Dick Hallorann

Scatman Crothers as Dick Hallorann in the 1980 film adaptation.

File:The Shining Melvin Van Peebles 01.jpg

Melvin van Peebles as Dick Hallorann in the 1997 television adaptation.

Richard "Dick" Hallorann was a man who had the rare "Shining" ability, an ability he had also shared with his grandmother. He drove a Plymouth Fury.

History

Not much was known of Dick's early life, except that he likely was born in New Hampshire. As a little boy he mentioned he could hold conversations with his paternal grandmother without either of them moving their lips. When he grew up he joined the US Army and was eventually assigned to be a cook for Easy Company, a New Hampshire-based unit. Dick Halloran parlayed his cooking skills for the rest of his life, where he partnered with other men in his unit into starting up The Black Spot, which was a nightclub that mainly catered to black soldiers. Later he would get a job at the Overlook Hotel, eventually becoming their head chef.

Dick was first introduced in The Shining, in which he worked as a cook at the Overlook Hotel. Like Danny Torrance, Dick possessed the gift called the Shining, and warned young Danny that the Overlook could be dangerous to those with the Shining. He later attempted to rescue the Torrance family after Jack Torrance became possessed by the hotel. Dick remained close to the remaining Torrances until well into Danny's teenage years.

In IT (Stephen King), Dick is mentioned as an Army cook and member of the African-American army nightclub in Derry, Maine called "The Black Spot", which was burned down by the Legion of White Decency (the Maine equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan) in 1930. Dick's Shining allowed him to save the lives of several other clubgoers, including Mike Hanlon's father. He is also notable for being one of the only sane adults able to see It in one of its varying forms.

Dick appears briefly in Tabitha King's novel Pearl, where he works with Pearl Dickinson as a chef at a restaurant in Key West. Pearl remembers Dick as an incredible cook who enjoyed stepping out with a number of good-looking women.

In Doctor Sleep, Dick is given his most fleshed-out backstory to date. Dick is called by Wendy Torrance as the beginning of the novel to come and comfort her son, Danny, some months after their shared encounter at the Overlook Hotel at the end of The Shining.

Danny awakens in the middle of the night to pee and encounters the Woman from Room 217 from the Overlook in the bathroom, rotted and decaying. After a warning from Danny and seeing evidence of the Woman left on the toilet and shower curtain, Wendy calls Dick to assist and when he arrives, he tells Danny about his childhood.

Dick's paternal grandmother, who Dick refers to as "White Grandma" (due to her white, pure spirit - not her skin color) who shares Dick's "shine" and has trained him in it, had a brother, Andy Hallorann "Black Grandpa" due to his black and evil spirit. Black Grandpa would routinely sexually and mentally abuse Dick. After Black Grandpa dies, Dick has several shining encounters with his Black Grandpa's naked and sexualized spirit, which prompts Dick to tell his White Grandma about these apparitions. She teaches him how to "lock" bad shines like Black Grandpa into a menta lockbox. Dick passes this knowledge down to Danny to, in the form of a physical lockbox, to help him conceptualize locking away the Woman. Danny later does so to both her, and to Horace Derwent, another Overlook spirit, after an encounter with him.

Decades after this meeting, Danny (now Dan) Torrance once again seeks the help of Hallorann in protecting Abra Stone from the clutches of the True Knot cult, only to discover that Dick died on January 19, 1999. Nevertheless, Hallorann managed to speak to Dan one last time from beyond the grave by briefly possessing the body of the late Eleanor Ouellette.

Adaptations

• Scatman Crothers portrayed Dick in the 1980 movie adaptation.
• Melvin van Peebles portrayed Dick in 1997 television adaptation.
• Arthur Woodley portrayed Dick in 2016 operatic adaptation.

Appearances

• The Shining and its film adaptation
• 1997 television adaptation
• The 2016 operatic adaptation
• It
• Doctor Sleep