You're right. We got the movies mixed up. Joe Pesci's character in Casino was Nicky Santoro. It was his character in Goodfellas who was named Tommy DeVito.
We were writing about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, the subjects of the smash-hit musical Jersey Boys that recently opened at Palazzo, hanging out with Joe Pesci before either the band or the actor became famous. Tommy DeVito was the Four Seasons band member responsible for putting the group together, and Pesci later took his name for the mean mobbed-up street character he played in Goodfellas. Unfortunately, we confused it with the mean mobbed-up street character he played in Casino: Tony Spilotro.
As to the Goodfellas role, New York City is a little off our beat, so we can’t give you full details about that character. However, there's a strong Las Vegas connection involved. Goodfellas was about the New York crew that pulled off the infamous Lufthansa heist. In the movie, Ray Liotta played Henry Hill, who became one of the highest-profile government informants ever. Nothing new there, but the following is.
One of the guys involved in that group was Richie "the Fixer" Perry. Years after Lufthansa, Richie moved to Vegas and became embroiled in the college-basketball controversy that ultimately took down UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian (see the infamous hot tub photo of Perry and members of the UNLV team below). Anthony Curtis recalls Perry used to proudly open the book Wiseguy (from which Goodfellas was adapted) at the Gambler's Book Club and point to the single page that referred to him. Perry befriended many of the top gamblers of the day and was a major advantage player, even though that term hadn't yet been coined back then.
