Ace in the Hole

Charles Tatum is a journalist whose drinking has cost him jobs at big New York papers and left him working at a small local publication in New Mexico. Frustrated after a year without a story worth telling, he learns that a man named Leo Minosa is trapped inside an old Indian cave and sees a chance to rebuild his career. Tatum makes himself the only reporter covering the rescue, and instead of speeding the operation up, he works to keep it going as long as possible, turning the trapped man's ordeal into a national spectacle. The 1951 drama was directed by Billy Wilder, the sixth of the twenty-two films he directed in chronological order, following Sunset Boulevard and preceding Stalag 17. Wilder also produced and co-wrote the screenplay with Walter Newman and Lesser Samuels. Kirk Douglas plays Tatum, with Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur, Porter Hall, Frank Cady and Richard Benedict among a credited cast of fifty-one.

Paramount backed the film with a budget of about two million dollars, and it took roughly twice that amount at the worldwide box office. On IMDb it holds 8.1 out of 10 from around forty-two thousand votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7.8 from a much smaller base of 776 votes. A critics' rating of 8.8 from forty-three reviews places it above both audience scores, indicating stronger enthusiasm among professional reviewers than among the wider public.