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 Holeshould 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