Many droogies on this subreddit may already know this picture.
I posted it because of the whole "Stanley treated Shelley so badly" thing, that still fills whole articles and is the subject of videos on the web, so please let me tell you something.
First thing you have to know is, that SK always chose his actors and crew with enormous care and of course never by accident or sloppily. So he cast Shelley for the role of Wendy in "The Shining" very consciously.
He saw her in the fantastic movie "3 Women" by Robert Altman and decided she would be a perfect Wendy, although (or maybe because, who knows?) there were voices that said, that she as a person might be a bit too, let´s say, fragile. She was kind of intimidated by Stanley on their first meeting and had a lot of misconsceptions about him, that so many people had or have.
Everybody had a whole lotta respect and awe for him, but she also had, well, fear. I don´t know really why, because Stanley treated women always very gentlemen like, and it was the same with Shelley.
During the shooting of The Shining, as during the shooting of any of his movies, there were always moments of tension and stress of course, but the atmosphere on the set of TS was reasonably relaxed after all. Yes, it´s true that he pushed Shelley to the limits (as he always did with himself and even more), maybe sometimes even beyond. Shelley had a very hard time, no doubt about that.
Many people experienced this who worked for him. So it was no big surprise. BUT: He didn´t abuse her, didn´t hurt her and often knew how far he could push her. People often talk about the infamous "stair scene" with Jack Nicholson where Stanley demanded 127 takes. I don´t know if it was exactly 127 takes, it was a high number of takes, yes. But mainly because of technical reasons, a department where Stanley was an enormous pain in the neck. The many takes were very often not the actors fault, it was just very often not an actors issue. And maybe it was a mistake on Stanleys side (but I don´t judge him, he may have had his reasons) that he almost never explained the reasons to the actors why he demanded another take (but sometimes he did). That confused many actors and made them insecure, also Shelley in a very special way (maybe that was something he wanted to achieve?).
If you have watched the making of The Shining, filmed by Kubricks daughter Vivian, you will remember that scene in the snow where he "screams" at her. I honestly never understood how people could say or write that he screamed at her. For me that´s not screaming, that´s just arguing over a mistake, whoever was guilty for causing it.
Other great directors, for example (just two examples, you wouldn´t believe what kind of and how many, pardon me, psychos freely walk around in the movie business) Hitchcock and John Ford, do you know what they did to their actors and crew? I will not even start telling what horrible things Hitchcock and Ford did to them.
Do you know how a random Hollywood director usually behaves on set? Stanley was a choirboy compared to them, a choirboy. He never, ever shouted at his crew or actors, for example. Didn´t put them down in front of others. Of course, as I said, there are always moments of tension and great stress during the production of a movie.
Sometimes I wish Stanley had not forced (in a way) Vivian to recut the making of, because there were some scenes in it that showed Stanley in a very good light, I thought. Stanley didn´t want them. People with their misconceptions wouldn´t have believed that this man they would have seen could be this inhuman monster director Stanley Kubrick they heard of, who, in their minds, ate his actors and crew for breakfast.
Yes, he was difficult, yes, he was extremely demanding (but always remember, he always demanded the most from himself), yes, he sometimes pushed people too far. But he was no sadist or monster, who enjoyed to treat people badly (quite the opposite). And look at the results, look at the movies, at his art, isn´t this something? He was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century in my opinion. And he was just himself, he was just Stanley Kubrick.
So many people liked him, some loved him - and still do, for good reasons.