MovieChat Forums > Ocean's Eleven (1960) Discussion > Did you spot the body double??

Did you spot the body double??

posted 10 years ago by vpking77-276-694061
4 replies | jump to latest

This is one of my favorite movies of all time and saw it in theater when it originally came out. I have probably watched the movie over 50 times. In the bowling alley scene. Frank Sinatra is seen throwing a strike and the camera is located behind the bowling pins. If you look closely Frank is not throwing the bowling ball. It is a double. This was most likely done because Frank might not have been a good bowler and they wanted to get the shot over with it.

The movie is fascinating because it shows what the Las Vegas Strip looked like in 1960. I lived in Las Vegas for many years first coming to the town in the mid-seventies. East and West Flamingo were mostly desert in 1960. Caesars Palace wasn't even built yet. There was very little going South past the Dunes onto the route that eventually took you to Los Angeles. I-15 freeway didn't exist yet. Las Vegas was really a small town. You would see the visitors to the casinos dressed up just like in the movie. Men in suits and women smartly attired. There is sign on the Strip selling land past the Dunes when Sammy Davis Jr was driving his garbage truck out of town. If you had bought that land on the Strip. You would be an extremely wealthy man today. I can't even guess the price of an acre back then.

[–] lbs1942 9 years ago

4 or 5 casinos...that's it.

[–] hoyo-mont 9 years ago

There were three other major hotel-casinos in early 1960: Stardust, which seems like it should have been in the film, as well as smaller Hacienda on the south strip, and El Rancho Vegas, which would burn to the ground a while after filming.

There's a great view of the south strip near the end of the film, when Sammy Davis Jr drives up to the roadblock. It's in front of the Dunes Hotel. We see a sign for the motel Royal Palms, and beyond that not much. Here's a screen shot together with an image of the location today: http://i.imgur.com/u8av5lY.jpg

[–] porfle 9 years ago

My parents and I spent a night in Las Vegas back in the late 60s or early 70s. We stayed in a little motel called (I think) The Golden Desert right across the highway from a casino called (I think) The Silver Slipper. (It was the one with one of Ian Fleming's favorite restaurants, the Aku Aku Room). Las Vegas still looked at that time like it does in this movie.

[–] paulr03 8 years ago

Our family stopped in Las Vegas in 1960 en route to Disneyland in LA. The movie shots are just as I remember. But I remember when we stopped and parked where the Golden Nugget and (don't remember the name) the one with a 20' tall cowboy waving his arm. Best shot of that area was in 1957's, The Amazing Colossal Man.