LAS VEGAS — Angie Dickinson enters an elevator just as Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford exit. Seeing Dickinson, Sinatra executes a U-turn.
Acting mock-slighted in the hall, Lawford turns to Dean Martin, who had accompanied Dickinson to the elevator.
“What happened?” Lawford says. “I came out with a fella.”
“A fickle fella, lieutenant,” Martin says. “Stick with me. I’m sincere.”
The elevator door closes.
“Have I got great news for you,” Sinatra’s Danny Ocean informs Dickinson’s Beatrice Ocean.
She says, “Auburn beat Alabama by 12 points?”
Perfection.
They’re married, but not exactly. Bea doesn’t want a life based on the color of a card or the length of a horse’s nose, or a home that’s a floating craps game. Danny, though, isn’t unlucky in those arts.
She wants more than a New Year’s jaunt to Rio de Janeiro for, as he says, “a little hey-hey.” She shrugs. He can’t change who he is, yet she doesn’t disappear for good.
Lines that highlight my favorite holiday film, the original “Ocean’s 11,” which involves scant snow, gambling, Las Vegas, Sinatra, Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
(“Diner,” the 1982 movie that stars Mickey Rourke and a fantastic ensemble, and 1949’s “Holiday Affair,” Robert Mitchum headlining, round out my top three.)
Plenty of aura in “Ocean’s,” too, as they filmed scenes in and around downtown Vegas and the Strip before engaging in raucous antics on the Copa Room stage at the Sands.
Twice, photogenic presidential hopeful John F. Kennedy visited the shenanigans; there’s hey-hey to be had, arranged by Sinatra, in those shadows.
Few left Sinatra’s sphere until “Five O’Clock Vegas Blue,” a distinctive shade of desert morning twilight he coined and adored.
The heist
The movie’s first seed dropped in the summer of 1955 when, on the sand behind his Malibu home, Lawford bumped into movie director Gilbert Kay.
A gas-station attendant had related to Kay how a band of GIs carried out smuggling jobs for the army during WWII. Kay envisioned a heist story during a reunion in, say, Las Vegas.
That’s what author Shawn Levy documented in his superb 1998 book “Rat Pack Confidential.” Three years later, Lawford bought the story rights for $10,000.
He brought it to Sinatra, whose production company owed a script to Warner Bros., who green-lighted further development.
Danny Ocean spends the first hour recruiting former 82nd Airborne buddies to knock over five Strip casinos on New Year’s Eve at midnight.
The Flamingo, Sands, Desert Inn, Riviera and Sahara.
From New York, Sinatra flew into Vegas on Jan. 17, 1960; his luggage went elsewhere, courtesy of rare southern Nevada snowfall.
On Jan. 18, filming began for three days at the Riviera. Calls usually started at 3 p.m. and lasted three hours, tops. After that, Sinatra was on camera, in Vegas, for only six days.
They pull off the heist, but Duke Santos (Cesar Romero) pokes his nose into the scheme. I won’t spoil what happens to the hot loot.
The shows
Both hourlong nightly Copa shows were kept to a sharp 60 minutes to ensure maximum casino gaming time for patrons.
They began the night of Jan. 20, with no film work scheduled that day. Sinatra sang the first night, two shows. Martin, for two, the second evening. On the third, Davis went long, forcing Sinatra to intervene.
Sands pit boss Ed Walters told author James Kaplan, for his magnificent 2015 book “The Chairman,” that Sinatra confronted Davis.
“[Sinatra] said, ‘He’s got to go to bed; we’re doing a movie all day. Sammy, say good night.’ Sammy says good night. Frank takes him by the hand and tells the crowd, ‘I’ve got to get him to bed.’
“They both walk off to a big round of applause.”
The cheering, clapping and especially the laughter intoxicated Sinatra. From there, dominos fell, mayhem ensued, a metal liquor cart received much attention.
The next night, Dean hopped onto the stage as Sinatra sang and told the audience he had to get Sinatra to bed. The crowd didn’t know if Martin was serious or not, whether he was drunk or not, compounding the intrigue.
“The show ended with the audience going out and raving about what they saw,” Walters said. “Everyone in the casino talked about it.”
In those days, such ad-libbing and improvisation were highly unusual.
“This stuff would [later] become legend,” Walters said, “but at the time, it was a shocking thing to see.”
Sinatra would introduce Kennedy, the Massachusetts senator seeking the presidency. When the clapping subsided, Martin chimed in, “What’d you say his name was?” More laughter.
Each night trumped what had occurred the previous evening, celebrities flocked in to see it and, by early February, the 200-room Sands was receiving 18,000 registration requests.
A ticket cost $5.95 and included dinner.
Lucille Ball, Yul Brynner, Cyd Charisse, Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, plus Tony Curtis and wife Janet Leigh, who starred in “Holiday Affair,” and many others flew in for the shows.
It lasted barely three weeks.
Iconic photo
Today, the Flamingo has 3,460 rooms. The Sands, Desert Inn and Riviera are gone. The Sahara brand name disappeared in 2011, returning in 2019.
The Flamingo opened in 1946 and infamously involved gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, whom Sinatra knew. A three-foot-tall marker once stood in the backyard, by the flamingos, as a tribute to Bugsy, but it has vanished.
On a workday cut short by high winds, Sinatra, Martin, Davis, Lawford and Joey Bishop gathered for a Vegas shoot for the first and only time, for the closing credits.
They stroll south on the Strip sidewalk, the Sands marquee, bearing their names, behind them in a famous photo. Ol’ Blue Eyes, of course, tops those names.
Today, at that approximate spot on the sidewalk in front of the Venetian, stands a solid and shiny three-foot-tall marker, a tribute to what the Rat Pack did 65 years ago.
Those high winds, by the way, are brutal, captured perfectly in “Bugsy,” the 1991 Warren Beatty vehicle about Siegel.
Tributes
I have my own mobile tribute to that movie and era, an “EO11” license plate, on the white Challenger, the famous diamond-shaped “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign to the left.
An “Ocean’s” nod to Sammy Davis, a would-be trashman who croons for “a penthouse, stacks and stacks of folding green . . . Eee-O-Eleven,” a takeoff on a craps roll.
In my 23 years living here, only once, from a guy in a gas station, has anyone applauded that distinctive plate.
Twenty-five years ago, I applied for a black Sinatra MasterCard, canceling it as soon as I received it, so sliding credit-card gizmos wouldn’t scratch it. In my wallet, it’s protected well.
For his centennial birthday, 10 years ago, I was honored to pen a feature, for a local magazine, about how Vegas was Sinatra and Sinatra was Vegas.
He performed here from 1951 till ’94, and it’s felonious that the city’s airport isn’t called Frank Sinatra International.
“Summer Wind” is the favorite song, but “Come Fly With Me” is right there as Sinatra keeps pace with the strings and brass with subtle finger-flicks that, I’d wager, he didn’t even recall snapping.
Absolute perfection.