Barry Nelson, as the New York Times posited, was "an actor whose face we knew without quite knowing his name." His face became the first to embody the role of James Bond on a 1950s live TV production, telling The LA Times, "I always thought Connery was the ideal Bond. What I did is just a curio." He had a "Stopover in a Quiet Town" in "The Twilight Zone," navigated the star-studded "Airport," and commanded the stage next to legends like Lauren Bacall and Liza Minnelli, earning a Tony nomination in the Martin Scorcese-directed "The Act."
To most, he is best known as Stuart Ullman, general manager of the Overlook. He hires Jack Torrance to be the winter caretaker but gives him fair warning about the isolation as well as the hotel's gory past. Like many of his fellow actors, Nelson "had never done that many takes," telling Premiere Magazine that "Kubrick was a genius with the camera, so it wasn't all whether the actor was pleasing him or not," with the caveat that "it presents a problem to keep spontaneity after you do sixty, seventy takes" (via "The Complete Kubrick"). Nelson actually had an additional scene at the end of the film, where he visits Danny and Wendy in a hospital, but it was cut soon after release with Kubrick saying, "the fantastic pitch of excitement which the audience reached during the climax of the film, I decided the scene was unnecessary." (via New York Times News Service)
Nelson had previously co-starred with Shelley Duvall in the series "Cannon" on the 1973 episode "The Seventh Grave," and after "The Shining" chipped in guest starring roles on shows like "Taxi," "Dallas," "Fantasy Island," and "Murder, She Wrote." Nelson died in 2007, at age 89.
