While Ace only runs one casino in the film, Lefty ran four mobbed-up Las Vegas casinos simultaneously, including the Stardust, Fremont, Marina, and Hacienda. In Casino, Ace runs the Tangiers, based on the real-life Stardust casino. That’s a lot of Franks.Įven the casino names were changed for legal reasons.

Famous film mobster face Frank Vincent played Frank Marino in the film, based on real-life Chicago Mob enforcer Frank Cullotta. Kevin Pollack played Phillip Green, who is based on money mover Allen Glick, who borrowed money from the Teamsters fund to finance casinos. Sharon Stone played Ace’s main squeeze Ginger McKenna, based on Rosenthal’s real wife, Geri McGee. It’s said the murder rate in Vegas went up 70% after Spilotro arrived. His real life counterpart was Anthony “Ant” Spilotro, notorious mob thug with a high murder rate. And his enforcer, the little wise guy who could, was Nicky Santoro, played by Joe Pesci. Ace’s real-life counterpart was notorious gambler and bookie Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal. Robert DeNiro played Sam “Ace” Rothstein in the film Casino. Scorsese dealt up all of Casino’s gritty gambling gangster drama straight from the nonfiction source material, and only the names were changed to protect the guilty, as it were. The author of much of Scorsese’s source material is writer Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote Wise Guys, Casino, and Goodfellas.

Read on for the true story behind the real life mobsters, made men, and thugs portrayed by Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and the rest of the cast of the movie Casino. And for the most part, these rumors are absolutely true. The early years of Las Vegas are rife with rumors of mafia corruption, organized crime operations, money laundering, and disappearing bodies in the desert. But did you know that in Scorsese’s film, Casino, the characters portrayed in in the vintage Vegas casinos were based on real life people? You know you’ll be in for a gritty portrayal of mob life, the mean streets of New York, Chicago, and Vegas, and multi-dimensional characters. There’s nothing like settling in for a good Martin Scorsese film with all the usual goodfellas cast in the main roles.

Casino the movie real characters