FILM · 1960 · USA
Ocean's Eleven
52 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (52)
- #001
According to Frank Sinatra Jr. in the DVD commentary, Sammy Davis Jr. had to stay in a "colored only" hotel during filming because Las Vegas did not allow Black people to stay in the major hotels, even though he appeared at the Sands Hotel with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and the others. He was only allowed to stay in the major hotels after Frank Sinatra confronted the casino owners on his behalf, thereby breaking Vegas's unofficial color line. The hotel was Mrs. Harrison's Boarding House, located in the historic Westside district. The establishment hosted many African-American artists in its time and is now a protected historic building.
- #002
Sammy Davis Jr. asked for wooden blocks to be fitted to the pedals of the garbage truck he was driving so that he could reach them.
- #003
Significant portions of the on-screen interactions between the main characters were improvised. All of the lead actors knew each other well and improvised their dialogue as well as, or better than, the script.
- #004
One of the hardest tasks the film's production team faced was convincing Nevada's Clark County authorities to let them use one of the garbage trucks.
- #005
Because most of the actors had shows to perform every night in Las Vegas during filming, most of the shooting took place in the early hours of the morning, before sunrise. The actors would wake in the afternoon, perform one or two shows in the evening, then get into makeup and arrive at the locations for principal photography. Each location was fully prepared in advance so that a minimum of time was lost once the actors arrived.
- #006
The entire cast of Ocean's Eleven appears together only twice: around the pool table at Acebos's house and in the bowling alley. Although it is noted above that everyone was filmed walking along the Strip, that was after the funeral and Bergdorf was not included.
- #007
Shirley MacLaine shot her quick cameo during a break from filming The Apartment (1960). Although she was offered a car for the job, she says she took it as an excuse to hang out with her Rat Pack friends and watch the Vegas shows.
- #008
Jack L. Warner was sufficiently impressed by the finished film that he subsequently signed a long-term contract with Frank Sinatra and his production company.
- #009
George Raft, who played a small role as a casino owner, had helped the New York gangster Bugsy Siegel finance and promote the Flamingo Hotel.
- #010
During filming, the Rat Pack was not yet the tight, solid block of friends it would come to seem. Peter Lawford and Sinatra had to work through toxic differences between them over Lawford's relationship with Ava Gardner before and after Sinatra's difficult marriage. Dean Martin and Peter Lawford did not much like each other either. And Sammy Davis Jr. did not start out as a good friend of Sinatra; he had been part of Humphrey Bogart's original Rat Pack before Bogey died and Sinatra took on the leadership role.
- #011
According to Frank Sinatra Jr. in the DVD commentary, Danny Ocean and his men managed to get out of Las Vegas with the money by escaping in a chartered plane (flown by one of the Eleven). Later, however, the whole gang is killed in a plane crash. Nobody liked this ending because they thought it was too depressing, so it was rewritten into the ending shown in the film, in which the money is burned along with Tony Bergdoff's corpse. The idea of ending on the cremation came from director Lewis Milestone, who had recently attended a friend's funeral.
- #012
The KLAS-TV news coverage after the heist is a real Las Vegas television channel. Shortly after the film's release, Las Vegas resident and millionaire Howard Hughes bought the film so that he could control which movies aired on television at night.
- #013
Peter Lawford's lines about buying votes and going into politics are a reference to his brother-in-law John F. Kennedy's involvement in the 1960 presidential campaign.
- #014
During filming, either because of production rules or unresolved legal technicalities, prop money that looked nothing like the real thing was still required. Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960) appears to be a groundbreaking film for movie producers, one in which convincingly realistic prop money was prominently used.
- #015
Actor Richard Boone voiced the minister who delivers the eulogy at the end of the film, though he does not appear on screen.
- #016
Frank Sinatra identifies himself on the phone as Detective Lieutenant Brannigan. Lieutenant Brannigan is a police officer in Guys and Dolls (1955), in which Sinatra also starred.
- #017
Leading entertainment figures, all well known to 1960 audiences, appear in the marquees of various casinos: Gisele MacKenzie, Phil Foster and Harry James at the Flamingo; Danny Thomas and Red Skelton (who also appears in a well-known cameo) at the Sands, along with Red Norvo; Louis Prima and Keely Smith at the Desert Inn; Patrice Munsel and Buddy Hackett at the Riviera; and Donald O'Connor, Sidney Miller and Freddy Martin at the Sahara; of these, only Red Norvo performs on screen, accompanying Dean Martin on stage.
- #018
Bringing the old friends together required Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. to patch up their differences with Frank Sinatra; both had fallen out with Sinatra a few years earlier.
- #019
The music Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford and Buddy Lester dance to in the burlesque nightclub where Buddy works and his wife begins her striptease is "The Tender Trap" (1955), the theme song of Sinatra's 1955 film of the same name.
- #020
Because most of the cast were performing in Las Vegas at night, scheduling the shoot was a major struggle. Joey Bishop was always on call at 9 a.m., Peter Lawford worked only in the mornings, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. arrived in the afternoon, and Frank Sinatra turned up at 5 p.m.
- #021
This was the second film in two years starring Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin that ends with the reading of the 23rd Psalm. The final scene of Some Came Running (1958) closes with a cemetery funeral scene in which the psalm is read.
- #022
Right after the heist, while Sheriff Wimmer questions a possible witness by phone, the voice on the other end of the line belongs to George Fenneman, who is uncredited and is better known as the announcer for TV game shows such as You Bet Your Life (1950) and Tell It to Groucho (1961).
