Geraldine "Geri" McGee was born May 16, 1936 and grew up in Sherman Oaks, California. She, along with her sister Barbara and, coincidentally, Robert Redford, attended Van Nuys High School, which was when she started dating Lenny Marmor, with whom she had a daughter in 1957. Marmor was the character named Lester Diamond in Casino, played by James Woods.
No history we have read relates why she was at a convention in Atlantic City some years later, but that's when she met Anthony Spilotro, with whom she began an affair. She moved to Las Vegas at Marmor's instigation, where she basically became a casino hustler hitting up gamblers for chips to play. Evidently she was pretty successful in her endeavors, because by the time she met Spilotro's buddy Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, some eight years later, Geri had earned enough to buy her own home and was supporting both her sister and ailing mother, while also raising Robin, her daughter by Marmor.
It was through Spilotro that she met Frank Rosenthal and, as the movie portrays, it would seem he became infatuated. On May 1, 1969, the pair were married.
Geri and Lefty went on to have two children together, Steven and Stephanie, and resided at the home on the grounds of the Las Vegas Country Club that was the subject of Saturday's QoD.
Geri Rosenthal was said to have been a devoted mother, but the relationship with her husband was troubled to say the least, a fact that he blamed on her alcohol and drug problems. She was still visited periodically by her childhood sweetheart Marmor, just as the movie portrays, and resumed her affair with Spiltro, among others. The Rosenthals separated, with Geri apparently stealing a good chunk of Lefty's savings, and were divorced in January, 1981. She was found dead in a motel room late the following year from an apparent overdose. According to the $50,000 autopsy that Lefty paid for (apparently to put paid to rumors that he'd taken out a hit on his ex-wife), her death was from a cocktail of cocaine, Valium, and Jack Daniels. She's buried at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
There aren't that many images of Geri in the public domain, but among those we've seen there's a much-used youthful photograph of her in a bikini where she looks gorgeous, but skinny and out-of-it, plus a couple of very staged shots of her and her husband at home. Sadly, we've never seen a happy photo of her but you can view what few pictures there are by clicking here.
