Frank ?Lefty? Rosenthal

[mbar]

Non mi stupisco ci abbiano fatto un film (e che gran film!)





Frank ?Lefty? Rosenthal

Oct 30th 2008

From The Economist print edition



Frank ?Lefty? Rosenthal, gambler and gangster, died on October 13th, aged 79







GAMBLERS usually go on until they have run out of both luck and money. Frank ?Lefty? Rosenthal went on until he was blown up. But then Lefty was not your usual sort of gambler.



First, he was more of an oddsmaker and casino manager than a plain punter, and anyway he could never bring himself to give up gambling completely. Second, if the habit had to be brought to heel, it was not because of a lack of cash. Lefty spent the last decades of his life in considerable comfort, lacking for nothing except any reciprocation of affection from the ?Latina lovelies? of South Miami Beach he so liked to ogle. Third, the bomb placed under his car in Las Vegas on October 4th 1982 did not mark the end of his luck. Quite the opposite. The blast would have killed him had a metal plate not been fortuitously fitted under the front seat of his Cadillac Eldorado to improve that model?s roadholding. It probably helped, too, that he turned on the ignition before closing the door, through which he was then explosively ejected. Scorched but safe, he refused to discuss the event with the police and soon left Las Vegas for California and then Florida. The crime is still unsolved.



Mr Rosenthal was not stupid. In his youth in Chicago, his skill at calculating odds of all kinds, whether at the race track or the baseball park, caught the eye of the mob. A career was born. It started with mere bookmaking?illegal, of course?but soon involved other criminal pastimes. Called to give evidence to a congressional committee in 1961, he exercised his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent 37 times, refusing even to say whether he was left-handed (he was, hence his nickname). After that he was convicted of trying to bribe a basketball player, suspected of procuring hand grenades, detonators and fuses for Chicago gangsters, implicated in a bombing in Miami?s ?bookie wars? and indicted for racketeering in California.



It was no surprise that he should have been drawn to Las Vegas, a town whose casinos were still largely Mafia-run in the 1960s. Unfortunately, his reputation preceded him and both that and the rekindling of a Chicago friendship with Tony ?The Ant? Spilotro, a violent mobster, did Mr Rosenthal no good in the eyes of the regulators. Lefty was therefore employed as a mere floor manager??the only guy below me was the shoeshine man,? he later remarked?when he was put in charge of four casino-hotels, the Stardust, Hacienda, Fremont and Marina, somewhat to the surprise of the man who thought he had bought them. He had not realised, it seems, that the pension fund of the Teamsters? union, which had financed his purchase, was controlled by the Mafia.



Mr Rosenthal was a fastidious manager. He made sure that all muffins served on his premises had exactly ten blueberries in them. He was also innovative, introducing to Las Vegas both female croupiers and ?sports books??places where you could bet on games and races in relatively salubrious surroundings. But the authorities would not give him a licence to run a casino and, though he won a brief reprieve from a judge whose daughter had enjoyed a cut-price wedding reception in a hotel where Lefty had been employed, the state of Nevada put him in its ?black book? of nasties banned from all casinos.



In later life Mr Rosenthal liked to look back on his heyday as a golden age for Las Vegas, which in his view was to become uncaring once the casinos had been taken over by big companies that knew nothing of ?gracious? customer service. Others may imagine Las Vegas in that era as a sort of latter-day Runyonesque Broadway, peopled by characters called Fiore ?Fifi? Buccieri, Joey ?The Clown? Lombardo and Frank ?The German? Schweihs.



They weren?t entirely lovable. It was Frank ?The German? who probably tortured Tony ?The Ant? and his brother Michael before burying them alive in a cornfield, where they choked to death on their own blood. And Lefty himself was quite candid about the way he dealt with a man found cheating at blackjack. He was zapped with an electric cattle prod and yanked off the floor to the ?woodshed?, a back room where his hand was smashed with a rubber mallet??less likely to leave a mark,? explained Lefty to Player magazine in 2005. ?I wanted to send a message,? he added; ?next time it wouldn?t be a mallet.?



Unlucky only in love

The dolls in Mr Rosenthal?s world were not much more romantic than the guys. The love of his life was Geri McGee, who had been a topless showgirl. They married, but her affair with Tony ?The Ant?, and an incident when she pulled a gun on Lefty, prompted him to sue for divorce. She died of an overdose of drugs and Jack Daniel?s soon after the car bombing.



When, in 1995, Martin Scorsese made a film, ?Casino?, based on Mr Rosenthal?s life, notoriety turned to celebrity. He had had his own television show and often been on others, but his depiction on screen by Robert De Niro, married to Sharon Stone, inflated his already large ego. For all that, Lefty stayed clear-eyed about his life?s animating activity, gambling. ?Winning is virtually impossible,? he would say. ?You can get lucky, but it?s just temporary.? Even if he was not simply a gambler, still less a simple one, he may have been the exception that proved the rule.

[Guest]

Sembra (anzi sembrava) Mr. Burns.

Beato a lui sempre in mezzo alla .......

[Guest]

ah ah !! Che personaggione !

[ronald66]

che vita da babba' che a fatto in the middle of all them girls....