The Vault of Kubrick

Part One

From 2001: A Space Odyssey courtesy of Stanley Kubrick Archives, London.

A few years ago I was working at the London College of Fashion, and heard about the Stanley Kubrick Archives housed in the basement of the London College of Communication; another branch of the University of the Arts, London. I got to know Richard Daniels, the senior archivist there at the time, and he invited me to bring my students along so they could get an idea about the depth of enquiry that Kubrick put into the research for all of his films, whether they came to fruition or not. It also served to show the path that Stanley Kubrick's career took, from his beginnings as a 13 year old boy with a new camera, to a 17 year old who sold an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine. This earned him a place as an apprentice photographer which then led to him being given a staff photographer role with regular assignments.

This was followed by his plan to move into documentaries and film and how he went about developing his ideas, often having several projects in various stages of development at the same time.

Another useful aspect of the trip was to get an idea about the importance of archiving and the organization of files, assets and resources. 

Richard is an absolute mine of information regarding Kubrick and his work, and after showing us into the main room (designed to reference the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey), he took us into the atmosphere controlled archive itself. State-of-the-art remote controlled doors labelled with each of the film titles, slide back to reveal corridors housing relics from every aspect of Kubrick's career.

The Archive itself runs to approximately 900 linear metres and includes production paperwork, letters, props, costumes, publicity materials, production photographs, research, photographs, plans, books, audiovisual material, equipment and press cuttings. 

Here are a few of the items I was given permission to photograph…

Kubrick's camera. I would KILL to own this Nikon! (okay, slight exaggeration). Below:Kubrick's own well-thumbed copy of Vietnam Inc used as reference for Full Metal Jacket.

The severed head from the final moments of Full Metal Jacket.

Into the Eyes Wide Shut section... and Alice's drug paraphernalia.

The amount of research and the level of detail that Kubrick put into each film and each prop is astounding. The wallet for Dr. Bill Harford, played by Tom Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut was full of credit cards in the character's name and even his driving license had text on the back of the card too.

Bill Harford's Driver License.

Danny's clothing from The Shining, nicely boxed and stored at a constant temperature, sans snow.

Two pages from reams of hand-typed documents from Jack Torrance's 'book' in various languages.

Thanks were given at the time also to archivists Sarah Cox and Charlotte Procter for accommodating us and giving the LCF students a comprehensive tour of the archives.