This guy is extremely street smart. Knows how to keep his mouth shut. Made more money than most of us will see in a lifetime. Very old school. Great interview.
Keeping your mouth shut doesn’t help the working class. It only helps rich people. He’s more of a self serving cretin than a man of integrity and honor.
@@PS987654321PS I don't blame individuals like this for the background they come from, but you are absolutely correct that the supposed "values" of organised crime are the complete opposite of any that would actually help working class people. It's no wonder that Hollywood tries to make people idolise the mafia because it tries to turn people from a community into competing selfish individualists.
What you talking about? You talking like commie parteigenosse in my country 33 years ago. Every smart person, spetialy who knew very much about politics, criminals and big money world should very good thinking before open mouth. Who had mouth without brains in world of influence and money have many problems
You can tell he's always in control of what he's saying. He expected every line of questioning and had an answer. Most were non answers. Very highly intelligent person
I worked for him in Boca at a bar and restaurant called croc's the summer before I went to law school. I was working there the night of the OJ Simpson slow white bronco chase. He always tipped the staff directly, especially on slow nights. He said if you can survive a summer as a restauranteur in south Florida you might be accused of being a genius. This was back when the business was much more seasonal. Good boss. DeNiro came into the bar one night that was a fun night. Also watching and listening to this reminds me how fucking smart he was. He really was the smartest guy in the room.
absolutely ! he's a smart guy. there's an old quote from him from the 70's a reporter asked him" how do you stay in shape ?"& he said" by keeping my mouth shut".
Keeping his mouth shut about the Drug Addicted slut he was married to and her affair with Tony Spilotro was simply self preservation. Just like in the entire interview Rosenthal was taking no chances of saying anything that would piss off the Chicago Mob again.
@@uncleg1623No she died in 1982. She was in LA and was probably given a hot shot of coke and Valium. It was within a month of Franks botched car bomb. ( I think the people back home were cleaning house if you know what I mean) Frank loved Geri very much. Very sad. RIP Geri and Frank.
What is it about “The Irishman” you find so appealing? I’m not being condescending I’m genuinely curious as a huge Scorsese fan. Seems like it’s a love it or hate it movie and I hated it tbh. Curious what elements of it you found so entertaining? Not insulting your taste, just genuinely curious.
He didn’t want to be known as a violent criminal. Even being friends with Tony apilotro is a bad look , even when you try to stop him the whole movie .
"Organised crime did exist in Las Vegas. I knew them all. They were the Gaming Control Board, County Commissioners, two local court judges and one Supreme Court Justice " Rosenthal nailed it. He told truth to power. He understood who really control this world.
Let's not mistake ourselves though - it's not like the mob were acting in anyone's best interests either though. It's the ordinary guy in the street that loses out. Saying that though - if you or I got our house robbed, we'd be expecting the full weight of the law to be wheeled out against the perpetrators.
Organized crime didn’t just exist in Las Vegas. Organized crime literally built that city. It’s interesting to note that the Chicago outfit negotiated Las Vegas territory with the New York families. Chicago said you can have Atlantic City but we want Las Vegas.
"But in the end, we f***** it all up, it should have been so sweet too, but it turned out to be the last time street guys like us were ever given anything that f****** valuable ever again"
Street smart,intelligent.Guy never gave up information,after everything. betrayed by friends,Blown up. literally bombed and still remained solid.RIP Frank Rosenthal
My family owned the barbershops at Caesars Palace, The Dunes, Stardust, and Desert Inn at this time and It was a fun time being a kid I could only imagine how it was for my uncles and father.
@@balancedactguy No they didn't show that at all. He beat her cheated on her. And he wasn't just kind of an asshole to his staff like Deniro was. He was A HUGE ASSHOLE TO HIS STAFF. And even worse HE WAS AN FBI INFORMANT ALL ALONG.
This was an excellent interview. Just listening to him speak, you can understand why he was so successful. Street smart, intelligent, cunning, polite, and plays with his cards very close to his chest. Good job by the interviewer by asking relevant questions and smart enough to stop talking and just listen.
The fact that he chose to marry a woman with so much baggage while trying to blend in and then do a TV show poking the local est. in the eye tells me he is human and got caught up in the lights.
@@billl1127 Yep, I can attest to that lol. In your 20's it's understandable but after age 30 men should know better..but most don't..heck, most NEVER learn.
He still wouldn't be as bad as people who are running big corporations now, take the Pharmaceutical companies this man wouldn't have anything on those executives.
Yes sir, they lost money from the doctors not prescribing pain killers as they used to 10 years ago. So they make money from a forced vaccine, govt paid. Also, some of the major news shows pushing the vacs are sponsored by, wait for it..... Pfizer.