- #023
In the German dubbed version of the film, Frank Sinatra's character was renamed Frankie Ocean, probably to appeal to the larger audience that knew Sinatra only as a singer.
- #024
The telephones in the hotel rooms have no dials, meaning all room-to-room, local and long-distance calls had to go through the hotel operator. This was common in hotels until the late 1960s, when electronic telephone switching led to private branch exchange (PBX) phone systems and made it more economical for hotels to operate without operators. Until the 1970s many rural areas also had telephone systems without rotary dialing, so live operators were used. Santa Catalina Island, California, was reported to be the last place in the US to get dial telephone service, in 1978.
- #025
Al Silvani, long Sinatra's bodyguard and a fight trainer to the stars, has an uncredited role as the manager of the burlesque nightclub where Buddy Lester works.
- #026
Just after Sammy walks past, an old-style bus bench is visible in front of the Sands. When the film was released, Las Vegas Blvd. was an ordinary city boulevard where every establishment had a wide asphalt parking lot. Cars turned left or right off the road. Local buses carried casino employees to and from work as well as odd, adventurous tourists. In 2022 the Deuce bus still runs back and forth between the old Strip and Downtown.
- #027
The large staircase set in Ilka Chase's house (used in the scene where Peter Lawford first meets Cesar Romero) had previously been seen as Rosalind Russell's luxurious Manhattan apartment in Auntie Mame (1958). In this film the set was given several different looks, since the story follows forty years of Mame Dennis's adventures.
- #028
Peter Lawford's remark about salting the clouds to spoil the picnic refers to the then-emerging technology of cloud seeding to produce rain.
- #029
The first massage scene with Peter Lawford was nodded to in the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964), in the brief encounter between Sean Connery and the blonde masseuse Dink.
- #030
The Sahara Hotel and Casino, where Dean Martin sings, was also home to the House of Lords Steak House, one of the Rat Pack's unofficial meeting places. It specialized in prime rib and beef Wellington. It unfortunately finally closed in 2011.
- #031
In South Africa, the apartheid government was so bothered by the film's poster, in which all eleven main characters are equal, that it literally blacked out Sammy Davis Jr.'s character so that he appeared only as a kind of shadow. His name was also left off the poster.
- #032
Tony Curtis, Jackie Gleason and Milton Berle were initially offered guest roles.
- #033
In the original story, the characters played by Joey Bishop and Akim Tamiroff were actually members of organized crime. The idea was eventually dropped.
- #034
It was among the 500 films on the American Film Institute's 2000 list of nominees for the 100 Funniest American Movies.
- #035
The luxurious Beverly Hills house of Spyros Acebos (Akim Tamiroff) belonged to Hollywood agent Kurt Frings, the husband of then-screenwriter Ketti Frings.
- #036
The casinos hit in the heist are the Hotel Flamingo, The Sands, The Desert Inn, The Riviera and The Sahara. As of 2021, only the Flamingo and the Sahara are still in operation.
- #037
Richard Conte is the only member of the crew who dies in the film.
- #038
The opening title sequence of Reservoir Dogs (1992) recalls this film's final shot and end-credits sequence.
- #039
The map created on the silk scarf shows many Saguaro cacti. The Saguaro does not grow naturally around Las Vegas but is used in landscaping. The drawing was probably made to evoke the general atmosphere of the desert.
- #040
At the airport, after checking his bag, Sam (Dean Martin) tips the porter a quarter. In 1960 that amount was worth about two dollars, which is still the average a porter receives for a bag at an airport.
- #041
Peter Lawford's story about going skiing at Squaw Valley could not actually have happened, because a month after the film was completed the entire resort was under construction for the 1960 Winter Olympics held there in February.
- #042
It is the last film of actresses Anne Neyland and Ilka Chase.
- #043
Beatrice (Angie Dickinson) says that she and Danny (Frank Sinatra) are playing a variable game rather than being married. Five years earlier, Sinatra had also been dealing with a floating game of nonsense and love in Guys and Dolls (1955).
- #044
It is Myrna Ross's debut.
- #045
Major Taylor, the head of the men's military academy, is based on Donald L. Nichols, the head of the Palo Alto Military Academy. Nichols was known as 'Major' for his service in the California National Guard.
- #046
The name of each casino hit is prominently displayed on the inner door of every safe that is robbed.
- #047
The main melody riff of the 'Eee-0-Eleven' song (the whistled part) is the same as the opening riff of Henry Mancini's theme for the Mr. Lucky (1959) series, except that the last two notes are an octave lower. Mr. Lucky began airing on television a year before Ocean's Eleven was released.
- #048
Danny Ocean was right when he said no one had yet been to the moon. The correct means of travel had not yet been designed, and JFK's Rice University address mentioning a human landing on the moon was still two years away. Apollo 11, however, landed in the Sea of Tranquility about nine years later.
- #049
The garbage truck used in the film is a 1960 International Harvester VCOF-200 with a 'Packmaster' refuse compactor manufactured by Leach.
- #050
When the Sheriff's Office receives a phone call reporting the robbery at the Flamingo, no explanation is given of the culprits or how they managed it, but within a minute another police officer takes a call and announces, 'They just hit the Sands too.'.
- #051
Richard Conte (Bergdorf) later appeared in The Godfather (1972). In the 2000s film series, two characters were named Virgil and Turk, inspired by the character Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozzo in the Godfather films. One of them is played by Scott Caan, James Caan's son. Al Pacino appears in the third film.
- #052
When the crew gathers in one place for the first and only time, they assemble around a water feature while Clair de Lune plays in the background.
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