film.
Original scrapbook stored in the Stanley Kubrick Archive in London.
