May 23, 1980: The Shining premieres, directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by Stephen King. Except King hates this version.
Jack Torrance, a writer, takes a Winter caretaker position at the remote Overlook Hotel in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. The hotel closes every Winter season. After his arrival, hotel manager Stuart Ullman informs Jack that a previous caretaker, Charles Grady, killed his wife, two young daughters, and himself in the hotel a decade prior.
Before leaving for the Overlook, Jack's son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), has a premonition and a seizure. Jack's wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), tells the doctor about a past incident when Jack accidentally dislocated Danny's shoulder during a drunken rage. Jack has been sober ever since. Before leaving for the seasonal break, the Overlook's head chef, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), informs Danny of a telepathic ability the two share, which his grandmother called "shining." Hallorann tells Danny that the hotel also "shines," due to residue from unpleasant past events, and warns him to avoid Room 237.
A month passes, and Danny starts having frightening visions, including of the murdered Grady twins. Meanwhile, Jack's mental health deteriorates: He suffers from writer's block, is prone to violent outbursts, and has dreams of killing his family.
Danny gets lured to Room 237 by unseen forces, and Wendy later finds him with signs of physical trauma, for which she blames Jack. Jack sulks in the ballroom, where ghostly bartender Lloyd entices him back to drinking.
Wendy tells him that Danny was attacked by a "crazy woman" in Room 237. Jack investigates, and encounters a hideous female ghost in the bathroom, but tells Wendy he saw nothing. He blames Danny for inflicting the bruises on himself, and reacts angrily when Wendy suggests leaving the hotel. Danny enters a trance, and telepathically contacts Hallorann. Returning to the ballroom, Jack finds it filled with ghostly figures, including waiter Delbert Grady, who urges Jack to "correct" his wife and child.
Wendy finds Jack's manuscript, written with nothing but countless repetitions of the proverb "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." When Jack threatens her life, Wendy knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat, and locks him in the kitchen pantry. But she and Danny cannot leave, because Jack previously sabotaged the hotel's two-way radio and snowcat.
Back in their hotel room, Danny says "redrum" repeatedly, and writes the word in lipstick on the bathroom door. Wendy sees the word in the mirror, and realizes that it is actually "murder" spelled backward.
Jack is freed by Grady, and goes after Wendy and Danny with an axe. Danny escapes outside through the bathroom window, and Wendy fights Jack off with a knife when he tries to break through the door. Hallorann, having flown back to Colorado from his Florida Winter home, reaches the hotel in another snowcat. His arrival distracts Jack, who ambushes and murders him with the axe in the lobby, then pursues Danny into the hedge maze. Wendy runs through the hotel looking for Danny, encountering the hotel's ghosts, Hallorann's bloody corpse, and a vision of cascading blood from an elevator, similar to Danny's premonition.
In the hedge maze, Danny carefully backtracks to mislead Jack and hides behind a snowdrift. Jack plunges onward without a trail and becomes lost. Danny and Wendy reunite and leave in Hallorann's snowcat, leaving Jack to freeze to death in the maze.
In the film's last shot, a photograph in the hotel hallway pictures Jack standing amidst a crowd of party revellers from July 4, 1921.
Of course, Jack Nicholson had to be cast as Jack Torrance, a scarier villain than Darth Vader was in the Star Wars film that premiered 2 days earlier.
Stanley Kubrick was so crazy. (How crazy was he?) Crazy enough to direct this movie. Crazy enough to have people type up that entire "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" thing hundreds of times -- including in other languages, so he could sell the film to foreign markets and still include the scene. Crazy enough to make Shelley Duvall do 127 takes of a scene. That is not a typo: One hundred and twenty-seven takes. And you thought she was afraid of Nicholson?
King later admitted that Jack Torrance's drinking problem mirrored his own, and that he was also using cocaine at the time.
In 1997, NBC broadcast a miniseries titled Stephen King's The Shining. Now clean and sober, and given this 2nd chance, King no chances: He produced it, and wrote the screenplay himself. Mick Garris directed it. It was shot at the inspiration for the novel, the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. This time, Steven Weber played Jack Torrance, Rebecca De Mornay played Wendy, Courtland Mead and Wil Horneff played Danny at different ages, and Melvin Van Peebles played Dick Hallorann.
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May 23, 1980 was a Friday. Football was out of season. The next day, the Stanley Cup was won by Bobby Nystrom's overtime goal, giving the New York Islanders a 5-4 win in Game 6 over the Philadelphia Flyers at the Nassau Coliseum. The NBA season ended a week earlier, when the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Philadelphia 76ers in the Finals.
And these Major League Baseball games were played:
* The New York Yankees beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 7-3 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. Willie Randolph, Dennis Werth and Joe Lefebvre hit home runs in support of Ron Guidry. Reggie Jackson did not play.
* The New York Mets beat the Atlanta Braves, 2-1 at Shea Stadium. Ray Burris was the winning pitcher.
* The Boston Red Sox beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. Carl Yastrzemski, Butch Hobson and Jack Brohamer hit home runs in support of Bob Stanley.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Houston Astros, 3-0 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. It was "Win Day": Steve Carlton pitched a 3-hit shutout, while Nolan Ryan didn't get out of the 4th inning. Mike Schmidt hit a 3-run home run off Ryan, while Pete Rose went 1-for-1 with 3 walks. No one knew it yet, but this was a preview of what is still one of the best League Championship Series ever played.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-3 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Ken Singleton hit a home run in support of Steve Stone, who outpitched Jack Morris on his way to a 25-7, Cy Young Award season. Eddie Murray went 0-for-3, but had an RBI on a sacrifice fly.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the San Francisco Giants, 5-4 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Tim Foli hit a sacrifice fly to score Steve Nicosia with the winning run in the bottom of the 13th inning. Willie Stargell went 3-for-4 with 2 RBIs.
* The Montreal Expos beat the Cincinnati Reds, 7-4 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. Bill Lee, "The Spaceman," went the distance for the win. Johnny Bench did not play.
* The Chicago Cubs beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, 2-0 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. Dennis Lamp pitched a 4-hit shutout, outpitching Don Sutton.
* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-0 at Milwaukee County Stadium. Bill Travers pitched a 4-hit shutout. Robin Yount and Ben Oglivie hit home runs, and Paul Molitor went 0-for-3 with a walk.
* The San Diego Padres beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 2-0 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Willie Montañez doubled Dave Winfield home the winning run in the top of the 9th inning. Rick Wise had pitched 7 innings of 4-hit shutout ball, but Bob Shirley, who finished the 4-hit shutout, was the winning pitcher.
* The Kansas City Royals beat the California Angels, 13-9 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). George Brett went 2-for-6 with 2 RBIs. Joe Rudi went 3-for-5 with 2 home runs and 3 RBIs. Rod Carew went 2-for-5.
* The Texas Rangers beat the Oakland Athletics, 3-1 at the Oakland Coliseum. Fergie Jenkins allowed just 2 hits, outpitching Rick Langford. Rickey Henderson, then a rookie, went 0-for-4.
* And the Seattle Mariners beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-0 at the Kingdome in Seattle. Rick Honeycutt (2 hits in 5 innings) and Shane Rawley (1 in 4) combined on a 3-hit shutout. Willie Horton and Tom Paciorek hit home runs for the M's.
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