Former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is hosting a dinner conversation on Wed at the Plaza Hotel and Casino, focusing on ane of the city’s long-ago underworld operatives.
The discussion at Oscar’s Steakhouse indoors the Plaza this calendar week testament nerve center on Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, who ran Las Vegas casinos for Midwestern criminal offense families decades ago.
As a defence force attorney, Goodman, 82, represented Rosenthal and other Las Vegas Mob figures.
Rosenthal had been a Chicago oddsmaker who moved inward the 1960s to Las Vegas, where he could control lawfully in the sports bookmaking industry. Rosenthal lived for a piece at the Tropicana hotel-casino on the Strip. He married a dancer, Geri McGee, who performed inwards the showroom there.
The Tropicana, which opened in the 1950s, is allay in surgical procedure on the E position of the resort hotel corridor nigh McCarran International Airport.
Rosenthal eventually ran the Stardust Casino and other properties as the Mob’s within operator.
The Stardust has since been demolished. Resorts World Las Vegas was reinforced at that site close Circus Circus, and Slots-A-Fun on the west side of meat of the Strip.
In the 1995 Las Vegas Sicilian Mafia movie Casino, Henry M. Robert De Niro portrays a grapheme based on Rosenthal. Sharon I. F. Stone plays his wife. Goodman appears briefly inwards the pic as himself.
Rosenthal Survives Car Bombing
In 1982, Rosenthal’s survived the bombardment of his automobile remote a Tony Roma’s restaurant on Orient Sahara Desert Avenue close the Strip. Tony Roma’s later became a Hustler Hollywood adult novelty store.
The bombing was never solved. Some suspect mobster Tony “The Ant” Spilotro had a manus inwards it. Spilotro, the Chicago Outfit’s overseer inwards Las Vegas, had been mired in a romantic human relationship with Geri Rosenthal. In Casino, Joe Pesci plays a theatrical role based on Spilotro.
Others trust Kansas City criminal offense bosses, overturn at Rosenthal’s high public profile, orchestrated the elevator car bombing. Midwestern mobsters were receiving untaxed gaming revenue below the table from the Stardust and other casinos. The Mob didn’t want that illegal hard currency flux ruined past too much media attention.
Rosenthal had a video variety demo program from the Stardust, featuring guests such as Frank Sinatra. Rosenthal also feuded publically with Battle Born State Gaming Commission Chairman Harry Reid. That incident was dramatized inward Casino. Years later, Reid, a Democrat, became US Senate legal age leader.
Rosenthal at long last moved to California and then to Florida. He died of an evident spunk tone-beginning in Everglade State in 2008 at age 79. Geri Rosenthal died inwards Southern California of an accidental o.d. in 1982. She was 46.
Las Vegas Review-Journal newsperson Jane Ann James Douglas Morrison later revealed that Rosenthal had been a upside echelon source for the FBI.
Goodman’s Mob Tales
The dinner party conversation on Wednesday features a three-course meal. a cocktail 60 minutes with a hard cash debar begins at 6 pm, with the dinner and Goodman’s presentment rootage at 7 pm. Tickets are usable on the Plaza website.
Though Goodman doesn’t own the steakhouse at the Plaza inward downtown Las Vegas, it is named after him inwards a licensing agreement. He hosts periodical dinners there, discussing his experiences as a Mob attorney and mayor. His wife, Carolyn Goodman, is the electric current Las Vegas mayor.
Plaza CEO Jonathan Jossel has said discussions are underway to build additional Oscar’s Steakhouses in New York, Japan, or the United Kingdom.