Frank Rosenthal

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Photo of Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal following his rejection for a gaming application

Frank Lawrence 'Lefty' Rosenthal is a renowned sports handicapper and a former Las Vegas casino executive. He was born of Swedish parentage on June 12, 1929, in Chicago, Illinois, a recognized center of Scandinavian-Lutheran immigration to the United States at that time, and was later adopted by a Jewish family. He had numerous arrests and indictments for gambling crimes, including bribing players to fix games.

A pioneer of modern gambling, he secretly ran the Stardust, Fremont and Hacienda casinos when they were controlled by the Mafia. He was the first to operate a sports book from within a casino (previously, the inefficient norm had been to do the opposite), making the Stardust one of the world's leading centers for sports gambling. Another Rosenthal innovation was to allow female blackjack dealers; in just one year, this doubled the Stardust's income.

In 1976, when authorities discovered that Rosenthal was secretly running casinos without the Nevada license needed to officially do so, they held a hearing to determine his legal ability to obtain this gaming license. The board's decision: Rosenthal was denied a license as an employee in a casino. However, he later succeeded, in an appeal before Judge Joseph Pavlikowski (who had been given a write off of $2,800 -- the cost of his daughter's wedding two years earlier -- at the same hotel at which Rosenthal had been working as a publicity director). An effort to have his name included in the Black Book (which would have banned him from being in or near any casino in Nevada, and could cause any casino he was found in to lose its license) was temporarily thwarted in 1988 by Judge Pavlikowski, but his decision was ultimately overruled.

Rosenthal earned the nickname "Lefty" during a Supreme Court hearing where he pleaded the Fifth Amendment 37 times, not even answering the question of whether or not he was left-handed.

Rosenthal married Geraldine McGee, and while she had a child previous to their marriage (fathered by Lenny Marmor), Frank and Geri had a child together. The marriage ultimately ended in divorce, with Rosenthal attributing the failure primarily to McGee's inability to escape her alcohol and drug addictions. Geri eventually died in the early 1980s, following an apparent drug overdose at a motel (after leaving Rosenthal and stealing a significant portion of his savings). It was ruled that her death was accidental and from a combination of Valium, Cocaine and Jack Daniel's Whiskey.

Rosenthal survived a murder attempt in 1983 after his car was rigged with explosives, subsequently he was forced out of Las Vegas (he was put in "the Black Book" in 1988, making him persona non grata -- and unhireable -- in every Nevada casino ever since) because of his alleged ties with organized crime. He retired to Laguna Niguel, California, then to Boca Raton, Florida, and now currently resides in Miami Beach where he continues to handicap sports events, giving his picks to gamblers for free through his website.

The 1995 Martin Scorsese film Casino, based on the book by Nicholas Pileggi, was based on Rosenthal's career in Las Vegas. Rosenthal (re-named "Sam 'Ace' Rothstein" for this fictionalized account) was played by Robert De Niro, and his Mafia associate Anthony Spilotro (re-named "Nicky Santoro") was played by Joe Pesci.