1951: Jan Sterling in "Ace in the Hole"
Friday, August 19, 2022 at 9:00PM We're revisiting the 1951 film year in the lead up to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown. As always Nick Taylor will suggest a few alternatives to Oscar's ballot.
Surely we all remember Jan Sterling from the excellent 1954 Smackdown, whose performance as an “anxious catfishing pioneer” in The High and the Mighty gave a misogynistic role one of the only moments of real pathos in the whole film. That disaster film was enough of a critical and box office success to justify her nomination, but much like Katy Jurado in Broken Lance and even Nina Foch in Executive Suite (who I love!) from the same lineup, the energy around Sterling’s nomination reeks more than a little of belated recognition.
In Sterling’s case, that missed opportunity came in 1951. Beford the National Board of Review introduced supporting categories to their own awards they handed her Best Actress for her supporting turn as a bored, opportunistic wife of a trapped man in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole. But the mediocre reception Ace in the Hole received for its overt cynicism towards the noble professions of journalism and public service may have nixed her chances before category confusion could come into play. That's a shame since Sterling’s performance is absolutely essential to Wilder’s mix of jaded, mundane villainy and calculated entrepreneurship...
The unambiguous center of Ace in the Hole is Chuck Tatum, embodied by Kirk Dougas with ruthless, black-hearted machismo. Chuck enters the film sitting in his car and reading the local newspaper as it’s being towed down the main street of a New Mexico town. He’s looking for a job after drinking, cheating, and lying his way out of eleven major newspapers across the country, and the only place he can hope to get work is a tiny joint like the Albuquerque Sun-Bulletin. Chuck spends a year languishing in an uneventful job in a dull town, wasting his talent for sensationalism and staying sober the whole time. One day Chuck and a photographer half his age named Herbie (Robert Arthur) are sent to cover an annual rattlesnake hunt in some podunk town. Lucky for Chuck, they stumble across a horrible, suspenseful incident, and he begins calculating how to spin this into a tale that will return him to his former glories.
Sterling arrives unceremoniously into Ace in the Hole, coming sideways into the frame towards Chuck and Herbie’s car with a large, wrapped-up blanket and a giant tin of coffee. You wonder for a second if she’s a hitchhiker before she says she’s bringing supplies to some brouhahaha up on the mountain. She introduces herself as Lorraine, Mrs. Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), and tells Tatum her husband has once again gotten his sorry ass trapped in a cave-in while looking for ancient Native American artifacts which he sells off to support their flailing post/restaurant. This isn't the first time but it’s the deepest he’s ever been stuck.
Lorraine recites all of this to Chuck with bored disinterest. One might wonder if Lorraine is simply used to Leo getting stuck, but Sterling’s blasé dissatisfaction with the town and her husband’s business keeps us from assuming she’s being flippant. There’s no sense she’s concerned about whether he’ll make it out alive. The only time we see her smile is when she overhears Chuck dictating Leo’s story over her phone to some poor editor - Lorraine can already smell the incoming attention. Still, she tries to leave town the next day, travelling as far as $11 can take her. Chuck attempts to persuade Lorraine to stay with sentimental arguments, but she shoots down the very idea of caring for Leo, saying that suffering with no money in the middle of nowhere for five years of marriage is more than enough gratitude.
Lorraine counters that Chuck could give a shit about their marriage and only wants her around to sell a better story for his paper. So the reporter eventually convinces her to stay for one reason: money. The publicity from Chuck’s coverage of the accident will draw crowds big enough to make up for the past five years of one customer per day despair. Who wouldn’t want to show support for this trapped, devoted husband by supporting his business? Hell, there’s already people coming to watch the rescue effort. Lorraine listens to Chuck’s declaration without turning to face him until he’s walking away, and Sterling makes her fidgeting and heavy-lidded stare into a symphony of total anxiety as she internally debates if staying in this shithole for a few more days is worth the cash.
