Kirk Douglas is pretty good at playing a certain type of media-savvy, self-centered monster.  Perhaps his best outing in such a role is in 1951’s Ace in the Hole. 

His newspaperman had worked for the top outlets in all the big cities, with each resulting from yet another termination due to his recklessness and selfishness.  Having exhausted the opportunities at any desirable employer, he rolls into Albuquerque.  At the city’s sole paper, this charmer tells editor Porter Hall, “Even for Albuquerque, this is pretty Albuquerque.”

Cut to one year later, and he is still unenthusiastically employed by Hall’s paper.  According to Douglas: “You know what’s wrong with New Mexico?  Too much outdoors.”  He’ll see a lot of that outdoors when an unexpected break surfaces, as a local man (Richard Benedict) finds himself trapped in a cave outside the tiny town of Escadero.  Douglas sees an opportunity to milk this story, and manipulates law enforcement and various officials to try to get a week’s worth of coverage out of it.  That’s right—our protagonist prevents a man from getting rescued, so that he can throw his weight around. 

He especially enjoys the leverage this gives him over his former co-workers at the big city papers, who have arrived to discover only Douglas is allowed direct access to the confined man.  Robert Arthur, playing a young co-worker of his, is impressed by how Douglas is able to manipulate the situation to his advantage.  He learns such elements of the trade from his mentor as, “Bad news sells best, because good news is no news.”  He forgot to mention bad news always travels fastest, which is why Douglas Adams once wrote of a spaceship powered by bad news, which arrived anywhere faster than any other transport, though nobody was pleased when it was arrived.  An even better lesson imparted by Douglas is: “One man is better than 84. Human interest. Somebody all by himself, like Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic.”

Observing from the sidelines is Jan Sterling, as the tired and world-weary wife of Benedict.  When Douglas asks her if this is Escadero, her snappy comeback is, “I have a couple of other names for it.”  She can’t wait to become a widow, so she can get out of the town so small that the travel stop she runs with her husband has a phone number that is only “Escadero 2”.  She is as cynical as Douglas, but he needs her to play up the part of the grieving widow for the story.  It is difficult to get her to fake empathy (“I don’t go to church.  Kneeling bags my nylons”), though she is able to make more of an effort once the tourist dollars start rolling in from the masses who come to watch the excavation effort.

It is telling Benedict is in a cave under The Mountain of the Seven Vultures.  Soon, there are a great many more than seven vultures waiting outside, as his predicament becomes such a draw that a media circus is joined outside by an actual carnival. 

That such a deeply cynical film as Ace In the Hole was directed by Billy Wilder is no surprise.  It is even more acerbic than his Sunset Boulevard, and might have too much of an unlikeable anti-hero in Douglas.  In some regards, it seems to foretell the director’s Kiss Me, Stupid in its desert locale and characters obsessed with fame.  Curiously, the film it most resembles is A Face In the Crowd, a picture with which Wilder had no involvement of which I am aware.

Dir: Billy Wilder

Starring Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling

Watched on Criterion Collection blu-ray