Ocean's Eleven (1960 film)

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Ocean's Eleven

Directed by	Lewis Milestone
Produced by	Lewis Milestone
Starring	Frank Sinatra Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr. Peter Lawford
Music by	Nelson Riddle
Cinematography	William H. Daniels
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	August 10, 1960 (U.S. release)
Running time	127 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Ocean's Eleven is a 1960 heist film directed by Lewis Milestone and starring five Rat Packers: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford. Other stars included Angie Dickinson, Cesar Romero, Richard Conte, Akim Tamiroff, Henry Silva, Ilka Chase, Norman Fell, Harry Wilson, and Buddy Lester, as well as uncredited cameo appearances by Shirley MacLaine, Red Skelton, and George Raft. The title of this film is also often presented as Ocean's 11.

A remake, directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts appeared in 2001, followed by, Ocean's Twelve in 2004, and, Ocean's Thirteen, which is expected for release in June of 2007.

The original 1960 film was not a critical favorite, and was regarded as mostly a vanity project for the Rat Pack. The 2001 remake was regarded by most critics as superior to the original. It should be noted though, that other than the general premise and the main character's name, the remake bears little to no resemblance to the original.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In the movie, a gang of ten World War II 82nd Airborne veteran Army Rangers, led by former Sgt. Danny Ocean (Sinatra), get together 15 years after the war to rob five different Las Vegas casinos (Sands, Desert Inn, Flamingo, Riviera and Sahara) on New Year's Eve.

Lawford plays an ex-Lieutenant, a hero in the war, but now a playboy with no means of his own, living off his wealthy mother. He wants the heist to have his own stake. He discovers that Duke Santos (Romero), an ex-mobster gone straight, is on the verge of marrying his mother. Dean Martin plays another ex-Lieutenant who has to be talked into the heist, and agrees to go along with the plan only to not let the others down. Silva, Martin, Norman Fell, and others work the casinos (Martin, as a lounge performer -- basically, playing himself) scoping out the security guards and laying the hidden trails using an 'infrared dye' in the days before New Years. They also try to provide access and diversions so that Bergdorf the electrician (played by Conte) can scope out the circuit boxes in each casino. In this phase, one sees the cameo from Red Skelton. The sense is that these 'inside men' have secured these jobs well ahead of knowing what the 'mission' or heist specifically was.

The Rat Pack plans the heist with the precision of an Army operation. About two days before the heist, they gather for the briefing where it is all laid out for everyone. This is where Martin's character objects, but finally comes around. Sammy/Josh has a job driving a garbage truck, but also separately killing the power by eventually blowing an electrical transmission tower, out away from town, to cause a general blackout. Josh was a demolition man in the war. Starting about 2 hours before the blackout, Bergdorf covertly 'cross-wires' the backup generator circuits (called "auxiliary motors" in the film) in each of the five casinos. And it's also during this last day, New Years Eve day, that Santos and Foster's mother stop in Las Vegas and run into someone who tells his mother, but not Santos, that both he and Ocean were seen in the area (Foster had told his mother he was up in Squaw Valley). Nothing comes of that, immediately. And in the last minutes, as the electrician has to make the final 'cross-wiring', Shirley MacLaine puts in a 'drunken' cameo where Dean Martin must distract her, momentarily. Midnight, the countdown, New Year's. The camera shows each of the five casinos in turn. Danny Thomas can be seen in one, counting down the seconds.

So about a minute after midnight on New Year's Eve, when everyone in every Vegas casino is singing "Auld Lang Syne" (in unison), the tower is blown. People continue, oblivious, partying in the dark or begin lighting candles, laterns, etc. In the minutes following, when the backup generators finally come online, they instead simply open the front doors to the cashier cages with silent little clicks, instead of restoring general power. The inside men sneak in, following the infrared trails already laid out, get into the cashier's cages and force the cashiers to sing Auld Lang Syne themselves, while one of the crew goes to the small vault, which is somehow open in each of the five casinos, where they stuff small carryon airline/duffle bags with cash from these vaults. They dump the satchels in small garbage cans out on the street. Then the lights return. The thieves are mostly then outside the casinos, except for those with jobs there, as the two - Sinatra/Ocean and Lawford/Foster - characters walk the block to check in with the others, and see how it went.

But when crossing the street toward them, Bergdorf has a heart attack in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip and dies. A police car is right there, as a crowd quickly gathers. By the time Ocean and Foster are across the street, Bergdorf is dead. They leave, unobserved. In the morning, Sammy/Josh comes by with the sanitation crew. They simply dump the contents of the trash cans, going to each of the five casinos, and without compacting Josh drives right out to the dump, passing through a sheriff's roadblock without any interference. He grabs the five bags after dumping the load, and hides them in a nearby mound with a sort of cave/tunnel dug into it. And for the meantime, the money stay in the dump.

Duke Santos offers to recover the casino's money for a third of their loss, 30%. He still has his underworld contacts. The sheriff is instructed by the head casino boss, played by George Raft, to cooperate with Santos. And he accidentally reveals on their first meeting, that Bergdorf died, mentioning the term - 82nd Airborne. Santos is sufficiently curious that he visits the funeral parlor, and pays to have one of the partners call him if anything unusual happens in the disposition of Bergdorf's body. But it's when he returns to his suite and Foster's mother enters to make a call that he finds the thieves. She now knows that her son is in Vegas. And she lets it slip that Ocean was seen, too. And Santos puts it together. He had no rumors or luck from the underworld. The job wasn't pulled by the usual 'heist men'. But here was a coincidence of 82nd Airborne personnel and Foster's mothers suggestion that even more may have come to Las Vegas. Then he's sure. They pulled the job.

He then quickly goes to Ocean's hotel room, and find both he and Martin there. He confronts them with this information and demands half of the take. He sells out the casino bosses' 30% for 50% share. So Martin's character gets an idea. They take all the money and dump it into the coffin of Bergdorf. They take a block of ten thousand dollars and send it to his widow. She then asks to have the coffin sent to San Francisco for burial, where the team surely would be to intercept it and retrieve the cash. However, this plan goes wrong when the wife (Jean Willes) decides to keep the money for her son's education, and the other funeral owner suggests that she simply bury, in fact cremate, her husband's remains in Vegas. A local group from an American Legion chapter serves for part of the ceremony.

The Silva character has been waiting outside, and alerted the team that something was going on, that legionnaires had gone into the funeral home. The entire crew then shows up, in person, at the funeral. But the coffin isn't there. In addition, the other owner phones Santos to report the appearance of these strange men. And Santos quickly shows up and sits down right behind Sinatra. Then suddenly, they start to hear a low roar. They look down at each other and ask - what's that? And a man sitting at the end, in front of Santos replies - cremation. The coffin is being burnt. Santos slumps down in the pew. And each of the team in front slowly turn to their right, each in turn, dumbfounded, until they reach Joey Bishop on the end. He just turns sideway in the pew, disgusted.

The final scene has the group slowly walking along the sidewalk, looking dejected. As Sammy, trailing the group, passes in front of the camera, the large marquee sign behind him is seen to have his name, that of Martin, Sinatra, Lawford and Bishop.