'Bad news sells best. Cause good news is no news.’
Chuck Tatum, ‘Ace in the Hole’

In Billy Wilder’s splendid 1951 movie ‘Ace in the Hole’Kirk Douglas plays Chuck Tatum, a hard-bitten, unscrupulous journalist who has been fired from the big East Coast papers for lying, drinking and womanising. Arriving in a small New Mexico town, looking for a break to take him back to the big time, he takes a job at the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. 

'I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news, I'll go out and bite a dog.’

After an uneventful year at the paper, Tatum stumbles across an incident where a man has been trapped alive down an old Native American mine. He weaves a sensational story about an ancient curse, a hero in peril and a distressed wife waiting back at home. The piece makes the front page and precipitates a stream of onlookers and reporters to the site of the accident.

'This is the way it reads best, this is the way it's gonna be. In tomorrow's paper and the next day's. It's the way people like it. It's the way I'm gonna play it.' 

Tatum understands that human interest sells newspapers, and he’s happy to spice up the truth a little to enhance that human interest.

'Human interest. You pick up the paper, you read about 84 men or 284, or a million men, like in a Chinese famine. You read it, but it doesn't stay with you. One man's different. You want to know all about him. That's human interest.’

Next Tatum does a deal with the local sheriff to keep competitive press reporters away from the scene, promising that the celebrity he garners for the official overseeing the rescue will increase his chances of re-election. When the disgruntled wife of the trapped man threatens to leave, Tatum coaxes her to stay on and reap the commercial benefits of the sensation at her hitherto desolate trading store. 

'I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.’ 

Then the chief engineer reports that he can get the trapped man out in 12 hours by shoring-up the mine walls. This is too soon for Tatum. He persuades the contractor to drill from above, which will take a number of days. The more dramatic the project, the greater the engineer’s reputation, the more lucrative the jobs he’ll secure in the future.

'I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.’

For Tatum himself the incentive for spinning out the story is simple: more exclusives, more recognition, a bigger job, more money. Soon he’ll be back at the top where he belongs.

'Look, I've waited a long time for my turn at bat. Now that they've pitched me a fat one, I'm gonna smack it right out of the ballpark.’

Intense, vigorous and on a short fuse, growling and grinning, teasing and cajoling, Tatum orchestrates a full-scale media circus. Day-trippers arrive from the city. Cars and tour-buses queue to get in. A special train is laid on. A carnival sets up in the shadows of the mine. 

The disgruntled pressmen endeavour fruitlessly to get Tatum onside.

'We're all in the same boat.’
'I'm in the boat. You're in the water. Now let's see how you can swim.’

‘Ace in the Hole’ is a modern fable. It illustrates what happens when truth is pushed to one side, when compromises are made, when people are manipulated to pursue their own self-interest. It’s a story of when cynicism takes hold.

Of course cynicism can be seductive. Cynics are often charming and funny, crafty and canny. You’ll find them at every level of status and experience; in every company, community and country. They can bend the truth to make it more attractive. They can make straight dealing seem archaic and naïve. 

But cynicism is corrosive. With every corner cut and lily gilded, with every minor deception and petty deceit, with every scornful remark and sarcastic observation, there is an erosion of trust, a decay in confidence, an unpicking of the ties that bind people together. And, in time, sooner or later, things fall apart.

Of course, for all his charisma, intelligence and foresight, there’s one element of the whole media circus that Tatum can’t control: the health and durability of the hapless victim trapped for six days down a mine. And this is where his perfectly laid plans gradually come unstuck.

'When you have a big human interest story, you've got to give it a big human interest ending. When you get people steamed up like this, don't ever make suckers out of them. I don't want to hand them a dead man.'

In memory of Kirk Douglas (1916-2020) who passed away earlier this month.

'Well, if friends with their fancy persuasion
Don't admit that it's part of a scheme,
Then I can't help but have my suspicions
'Cause I ain't quite as dumb as I seem.
And you said you was never intending
To break up our scene in this way.
But there ain't any use in pretending
It could happen to us any day.
How long has this been going on?
How long has this been going on?’

Ace, ‘How Long?’ (P Carrack)

No. 268