Ocean's Eleven

Ocean's Eleven (1960)

Timing: 2:7 (127 min)

6.357/10
384

7.924/10
10470

6.5/10
24691

All about film

Video 2

Photo 28

Actors and characters

Release date

1960-08-10

Country

United States

Production

Warner Bros. Pictures, Dorchester

Genre

Crime, Comedy, Music

Budget

$0

Revenue

$2 800 000

Website

Director

Lewis Milestone

Actors

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson, Richard Conte, Cesar Romero, Patrice Wymore, Joey Bishop, Akim Tamiroff
All actors and roles (10)

Scenario

Producer

Lewis Milestone

Operator

William H. Daniels

Composer

Nelson Riddle

Artist

Audition

Editing

Philip W. Anderson
All team (22)

• All members of the "Rat Pack," led by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr., appeared in this film. The only one who did not participate was Humphrey Bogart, the founder of the "Rat Pack." He was already deceased at the time of filming.
• According to the lead actor Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), Sammy Davis Jr. (1925-1990) had to be housed in a "blacks-only" hotel for the duration of filming because black people were not allowed to stay in the major hotels in Las Vegas, even though Davis Jr. appeared at the Sands Hotel with Sinatra, Dean Martin (1917-1995) and the rest of the filming crew. He only settled into one of the larger hotels after Sinatra intervened on his behalf with the casino owners.
• The relationships between the characters shown in the film were largely the result of improvisation. The actors in the leading roles knew each other well, so the lines they came up with sounded as good as, or even better than, those written in the script.
• Filming mostly took place in the early morning hours before dawn, as many of the actors had their own shows in Las Vegas during the day that they couldn't miss. The actors would wake up after noon, participate in one or two evening performances, then get their makeup done and arrive on set. Everything on set was prepared in advance to avoid wasting time.
• Shirley MacLaine played a cameo role here during a break from filming Billy Wilder's (1906-2002) tragicomedy 'The Apartment' (1960). She was offered a car by the studio to take her back, but she refused, preferring to spend time with her friends from the so-called 'Rat Pack' (a group of American show business figures from the 1950s and 1960s that formed around Humphrey Bogart and his wife Lauren Bacall; in the early 1960s, group leaders Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. often performed in Las Vegas clubs and on television with improvised comedic and musical numbers) and see a show.
• According to Billy Wilder, he decided to help write the screenplay for the film as a favor to Frank Sinatra, who in gratitude gifted him a drawing by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).
• One of the most difficult problems the filmmakers had to solve was convincing officials from Clark County to rent them a garbage truck.
• According to Frank Sinatra, the film's original ending was quite different: the protagonists managed to escape from Las Vegas on a chartered plane piloted by one of them, but then they all perished in a plane crash. This ending didn't appeal to anyone, so the finale was rewritten, and it turned out that the stolen money was cremated along with the body of one of Danny's friends. This idea was suggested by director Lewis Milestone (1895-1980, birth name – Leib Milstein), who had recently attended the cremation of a deceased friend.