Former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman is hosting a dinner conversation on Wednesday at the Plaza Hotel and Casino, focusing on one of the city’s long-ago underworld operatives.
The discussion at Oscar’s Steakhouse inside the Plaza this week will center on Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, who ran Las Vegas casinos for Midwestern crime families decades ago.
As a defense attorney, Goodman, 82, represented Rosenthal and other Las Vegas Mob figures.
Rosenthal had been a Chicago oddsmaker who moved in the 1960s to Las Vegas, where he could operate legally in the sports bookmaking industry. Rosenthal lived for a while at the Tropicana hotel-casino on the Strip. He married a dancer, Geri McGee, who performed in the showroom there.
The Tropicana, which opened in the 1950s, is still in operation on the east side of the resort corridor near McCarran International Airport.