I presume we don’t need spoiler warnings on a 1960 movie.
The last couple of times I watched the original Ocean’s 11, I came away with the feeling that Duke Santos (Cesar Romero’s character) ends up with the money rather than it getting cremated as the Eleven and the audience are led to believe. He finds out about the money band near the coffin well before the cremation. He’s not trying to catch the Eleven with the money, and I can’t see him leaving the money out of his control any longer than he has to.
I haven’t seen this theory posited on the Internet. Does anyone else agree with me?
I’ve always assumed that the funeral home cremated the coffin with the body (and the money) in it. Isn’t this the standard practice?
Santos’s (and the Eleven’s) reaction to learning that the noise they heard was the cremation seems to support this. Anyone who tried to intervene at that point and stop the cremation would have very likely been implicated in the crime. The heat (heh heh) was not off. Recall the lyrics1 in the closing theme (sung by Sammy Davis as the Eleven walk glumly down the street) which allude to the continuing possibility that the Eleven might still be caught and convicted, even with the money gone.
However, your question makes me wonder: is it possible that for some reason, the funeral home removed the body and cremated it, at which point, they would have found the money?
1 "…some judge is apt to say, I’m puttin’ you away, for fourscore years and seven…"
They can be. The only requirement I’m aware of is that there not be any metal. So if you go to the expense of burning a formal casket in the process, the handles and hinges and stuff need to be removed. More commonly a simple wooden or even cardboard box is used.
Of the material that remains, the word “ashes” is a misnomer; it’s almost all bone fragments. The heat in a cremation chamber is sufficiently intense that any less-dense organic material is effectively vaporized. That would include the wood of a hypothetical casket.
If the body is removed from the coffin, whoever removes it will of course discover the money.
If Mr. Kelly (the guy whom Santos paid for confidential information) is the one who removes it, he might keep his word to Santos. In which case Santos might get the money.
But keep in mind that in 1960, the Motion Picture Production Code was still in place. Making a picture in which crime pays in the end would have violated the code. Burning the entire coffin with the money inside is a tidy way to resolve this.
Sort of a tangent: I think it’s a hoot that the code requires them to portray the people in charge of 1960-era Las Vegas as respectable corporations, as opposed to the mobsters who actually ran things.
The OP’s theory might have made a better ending for the movie. It’s been way too long since I’ve seen it to recall any details that would back up the theory.