How Saul Bass Brought a Shine to a Kubrick Classic

Despite its chilly reception at first, in the nearly 50 years since its release, The Shining (1980), directed by Stanley Kubrick, has become one of the most celebrated, discussed, and analyzed films of the 20th century—not just in the horror genre but in all of cinema. 

Nearly everything about the film has become iconic: the pattern of the rug at the Overlook Hotel, Jack Nicholson’s devilish grin and “Here’s Johnny!” catchphrase, and the elevator that inexplicably gushes blood; even if you’ve never seen the film, chances are you’re at least familiar with its eerie “twins.” The striking original poster for the film, designed by Saul Bass, a master of movie posters and titles, has itself also become part of the film’s legend.

Bass became a Hollywood institution in the 1950s and ’60s with his deceptively simple and minimalist artwork for such films as Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder as well as his many collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, including posters for Vertigo and the credit sequences for films like Psycho and North by Northwest. 

In 1960, Bass had collaborated with Kubrick on both the poster and the opening credits for the director’s blockbuster gladiator epic Spartacus. By all accounts, that collaboration had been a fruitful one—but nearly 20 years later, their working relationship seems to have involved a certain amount of friction.

“It was a hell of an experience. Stanley was obsessive about what he was aiming at. While it drove me nuts,” Bass said in an interview with John Baxter for his book Stanley Kubrick: A Biography (1997). “I deeply respected it because that’s the way I treat everybody who works for me. That took a lot of doing. Stanley pushed me very, very hard.”

Their work together on The Shining began as early as 1978—Kubrick was notorious for the long gestation periods and shooting schedules of his films—and my research in the director’s archives has revealed some of the fractious correspondence over Bass’s initial designs for the poster. 

In one note Kubrick writes: “My reaction to the ads you sent is that they are all beautifully done but I don’t think any of them are right.” He wrote harsh notes on several of Bass’s proposed compositions, all produced with a meticulous stippling technique. Some of Kubrick’s terse comments include: “Looks like science fiction. Hard to read, even at this size”; “Hand and bike are too irrelevant. Title looks small, looks like the ink didn’t take on the part that goes light”; “Maze too abstract and too much emphasis on maze”; and, simply, “Don’t like artwork.”

“I did three hundred drawings. Some of them were terrific,” Bass told Kubrick’s biographers. “I have the deepest admiration for that process. It’s a process in which I engage when I’m doing my work. I drive myself crazy, I drive people who work for me nuts in the same way that Stanley did it to me. That is the nature of what you have to do if you want to do something good.”

“Stanley will unhesitatingly junk things and do them over because he thinks they can be improved, changed or made better,” he added. “There may be inner anguish, but he’s cool outside. I admire that absorptive, obsessive, concentrated force field that he builds around himself. He’s an extraordinary guy.”

While Kubrick was evidently a fan of the Stephen King bestseller on which the film was based (he once said he “thought the plot, ideas, and structure were much more imaginative than anything I’ve ever read in the genre”), it was also clear that he had no intention of making a straight adaptation of it. The same would apply to the film’s poster art. While the book’s original dust jacket featured a conventional—for its time—illustration of the protagonists, the hotel where the novel is set, and a topiary animal that would play a central role in its plot, Kubrick was interested in something rather more spare and sinister.

Kubrick, who was infamously hands-on in the marketing of his own films (as well as in their projection and distribution), had directed Bass to design something that evoked “terror” and “the supernatural.” And the director believed that with a particular image of a haunted face, one that Bass had shown him earlier, the designer had nailed his concept.

After some prodding from Kubrick, Bass went back to the drawing board literally and figuratively, and produced several versions of what became his final artwork for the poster. It’s unclear if the frightened face is supposed to represent Danny Torrance, the young hero of the book who is eventually terrorized by his possessed father, or Tony, the imaginary friend he communicates with throughout the story. As one might expect from anything associated with The Shining, conspiracy theories and wild speculation abound regarding the identity of the face trapped within the letter T.

“The whole world had that poster of The Shining … with those eyes and the black and yellow,” former Warner Brothers marketing executive Julian Senior told the authors of the 2024 book Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. “I had seen nothing of the movie at that point, not a frame in it, but I looked at the poster and thought, Christ, I wonder what he’s really going to do?”

However, according to Senior, there was some hand-wringing from other executives at the studio; they did not like the fact that the poster omitted the instantly recognizable face of its marquee star, Jack Nicholson.

The decision to set the design on a bright yellow ground was reportedly Kubrick’s. “If you look at danger and traffic signals, pretty much anywhere in the world, black and yellow signifies something,” he said, according to the authors of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. “It’s authoritative. It says, ‘Whoa, stop, just a minute.’” 

This similarity to the colors of traffic signals is precisely why the Japanese distributor wanted to use an alternative poster—to prevent confusion with the country’s black-and-yellow signs. The ever-irascible Kubrick told Senior “The first guy in their office who commits hari-kari, I promise you, I will go with their poster.”

The color yellow is used to great effect here and also takes on an ominous meaning in the film. For instance, the Volkswagen Beetle that the fictional Torrance family drives to the Overlook Hotel where the story takes place is also bright yellow, another change from the novel that many believe was deliberate.

Rumor has it that Bass preferred the poster in red—suggesting blood. Later, when an EP (an Extended Play album) of the film’s long-out-of-print soundtrack was released on vinyl, the poster art was used on the cover in both red and yellow variants. 

Kubrick was thrilled with the final product. “I think it’s one of the best film ads I’ve ever seen,” he wrote Warner Brothers executive, Ted Ashley. “It solves the eternal problem of trying to combine the artwork with the title of the film.”

Meanwhile, Kubrick had the audacity to dub his own film “a masterpiece of modern horror” before anyone had ever laid eyes on it.

Like the original ending of the movie, however, and for reasons that have never been made public, the Saul Bass poster was eventually eschewed in favor of a more straightforward design (for both the film’s international release and subsequent home videos) that placed Jack Nicholson’s hysterical face from the film’s climax at its center. But the Bass poster has endured and become an indispensable part of the movie’s lore for its die-hard fans. 

Ironically, The Shining wound up being Saul Bass’s last poster for a major motion picture that was actually released. He designed a poster for the 1989 film Return to the River Kwai, which was never distributed, and a provocative poster for Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning 1993 film Schindler’s List, which was ultimately rejected. 

Clearly, a decade or so after The Shining, Bass’s style was beginning to fall out of favor; posters were becoming significantly less abstract and more driven by star power. Yet Bass’s influence endured, with clear homages to his artistry in the poster designs for Spike Lee’s Clockers (by designer Art Sims) and the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading (by the design firm P+A/Mojo). 

Ultimately, Bass’s poster for The Shining is an ideal match for the film itself. It’s mysterious, it’s open to interpretation, it’s striking, it’s unforgettable, and it’s—undeniably—one of a kind.

Adam Howard is a Senior Producer of The New Yorker Radio Hour. Previously, he was a Senior Associate Producer on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and an Executive Producer of the podcast Full Release with Samantha Bee. Prior to his career in late night comedy and radio, he spent several years as a journalist, writing about sports, pop culture and politics for The Daily Beast, Playboy, NBC News, and TheGrio. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of Journalism and studied film history and screenwriting at Bard College. In his spare time, he illustrates his own alternative movie posters and resides in Brooklyn, N.Y.