Question of the Day - 02 September 2021

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, Robin, in 1957. Marmor was the character named Lester Diamond in Casino, played by James Woods.

At Marmor's instigation, Geri and Robin moved to Las Vegas, where she worked as a cocktail waitress and, for a short time, a showgirl at the Tropicana, but eventually 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 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.

When Frank met Geri, 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 lived at the house on the grounds of the Las Vegas Country Club, the subject of the QoD mentioned in the question. 

Geri Rosenthal was said to have been a devoted mother, but her marriage to Frank 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 had an affair with none other than Tony Spilotro, among others.

The Rosenthals separated, with Geri apparently helping herself to a good chunk of Lefty's riches, and were divorced in January 1981.

Nearly two years later in early November 1982, at the age of 46, she was found dead in a motel room from an apparent overdose. 

Speculation about her death revolved around her ex-husband, two separate groups of outlaws, and Lenny Marmor.

The first was that Frank Rosenthal put out a hit on Geri for her past misdeeds. But to help clear his name, Lefty paid $50,000 for an autopsy that determined her death was caused by a lethal cocktail of cocaine, Valium, and Jack Daniels. 

The second was that she was murdered by the same gangsters who'd tried to kill her ex-husband in the infamous failed car-bomb attack that took place only weeks earlier outside Tony Roma's on E. Sahara in Las Vegas; rumor had it that she knew too much about the Las Vegas underworld.

The third involved a biker crowd she'd gotten involved with in Los Angeles, where she moved after the divorce. They'd either murdered her in order to help themselves to whatever was left of the reported $3 million in Rosenthal's cash and jewelry to which she'd helped, or they believed she had access to a lot more money than she actually did and when they found out she was expendable, they expended her. 

Lenny Marmor was also a person of interest in Geri's death, suspected of stealing her wealth, but that was never proved and he remained free from all but a few minor legal entanglements until he died in 2016 at the age of 80.

Geri Rosenthal is buried at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.