Irene Reid Album?


MAIN PAGESECTION PAGESITE MAPGLOSSARY

RANDOM ART FROM THE FILM
ARPEGGIOBOMBOCOMMONERS CROWNIRENE REIDMYSTERIES OF THE BOILER ROOMMYSTERIES OF THE OVERLOOKMYSTERY KITCHEN ARTSUPERNATURAL DREAMTWO NIAGARA FALLS POSTCARDSTONY THE TIGER


I made the correctly-stretched version of the cover with my super sophisticated image stretching abilities.

APPEARANCE

Seen once from 97:31-97:39, for the rest of the scene, Durkin blocks any view of the album behind him. Since Wendy blocks One By One, and given that album’s severe significance to the film, I doubt this would be anything less substantial. Alas. No luck nailing it down so far.

IDENTITY

I think I’ve identified the singer on Durkin’s countertop as Irene Reid, but it’s weird: there’s also a name (or some other writing) on the picture, and the name is definitely something like Willene Barton. Reid was a lesser-known jazz singer, whose major era was the early ’40s-’60s. Her album names (up until 1980) do speak to the themes of the film: Room for One More, It’s Too Late, A Man Only Does (What a Woman Makes Him Do), I’ve Been Here All the Time, The World Needs What I Need, Two of Us. If this is somehow a reference to Two of Us, that might make an interesting build on the One By One subtext.

What’s most interesting is that Reid subbed for the Wicked Witch of the West character Evillene in the musical The Wiz, sometime during the mid-to-late 1970s. That would seem to go with the time behind Durkin here being 9:07. The AT code for Snow White is 709. I’ve considered the implications of this near the bottom of my analysis on that folktale.

Barton was even more obscure with even fewer albums, including The Feminine Sax (’57) and There She Blows! (‘56) She was very interesting, though, for being a black female musician in the ’50s not known for her singing chops, which is obviously how so many got their starts back then. Barton apparently stayed away from recording, and made her living performing. There’s a lot written about her life, and yet no trace of her on Allmusic.com or english Wikipedia, for instance (as of this writing). So there’s a weird thing going on there, and I wonder if Kubrick had some idea about that.

MIRRORFORM SIGNIFICANCE

During its eight brief seconds (97:31-97:39), Wendy kisses Jack at his typewriter and asks him if he got a lot written today. He replies with a stilted, “Yes.” The couple almost seem to be standing on the album when she kisses him, so if this is some romantic album, that would be cute. But I’m thinking it’s more likely a break-up album.


Next art reference: Plovers


MAIN PAGESECTION PAGESITE MAPGLOSSARY


OTHER MAIN PAGES FOR SHINING ANALYSIS

THE MIRRORFORMTHE BEATLESTHE RUM AND THE RED
BACKGROUND ARTOVERLOOK PHOTOGRAPHSGOLDEN SPIRALS
PHI GRIDSPATTERNSVIOLENCE AND INDIGENAABSURDITIES
THE STORY ROOMANIMAL SYMBOLSTHE ANNOTATED SHINING

ABOUT EYE SCREAM