Kirk Douglas: why his finest role was as a cynical newspaper hack

The actor, who died last week, will go down in history as Spartacus, but his powerful performance in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole should not be overlookedThe quiet newsroom of the Sun-Bulletin in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is just a temporary holding pen for Chuck Tatum, the restless and unprincipled reporter played by Kirk Douglas in the 1951 Hollywood classic, Ace in the Hole. Sacked from bigger newspapers for being unreliable, drinking on the job and much worse, Tatum persuades the paper’s worthy editor, who works under an embroidered sampler bearing the words “Tell the Truth”, to give him a job despite his better judgment. “I can handle big news and little news. And if there’s no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog,” Tatum promises.This is the set-up for the best film made yet about the ethics of the press. And, although the death of Douglas last Wednesday elicited deserved praise for his other famous roles, in Spartacus, Paths of Glory and Lust for Life, it is this film that really gave the actor’s merciless screen presence full rein. Douglas himself recognised the strength he brought to the screen, whether cast as a hero or an antihero: “It doesn’t matter if you’re a nice guy or you’re a bastard. What matters is, you won’t bend!” he told Esquire magazine in 1969. Continue reading…
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