The Second Day Of The Locust-Kirk Douglas’s The Ace In The Hole

 

 

 

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

The Ace In The Hole, starring Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, directed by Billy Wilder, 1951

Get this story line right out of today’s mad social media driven desperate cry for recognition in a sullen, indifferent world.  A hard-nosed, hard-hitting newspaper reporter who liked his liquor, liked his women, liked to live close to the edge on a story, hell was willing to go over the top six ways to Sunday in order to sell the boss’s newspapers (and he was not particular about which boss as long as he go that by-line, got that big fat check). Get this too was willing, way more than willing to throw the truth out with bath water in order to keep the story humming for a few extra days, or until the juice was sucked out of the damn thing. Of course guys (gals too but our protagonist is a guy on this one) like our boy, Chuck, Chuck Tatum, maybe you read his by-line when he was riding the big wave, who live for wine, women, song and a big chunk of fame have a habit over going over the edge a little too much for the city editors of most newspapers taste which has caused him to be thrown off half the best newspapers in the country.

As we hone in on the story line Chuck is cooling his heels out in Albuquerque, on some nowhere square dink newspaper where the editor/owner thinks you should tell the truth straight and without the garnish, funny guy right. Finds himself out there where the states are square and the people left to their own resources by their own choice had better treat one another square, and be square or else. So our big city reporter was just looking for that one little story to ride him back to the big time, to easy street, what the heck maybe to that Pulitzer Prize that has eluded him all these years. And lo and behold out in the middle of Podunk on his way to cover yet another hoe-down or picnic in the boondocks Chuck gets his lucky break, a story a real live human interest story, the kind that people stop whatever they are doing to follow, the one that has them on the phone telling one and all their exact opinion of what is happening, with baited breathe. Here is the beauty of this one, a guy, a regular Joe (although his name is Leo but nobody cares about the name as much as the one-on-one human interest about what is happening to some poor sap who is in more trouble than they are, not much more was caught in a cave looking for relics around the mountains which the local Indians, oops Native Americans, you know the native peoples and needs help getting out, help which in the normal scheme of events would take a few hours and done. Except our boy Chuck smelled this for a million dollar story anyway you cut it, a story that every poor sucker who reads the newspapers form Podunk to New Jack City could relate to, if he can keep the thing alive long enough to draw an audience. So the catch is too get the guy out, but not too some. Through some very devious methods and some pure high-handed power-plays Chuck shows his reckless expertise, gets so wrapped up in the thing that he can see the bright lights of the city as fast  as he can write, and finagle things so that he gets exclusives, the almighty exclusives that separate the pros from the amateurs in the newspaper business. The key though was to keep that story going and that is where everything turned to dross in the end. See Chuck ordered the rescue crews to do the rescuing of poor sap Leo the long way round, you know, to keep the story going, has the crowds attracted by his stories coming out to observe the human drama in person on edge, has made the whole thing a  media circus. Key to that was getting Leo tough/hard as nails/sexy snake of a wife to work the ropes with him. And she, Lorraine, like all blonde Lorraines played her part well once our boy Chuck who, frankly, seemed to have been hard on his women, got under her skin (and gave her the franchise in the gathering circus end of the game).       Of course there was a down side to Chuck’s scheming since Leo refused to cooperate by getting a little short of breath waiting for that long way around digging to get to him, yeah the poor guy  folded up under the cave-in pressure and didn’t last long enough to get the big headline. Great big fifteen minutes of fame story if there ever was one.          

 Sounds like any other news story of today 24/7/367 media frenzy of the moment though, right. Wrong this is the skinny, the real skinny this one came in 1951. This one is famed director Billy Wilder’s (he the super-max daddy director of the close up sordid underbelly look at old time Hollywood in Sunset Boulevard) Ace In The Hole as he takes a big swing at the newspaper business in the days when that medium ruled the roost of mass communication and when like today with the expansive social media mega-reach the notion of “all the news that fit to print” hinged on how many paper it would sell. Kirk Douglas as the cranky, over-the-top news hound Chuck gives a very good performance here as does Jan Sterling as Lorraine, that hustling wife of poor old Leo. Hey, I didn’t tell you the ending, the real ending not poor schmuck Leo’s running out of air but Chuck’s. In the end Chuck got “religion” (helped by a friendly mortal wound from Lorraine when he decided one more time to play rough with her), see before he too passed from the scene he realized that he had gone over the edge, had set something in motive better left to the fates. Yeah, that’s the real cautionary tale sixty some years later.