In 1961, he appeared before a Senate hearing on gambling and organized crime during which he invoked Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination 38 times - and kept his left hand aloft throughout while doing so, thus garnering the nickname 'Lefty.' The corporate Las Vegas.'īorn in Chicago in 1929, Rosenthal learned the gambling trade through illegal bookmaking operations and made friends with Chicago mobsters - ties that would last a lifetime. 'He's one of the originals,' said Nick Pileggi, the author and screenwriter of 'Casino.' 'When Lefty went down, the new Las Vegas emerged.

Although Sports Illustrated once crowned him as the greatest living expert on sports handicapping, Rosenthal eventually wound up being listed in Nevada's 'black book' of unsavory types banned from the state's casinos because of his ties with the Mafia. Rosenthal, who once survived a car bomb, ran the Chicago mob-owned Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda and Marina casinos through the 1970s and into the mid-1980s.

Casino movie