We just watched the movie Casino (for the 10th time) and got to wondering about Lefty Rosenthal's house in Las Vegas. DeNiro is sitting there on his patio with a couple of Gaming representatives when the Cessna lands right beyond on the fairway, after running out of gas surveilling Pesci on the golf course. So where was that house? And is it still there?
It's no secret that the character of Ace Rothstein, played by Robert De Niro in Casino, was less than loosely based on real-life sports bettor, casino executive, and Mob associate Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, who not so secretly ran the Stardust, Fremont, Hacienda, and Marina casinos in Las Vegas before finally being blacklisted by Nevada's gaming authorities and narrowly escaping death in a car bombing. Following the failed hit, Rosenthal moved around, first to California, then to a couple different spots in Florida, where he died in 2008 at the age of 79 of an apparent heart attack.
During the height of his Las Vegas career, Lefty resided with his wife Geri, portrayed by the inimitable Sharon Stone, and their children, at 972 Vegas Valley Drive. It's on the east side of the Strip, just south of Karen Avenue between Joe W. Brown Drive and Maryland Parkway and, yes, it's located on the grounds of the Las Vegas Country Club in the city's original guard-gated community, featuring views of the fairway on which federal agents once landed that small plane.
The failed assassination attempt took place just a few blocks away in the parking lot of Lefty's favorite restaurant, the (now-gone) Tony Roma's located at 620 E. Sahara Avenue.
It's still there, a 3,300-square-foot three-bedroom three-bath and it has quite a history. In addition to the great view, when Lefty's two-story former residence came up for sale in 2011, some of the more unusual particulars of the home included bulletproof doors and picture windows, a gun hiding place, evidence of a former safe in a closet floorboard, state-of-the-art (for the time) surveillance equipment, and a possible bullet hole.
Following a fire in the late '70s, Rosenthal hired celebrated interior designer Steven Chase to completely redesign the home, so there were many more conventional period touches, including the intercom system, fabric-lined closets (to protect Geri's furs), mirrored ceilings, marble bathrooms, and "casino-style" lighting. One report we've seen called it "wiseguy chic."
Construction workers from the Stardust carried out the rebuild after the fire, so there are also other casino-esque features, like the steel floating staircase and industrial-strength stone work and framing. Subsequent owners commented that when a phone engineer saw the electrical room, he observed, "You guys could tap the whole neighborhood with this." (A former phone box by the swimming pool allowed the justifiably paranoid oddsmaker to switch lines multiple times if he suspected a wire tap.) One of the few amenities the property didn't have in common with its neighbors was a second-floor balcony, which was considered too much of a security risk.
The house has been sold numerous times since the Rosenthals occupied it, so it's been upgraded numerous times. Still, you can see photos on Zillow from the last time it was sold, in December of last year, for $835,000, here. It also changed hands in 2017 ($697,500) and 2011 ($615k). When Frank and Geri Rosenthal purchased the property in the early '70s, it cost them $15,000 plus change.