Even though he had all the characteristic of big pharma ceo. It was reported that all dealers sort of stood at attention everytime he walked over, he regularly put dealers on line and barked at them for slight and imaginative reasons. He re decorated and modeled his office four times in a row - he let the carpenters tear of everything they installed four times in row until he was satisfied, he fired people who said "good morning mr Rosenthal" because he felt they were obnixous cause they dared to talk to him. This was what he did inside his own company to his workers. Imagine what he did to his competitors.
I worked under Gordon when Eric at the Concord hotel in the Catskills I never saw a man command such authority with no fear of anything whatsoever it was absolutely something to witness
Fucked everything up.... He should've just took the food & beverage title..🤣
18 дней назад
There is a part of the puzzle many people do not know. Allan Glick ("clean face") was good friends with Frank Balistreri's son (the lawyer). Allen Glick was the face of the Stardust, in return for the $60 million Teamsters loan. Frank Balistreri made Glick sign over %10 to each of his sons to take effect 3-5 years up the road. Frank Balistreri hired Lefty to oversee the Casino-he hired several other Milwaukee hoods as well. Meaning Frank Balistreri of Milwaukee was the Don behind the skim, not a New York other East Coast family. That fact remains hidden.
Wow!! I am just seeing this! He was as sharp as a sword! Many would say he was dirty back in the Vegas mob days!! But make no mistake about it, modern day execs are old time Lefty Rosenthal's of today. This was a great interview. The man is very articulate and carefully words his answers.
love the interview. he steered everything away from the actual mafia and told the truth that the politics/ gov were the real gangsters...lol. The police, the gaming commission.. classy guy. Who ordered the bomb? he has no idea...lol.
I still wonder why Tony didn’t try to do this some other way. I think if Tony wanted Lefty dead, he would do it in a more brutal and direct way, Lefty would not have been alive. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t understand why he’d have to blow up Lefty’s caddy
Frank Balistreri is likely the person who tried to kill him. He was the Milwaukee Mob boss. He was known for using car bombs. He was a key guy in the skim and was involved in the Teamsters giving the financing for the Casino. He was heavily tied in with the Chicago Outfit and probably would have needed an okay from them but he wanted Rosenthal gone and car bombs were his style. He obviously didn't do it himself maybe Spilotro or someone else set it up. It says this on his Wikipedia as well and that the FBI suspected him.
It's surprising, it was most likely filmed on VHS or a similar tape, (Perhaps film but that feels unlikely) It really looks like a modern digital type format. Little noise and good quality / frames, as well as the color tones all make it look much more modern than the mid 90s.
" Kind of " does not have a place in intelligent conversation. So, plenty of words out of place. 👎 I'm not going to benefit from listening to this pointless conversation with man who thinks he's above everyone else. One can tell this in the very first few minutes; this emanates from him and I'm not impressed .
De Niro was 'gonna try'... to everyone that says De Niro does the same character everytime... he got him really well... his mannerisms and the rhythm to how he talks... De Niro got his 'character' really well
Totally agree. After Goodfellas, I kind of just expected DeNiro to just play a similar character. But he got this one down really well. Amazing performance.
This was a very intelligent man, he wasn't stupid by any stretch. Very clever, very street smart. Which explains why he was never touched after he escaped his car explosion and kept his mouth shut until the day he died. It's pretty obvious that Franks refusal to co operate with the feds kept him alive at out of the cross hairs of the Chicago mob.
@@djslowtunes That's the key thing. It was SAID. Just because it was said that doesn't instantaneously make it true. If I said you beat your girl and you didn't would that automatically make you a woman beater? Obviously it wouldn't. What we know as the truth and what we simply know as rumor are two different things. The FBI never made any acknowledgment that Frank Rosenthal was ever on any FBI program that I am aware of and never gave evidence in a Chicago court against the mob during the family secrets trial. And Rosenthal KNEW what was going on in certain Vegas Casino's with the skim. However it was world wide news that fellow mobsters such as Frank Calabrese and Frank Cullota WERE protected by the FBI. I think if Leftie was too we would have known about it by now. It's not like it matters anymore since they are all dead now.
This is the difference between a street thug like some of the low level mob guys were vs a gangster / criminal with some class and eloquence to them. He didn’t even have a bad word to say about his ex wife
Some class act. After his death, it was disclosed by Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jane Ann Morrison that Rosenthal had been a top echelon informant for the FBI, and his wife Geri was also an FBI informant
@@daniels.2720 Just like hundreds of them were. The 80s rico indictments had everyone flipping on everyone. Italians wish they could have had the NY FBI in their pocket like Whitey did Bostons.
I thought it was "...a movie is about to come out...and De Niro is going to play you" to which Lefty says "He's going to try." I'm thinking if the movie were already out, he'd already have an opinion. But that's just my opinion.