Yet Sterling plays all of this with offhand, minimalist control. Ace in the Hole thrives on contrasting the concentrated, utterly human bleakness of what its characters choose to do with a fairly unembellished style and scenario, especially by the standards of Wilder's previous film, Sunset Boulevard. Where Douglas keeps Chuck’s monstrousness coiled just enough to get what he wants, Sterling’s starchy, laconic behavior has no performative angle to speak of. Another actress might’ve pushed harder and more ostentatiously into embodying moral rot, but there’s no grotesquery to the hard edges Sterling gives Lorraine. I like that Sterling never hints whether Lorraine’s jaded veneer has been molded by her current unhappiness or if that's just how she’s always been. There’s no history to evaluate, no grounds to judge her on. She’s using Leo as much as the crowds of nobodies gawking at the mountain or the reporters hovering like vultures, but there’s a candor to her boredom and bitterness that separates her from the rest of them even as she takes on her own delusions of purpose and camaraderie.
It doesn’t take long for Chuck’s scheme to pay big dividends for Lorraine, whose shop is finally packed with customers from open to close. The next time he sees Lorraine in private she can't stop grinning. It’s a small grin, barely qualifiable as a smile, but Sterling’s face lights up tremendously anyway; this is the first time we see something behind her eyes besides antipathy, and it’s one of the only instances of happiness anyone expresses in the film. You can practically hear Hustler's Jennifer Lopez cooing “Doesn’t money make you horny?” in her ear, and the answer is an emphatic “yes” that Sterling opts to play with a soft, romantic air. There’s no distinguishing if she’s attracted to Chuck, his proficiency at his work, the lucrative business he’s brought her, or some jumbled mix that will all inevitably dissipate without the financial success he’s created for her. What’s more impressive is that Sterling makes this quiet joy unexpectedly stirring, conveying the sincerity of her feeling without suggesting Lorraine has softened in any real way. It makes you wonder how much loosening up this woman has in her, how tightly clenched she has to be to look so aggressively bored. As a result Sterling’s physical restraint elsewhere shines even more clearly as actorly control; it's a dissatisfied stuck character not a stiff actor failing to emote.
Chuck isn’t having this change in her demeanor. Their relationship will then shift violently and drastically in subsequent encounters, informed greatly by the developments surrounding Leo’s rescue and Chuck’s own prospects of success.
Lorraine isn’t given enough of a spotlight to contend with the likes of Wilder’s most canonized female characters, so it’s a testament to her own mettle as an actress that Lorraine emerges as such an intriguing figure in her own right, rather than just a pawn in Chuck's story. Sterling makes Lorraine’s appetites, displeasures, and ambitions come through in fine-grained expressions and gestures while pointing towards all the ways this woman has willfully closed herself off. Is there a better world waiting out there for her? Who knows. Unlike Gwyneth last month, I have a sad feeling this probably is the most exciting part of Lorraine’s life. But by the time she wanders out of Ace in the Hole, it’s hard to believe there’s anything left for her here, and harder still not to realize what an unexpectedly riveting character Sterling has made her.
Ace in the Hole is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and Amazon Prime, and is available for rental on most major services.
1951, Ace in the Hole, Billy Wilder, Jan Sterling, Kirk Douglas, NBR
Reader Comments (7)
I really love this performance, and it's one from this year that I would have snuck into Supporting Actress. If anyone hasn't seen Ace in the Hole, I highly recommend checking it out. I also agree that given the character on paper, Sterling managed to make the role stand out.
Sterling is very good in this movie and deserved a nod, for me Joan Blondell (The blue veil) was the weakest among the nominees.
Other worthy nominees:
-Machiko Kyo (Rashomon)
-Olive Sloane (Seven days to noon)
-Patricia Collinge (Teresa)
She is great in a film that I feel doesn't get a lot of love as it's not just one of Billy Wilder's great films but it has Kirk Douglas at his best.
