In Scorsese’s 1995 Casino, the movie begins and ends with an iconic scene where Ace Rothstein (played by Robert De Niro) narrowly escapes a car bombing in his 1981 Cadillac Eldorado. Rothstein’s voice-over states that a steel plate on the driver’s floor of the Eldorado is what saved his life. Really? A heavy steel plate that was factory installed by GM in a gas guzzler? I did a little research and found out that because it was a front-wheel drive vehicle, Cadillac engineers apparently needed the additional weight from the plate to correct a “balance” problem. It made sense, except that it’s not true. There has been no documentation from GM that this was ever incorporated into the car’s design, and no photograph of this steel plate configuration has ever been seen1. Yet, the myth persists and is widely presented as fact online. It does, after all, make for a great story.
The character of Sam “Ace” Rothstein from the film Casino is based on Nicholas Pileggi’s 1995 non-fiction book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas. It chronicles the real life of Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal2, a Chicago-born bookie whose talents and business acumen led him to Las Vegas in 1968. After successfully launching the first sportsbook to be located within a casino, his Mafia associates tapped him as CEO to oversee an illegal skimming operation at the Stardust (now the site of Resorts World). But as a convicted felon with an open FBI case file, the Nevada Gaming Commission refused to grant Mr. Rosenthal a gaming license. So, instead, he assigned himself as the Director of Food and Beverage for the casino while the Chicago Outfit went looking for a new “face” of the property in 1974. They found their straw man in Allen Glick, a San Diego real estate investor with a squeaky-clean record. Using money from the Teamster’s pension fund, Glick’s Argent Corporation went on to also purchase the Fremont casino downtown, as well as the Hacienda on the south Strip (now the site of Mandalay Bay). And then the skim began in earnest, benefitting the Chicago, Milwaukee and Kansas City crime families.
Lefty now had his hands full, so Chicago sent over his childhood buddy Anthony Spilotro to help out as his enforcer. Spilotro (played by Joe Pesci) was literally a homicidal maniac and began causing more problems than he solved, eventually drawing the attention of the FBI.
Mob hits in Las Vegas prior to Spilotro’s arrival were unseen and unheard. Now they were occurring in broad daylight, part of Spilotro’s plan to become the most feared man in Vegas. It worked. In the meantime, his relationship with Rosenthal was deteriorating and reached its apex when Spilotro began an affair with Lefty’s wife, Geri (played by Sharon Stone). His childhood friend had now become his enemy.
Rosenthal, for his part, was also becoming a distraction for his Mob handlers back home. In 1977, he inexplicably began hosting an interview program that was broadcast weekly on the local ABC affiliate, bringing more unwanted attention from the nascent FBI investigation that by this point had been assigned a name: Operation Strawman.
With pressure coming from all sides, things came to a head for Lefty on October 4th, 1982. After a dinner out with some friends, he turned the key in his Cadillac which unknowingly set off a bomb. The blast occurred in the parking lot of the Tony Roma’s restaurant on East Sahara Avenue, about a half-mile from the Strip. The restaurant closed in 2014 and is now the site of a Hustler Hollywood store. The parking lot stanchions for that light pole remain today.
Although the Tony Roma’s restaurant was still there in 1995, Scorsese chose to film the bomb scene in the parking lot of the Main Street Station casino downtown, with the California casino seen in the background. That inaccuracy can be chalked up to artistic license, but the real mis-step belongs to the obvious dummy that was used in the scene. Motion capture CGI was still years away when this movie was filmed, but still3. Aside from a new elevated walkway, this parking lot location remains relatively unchanged today, as seen below.
The bombing culprits were never found. Some speculate that it was the work of the Kansas City Mafia, as car bombings were a well-known specialty of theirs. Others say that the hit was directed by Spilotro, while still others claim that it was done by some old biker friends of Geri’s that were keen to get their hands on her husband’s money. Now estranged from Lefty, she had already left town after emptying out their safety deposit boxes, and had a serious drug and alcohol problem that needed constant funding.
Soon after the car bombing, Lefty made a run for it himself, first to Laguna Niguel, and then on to Florida where he lived out the rest of his days in relative peace with his first love: booking sports bets. In the late 1990’s he even created a personal website, where he welcomed reader submissions on betting topics, but mostly fielded questions about the fact and fiction behind the movie. Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal died of a heart attack in 2008 at the age of 79. After his death, it was revealed that he had been a high-level FBI informant for many years.
The FBI’s Strawman investigation had wrapped up in the mid-1980’s, bringing indictments and stiff prison sentences to several prominent Mob associates across all three of the involved families. Nevada gaming regulators were eager to move on, and granted operational rights and eventual ownership of the Stardust and Fremont casinos to the Boyd Gaming Corporation. By then the trend line was becoming clear: The Mob was being forced out of Vegas and replaced by corporations. In the words of Ace Rothstein:
The town will never be the same. After the Tangiers (Stardust), the big corporations took it all over. Today it looks like Disneyland. And while the kids play cardboard pirates, Mommy and Daddy drop the house payments and Junior's college money on the poker slots. In the old days, dealers knew your name, what you drank, what you played. Today, it's like checkin' into an airport. And if you order room service, you're lucky if you get it by Thursday. Today, it's all gone. You get a whale show up with four million in a suitcase, and some twenty-five-year-old hotel school kid is gonna want his Social Security Number. After the Teamsters got knocked out of the box, the corporations tore down practically every one of the old casinos. And where did the money come from to rebuild the pyramids? Junk bonds. But in the end, I wound up right back where I started. I could still pick winners, and I could still make money for all kinds of people back home. And why mess up a good thing?
On the show “Motor Myth Busters”, they actually sourced a 1981 Eldorado, found no steel plate, so installed one themselves and then blew up the car. It turned out that the steel plate caused even more destruction in the blast.
His nickname, “Lefty”, resulted from his 1961 testimony to a Congressional subcommittee on gambling and organized crime, during which he invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself 37 times, refusing to answer even the simplest of questions, including whether or not he was left-handed.
No shade implied. Casino is still the greatest Vegas movie ever made.
Love the tie in with Vegas, cars, the Mob and movies! Now I'm going to have to rewatch Casino.