Great interview! He said a lot without actually saying. A very smart man indeed! No matter what his job was, I have to respect him in that, he would not talk bad about his ex wife. He truly loved her, and it clearly shows. I moved to Las Vegas right when everything was coming down. My daughter attended a private school right behind Bertha's and sometimes I dropped her off in their parking lot so she could walk across the park to her school. I remember the Bertha's robbery well because of that. The mob has never left Las Vegas, they only appear in suits and ties and call themselves corporate. Just my opinion... I know one thing, Las Vegas was very safe for people living here back then, at least all the way until the bosses gave Spilatro permission to start robbing houses. "Casino" is one of the most factual movies ever made!
That's the thing bosses didn't give Spilatro permission to rob houses. Spilatro's job was to look after Lefty and keep the skim going. Spilatro being the street gangster that he was started up his own rackets and brought unwanted attention to the mafia in Las Vegas, which was the last thing the bosses wanted. As a result Spilatro ends up in a shallow grave in a corn field. He could have live a comfortable life making sure nothing happened to Lefty and taking his cut of the skim.
@@shack7631 According to people in The Mafia at that time The Corn Field insicdent is not 100% accurate shall we say. apparently it started out in a basement of a house in a unnamed Chicago suburb & then the body's where transported there after death to The Vorn Field that is. The Surse has his own You Tube Channel & has bid a review of Casino the movied some time ago now where he talks about how factual the movie actually is but he only talks about the facts he actually knows about the subject of the movie not about what he dose not know. This man was in The New York Mafia as was his father & only got in to the life to help his father he now lives in California he reached Capo in The Colombo crime family & had involvement in a gass tax frod in the 80's so this guy was connected at the time. Keep Safe.
After his death, it was disclosed by Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jane Ann Morrison that Rosenthal had been a top echelon informant for the FBI, and his wife Geri was also an FBI informant
I immediately recognized the voice of the interviewer: John Drummond. A long time Chicago crime reporter who specialized in covering the Chicago mob. He had a cameo in the movie (as a reporter) in the movie The Fugitive.
Liars tend to blink more because lying is stressful. ... People tend to blink more rapidly when they become nervous or when they hear or see something unpleasant
These edge gamblers who consistently beat the game/sportsbook/house are always ridiculously clever people. It's fascinating, they kind of remind me of those genius level IQ kids that do bad in school because it so easy to them that it's boring and they just refuse to engage with it. These guys could probably be doing any super high paying legit job they set their minds to, but yet they choose to try make a living beating a game that's set up to be unbeatable.
You understand that you cant break in. There are loads of people of incredible capability that are seen a mile off and will never break in legit. Why do you think the italians or any crime family did what they did.. originally? Because they would never be allowed in to the waspy structure that existed here from the 1600s. Anywhere there is power..it is ubiquitous. That's why you see investment bankers with a brother in the CIA and as family tied in to law enforcement or the military or some political office. Supposedly we live it or democracy but it doesn't function as it appears
Hey Zim, I agree with you completely. With the words you used there you might just as easily have been describing Meyer Lansky. Another genius, particularly when it came to gambling.
I am looking at photos of Lefty all over the net. I swear to you he looks younger here than he did in the 60s and 70s. Its TRULY wild!! He used to comb his receding hairline back and now that its forward, he looks younger now than he did in 1965. My mind is blown! Even the photo as hes adjusting his tie in 1961.
That's always the story as far as any kind of gambling even he in the U.K. they only let you win now & again just enough to keep people coming back time & time again but they very, very rarely give up the really big money. Personally I only gamble once in a blue moon & it needs to be only a Sports event & I also need to really believe in the bet heart & soul or why other in the first place. The last time I had a bet was on the 2018 Football ( Soccer) World Cup Final & it was the total number of goals in the game & it came up it was a desent win but nothing spectacular. Keep Safe.
You can make a good living from some gambling betting if yer know what your doing... just takes lot of discipline long hours And sacrifice 😂😂 And betting amounts that don't attract attention. It ain't no easy way to make money really. Only certain people could hack the lifestyle. It's more than a job like being a boxer or bodybuilder etc. Runs yer Life
You know this guy had some stories he could’ve told. Old school guy. He didn’t feel the need to talk shit about anybody, even if they did do him dirty.
Frank was the smartest casino owner but he let his wife destroy him. Just watching the movie Casino I couldn’t believe he had to beg his wife to marry him and he gave her a key to the vault. Frank could of gotten any kind of women in Las Vegas but he wanted his wife.
To be fair she was quite beautiful and her job before meeting him was to gain confidence from men to steal from them. Her husband at the time and her did that for years before settling on him. Made his life hell though. Never try to turn a hoe into a housewife.
