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or you can get all of History Daily plus other fantastic history podcasts at into History.com. Quiet on set on set. It's summer 1979 at Elstree Studios on the outskirts of London England.

On set 42 yearold actor Jack Nicholson fixes a frenzied grin on his face

as he looms over a closed bathroom door with a large axe in his hands.

Three years ago, Jack won an Oscar playing a man pretending to be

insane in the movie One Flew Over the Cocoo's Nest. For the last few months though, he's

been shooting a new movie involving a real descent into insanity.

In The Shining, Jack plays the caretaker of a hotel in the Rocky Mountains that's closed for the winter.

The isolation of the mysterious Snowed Inn Hotel drives the caretaker into madness

until he attacks his wife and young son.

Action. Now Jack is filming the scene in which he chops through a door with an axe

while his wife cowers on the other side.

As the camera rolls, Jack tries the bathroom door handle.

It's locked.

He puts his head close through the door, gently taps on the wood, and he steps back, lifts the axe, and swings it.

Again and again.

The blade chops a ragged hole in the door, and Jack puts his head through the gap.

He doesn't have a line scripted.

At this point, his co-star is just supposed to scream out in terror, but Jack's decided to improvise.

He inhales ready to call out, Here's Johnny in the style of the Johnny Carson show,

...