Jan Sterling would be my winner in 1951. Such a wonderful, complex, nail-biting performance. She is one of the great-underappreciated actresses of the 40th and 50th ... I have never seen a bad performance of her, even when the roles were badly written or the movies kind of bad.
international Top10:
1. Jan Sterling in „ACE IN THE HOLE“
2. Kim Hunter in „A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE“
3. Shelley Winters in „A PLACE IN THE SUN“
4. Machiko Kyô in „GENJI MONOGATARI“
5. Ida Lupino in „ON DANGEROUS GROUND“
6. Simone Simon in „OLIVIA“
7. Michiyo Kogure in „GENJI MONOGATARI“
8. Mildred Dunnock in „DEATH OF A SALESMAN“
9. Ava Gardner in „SHOW BOAT“
10. Sylvie in „SOUS LE CIEL DE PARIS“
eligibility fot the oscars:
1. Jan Sterling in „ACE IN THE HOLE“
2. Kim Hunter in „A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE“
3. Shelley Winters in „A PLACE IN THE SUN“
4. Ida Lupino in „ON DANGEROUS GROUND“
5. Mildred Dunnock in „DEATH OF A SALESMAN“
great performances ot Machiko Kyo in "Rashomon" (2.) and Danielle Darrieux in "La Ronde" (3.) would change it ... but for me they are in 1950
Dissenting opinion. I don’t like Ace in the Hole (aka The Big Carnival).
This is Billy Wilder’s first film without longtime collaborator Charles Brackett. The relentlessly misanthropic film indicates that Brackett tempered much of Wilder’s jaded world view.
Ace in the Hole is described here as receiving a “mediocre reception.” That is an understatement. In his 1998 text on the career of Billy Wilder, author Ed Sikov dubbed the film Wilder’s first critical and commercial failure.
Fifty years after release contemporary film critics reevaluated Ace in the Hole as a cinematic treasure. I think the movie is too dark and it’s humor too grim to justify two hours of my time.
There is a still above of Sterling standing before one of the carnival trucks that arrives to entertain the throngs who visit the spot where Leo Minosa is entombed. On the side of the truck is the name of the business - The Great S & M Amusement Corporation. By this point in the movie, I am too weary of the unending cynicism to find a chuckle in Wilder’s joke.
Definitely putting this one on my list! It sounds really interesting. I fondly remember Sterling as "Smoochie" in 1950's Caged, the great Women in Prison flick, especially for her memorable catchphrase: "I got news for ya..."
@eurocheese - Sterling is really wonderful in this, and not at all like her nominated role in The High and The Mighty, unless we count her ability to elevate characters that could surely come off as much, much worse than they do.
@Carlos - I'd have endorsed a Sterling nomination, but at the expense of Lee Grant (didn't get her in this at all) or Thelma Ritter (charming, and in the wrong category). If anything, I'd pick Blondell as my winner of that lineup.
@thevoid99 - I get why it's not in the pantheon of Wilder's most celebrated achievements, but I like it, and Douglas is lightyears better here than he is in Detective Story the same year.
@Thomas - You've named a couple performances I was really taken with and a few I still need to track down, Do you finalize your lineups by their world premiere dates? I'd certainly have the La Ronde women floating around a personal ballot, though I'd count Kyo as a lead for Rashomon, which also qualified for the Academy in 1952. Weird how that happens, even though it won Director at NBR.
@Finbar - This isn't my favorite Wilder either, yet the concentrated bleakness of it became more fascinating to me in comparison to some of his other films. The grotesqueries and ironies of The Apartment, Sunset Boulevard, and Double Indemnity can enrich those pieces but also feel like the director is taking potshots at his characters and his audiences. Ace in the Hole doesn't have as many release valves like that, and I admire Wilder's commitment to a basically straight drama, tinged as it is with his perversities, humors, and ironies. And Sterling's even more restrained than he is.
@Rob - Everyone in Caged deserves a hall of fame card. What an excellent cast.