Screenplay for the deleted original ending of The Shining. When the film was first released, a hospital epilogue was located between the shot of Jack frozen in the snow and the long dolly shot through the lobby that ends on the July 4, 1921 framed photo.
Kubrick decided to remove the scene very shortly after the U.S. opening, dispatching assistants to excise the scene from the dozens of prints showing in Los Angeles and New York City. All known copies of the scene were reportedly destroyed, although it is rumored that one surviving copy may exist.
Very little remains of the hospital epilogue beyond some continuity polaroids, costumes, and 35mm film trims housed in the Stanley Kubrick Archive. Evidence of just how late in the process the scene was removed lives on in the form of two actors listed in the end credits, despite the fact that they don’t appear in the finished film: Burnell Tucker in the role of “Policeman” and Robin Pappas in the role of “Nurse”.
It’s also important to note that this was likely not the exact scene that Kubrick shot; since the scene no longer exists, it’s impossible to know how exactly it played. Even the many people who saw the epilogue when The Shining was first released have varying recollections of the exact details. Clearly, the final text about the Overlook’s history was an idea omitted during the writing process.
Kubrick’s co-screenwriter on The Shining, Diane Johnson, had this to say about the deleted epilogue:
Kubrick had filmed a final scene that was cut, where Wendy and Danny are recovering from the shock in a hospital and where Ullman visits them.
Kubrick felt that we should see them in the hospital so we would know that they were all right. He had a soft spot for Wendy and Danny and thought that, at the end of a horror film, the audience should be reassured that everything was back to normal.
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