Casino is the best Mafia film although some might say that Casino
could not exist without the preceding Goodfellas so Casino is sort
of like Goodfellas 2. Be that as it may characters in Casino derive
from guys in the so-called Outfit -- the Chicago Mafia -- who ran
Las Vegas. A lot of us poetry readers, while we are familiar with
Joe Pesce and Robert De Niro in Casino, might not know about
their real life counterparts so a few of them can be seen below:
Joey Aiuppa, on the right, was the CEO of the Outfit at the time
in which Casino takes place although the character upon which
he is based is supposed to be from Kansas City in the film and
only appears in one or two scenes. I don't know who the guy on
the left is.
Robert De Niro plays Lefty Rosenthal in Casino and Sharon
Stone plays his wife. This photo shows the real Lefty Rosenthal
on the right along with his wife so you can see how incredibly
hot she was just like Sharon Stone in the movie. The other guy
is Michael Spilotro. He was the brother of Anthony Spilotro,
who was played by Joe Pesce in the film. I don't know who
the woman on the left is. Maybe Michael's wife?
Here's a rare and unusual picture of Anthony Spilotro -- Joe Pesce's character --
playing ping-pong. Anthony Spilotro looks kind of pudgy and baby-faced in the
picture but he was actually violent and hot-headed like Pesce portrayed him.
Maybe it's not explicit in the movie but in real life Anthony Spilotro had sexual
intercourse with Left Rosenthal's hot wife which made waves so Joey Aiuppa
okayed the execution of Anthony Spilotro. The real life hit of Anthony Spilotro
happened somewhat like in the movie except Anthony's brother Michael was
also whacked at the same time and they were not whacked in a cornfield but
were subsequently transported to a cornfield and buried there. Why was
Michael also whacked? Who cares. Furthermore, the bodies of Michael
and Anthony were soon discovered by a farmer whereas if they had been
buried a scant few yards away it would have been on remote public land
where they probably would never have been found and there would have
been no heat brought down. So the guy who chose the cornfield burial site
got whacked.
Terrific piece. "Why were they whacked?" Furthermore!
Posted by: Molly Arden | June 23, 2023 at 05:49 PM
Hi Molly, thanks for your kind words! Generally speaking there was less gangster violence in Chicago than, for example, in NYC because in NYC there were five "families" but in Chicago there was only a single organization. However, Chicago did seem to have a "one strike and you're out" policy so when Spilotro started making a mess in Vegas he had to go down.
One strike and you're out seemed to have been especially enforced on assassinations so when the interment of Spilotro and his brother Michael was bungled the responsible party was whacked. I've forgotten the the name of that guy although it's not hard to find.
An interesting sidebar is why Michael Spilotro was whacked along with Anthony. The consensus seems to be that they wanted to forestall any attempt at revenge by Michael even though revenge by Michael seems unlikely since Michael was not a very heavy dude. He seems to have been sort of a loudmouth so maybe they just didn't like him. That's sort of the opposite of when their lapdog Sinatra failed to produce JFK at some event right after the 1960 election. They considered killing Sinatra but decided not to because they liked him personally.
Posted by: mitch sisskind | June 23, 2023 at 08:28 PM
Wonderful post that makes me want to see "Casino" again. And yes, on tape we hear Sam Giancana saying that he could have "the canary" killed but he liked the guy too much.
Posted by: David Lehman | June 24, 2023 at 11:39 AM
Rashi is the Frenchman to read on the scriptures.
Posted by: rashi | November 19, 2024 at 03:37 AM