Mob Museum spotlights organized crime as opening nears

But beyond the movie screens there was a lot more to Las Vegas than Rosenthal and his ilk, who ran roughshod over the Strip well into the 1980s.

The real Las Vegas, where prosecutors, gambling regulators and everyday residents resented the infiltration of organized crime, is poised to take its own place in the spotlight Tuesday, when the Mob Museum opens downtown.

Also known as the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, it’s in large part an attempt by people who know the dark side of Las Vegas’ mob era to take control of the story line.

"Obviously (Rosenthal) was the creative director for that movie and provided information from his point of view," said Jeffrey Silver, 65, a former member of the Nevada Gaming Control Board who clashed with Rosenthal. "That there was another point of view was the purpose of this museum."

Silver, one of many former regulators and law enforcement officials affiliated with the museum, said it is high time Las Vegas, and the rest of the world, learned more about Rosenthal and other organized crime figures the public knows mainly from movies that gloss over the truth to highlight the glamour.

"I didn’t say anything at the time the movie came out because I’m certainly not going to scratch off scabs from the past, especially with a guy I considered to be quite dangerous," Silver said during a tour Wednesday of Las Vegas-themed exhibits in the museum.

He said Rosenthal "was a despicable character who didn’t treat people very well … and he was the mastermind, if not the participant, in skimming millions of dollars of revenue from these hotels that ultimately should have been taxed for the state of Nevada."

As workers put the finishing touches on the $42 million project, it was clear the experience is aimed at bringing visitors as close to the mob as possible without breaking any knees.

One third-floor exhibit on the early days of Las Vegas includes old photos of the meadows, a desert oasis for which Las Vegas is named; a photo of Mayme Stocker, the holder of Nevada’s first gaming license; and a large, iPad-like display for visitors to relive decisions early Las Vegans made while developing the community.

Another exhibit focuses heavily on midcentury glamour, with photos of Rosenthal’s gaudy television studio, trinkets from connected casino owner Moe Dalitz and flashy suits worn by the likes of Abe Schiller, a mob-connected casino host.

Yet another exhibit includes video of former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who was a defense attorney for Rosenthal associate Tony Spilatro and other underworld figures, engaged in a shouting match with former FBI agent and mob fighter Rick Bacon.

"This is a book that you can walk through," Silver said. "It is a story of a culture in our country that I think needs to be told."

DAYS OF ‘LEFTY’ ROSENTHAL

Silver had a front-row seat for Rosenthal’s antics beginning in 1975 when then-Gov. Mike O’Callaghan appointed him to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

His former position as a prosecutor in the Clark County district attorney’s office didn’t provide much experience in dealing with high-level organized crime common in casinos at the time, but that’s exactly what he faced from his first days on the job.

Just 29 years old at the time, Silver walked into his office and found the file for Rosenthal, who had been seeking approval for a gaming license.

"From the very inception I didn’t know really what to do," Silver said. "The one thing that was on my desk was the preliminary investigation material for Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal."

In a stroke of serendipity, a former FBI agent who was visiting with Silver regarding another case noticed the file and asked Silver if he wanted to add to the file transcripts of Rosenthal giving testimony to Congress in 1961 in which he declined to answer questions about fixing sporting events on the grounds the answers would implicate him in crimes.

Armed with the information that Rosenthal was likely crooked, gambling regulators were able to ask hard questions about his past during the licensing process, which doesn’t afford applicants the right to refuse to answer.

When Rosenthal wouldn’t provide the information, the control board recommended his application be rejected and the gaming commission, headed then by Harry Reid, now the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, obliged.

It was the beginning of the end for Rosenthal in Las Vegas. He dodged the system for a while by changing jobs within the casino to delay his ouster. But with the Nevada Legislature closing loopholes to make the dodge more difficult, and mob bosses growing tired of his antics, Rosenthal eventually was driven from the business.

A bomb that destroyed Rosenthal’s car in 1982, but didn’t kill him, provided an exclamation point for the end of his time in Las Vegas. Rosenthal died in his home in Florida in 2008.

"It really brought the spotlight on one individual who was the poster boy for what organized crime activity could mean for a Nevada casino," Silver said of regulators’ dogged pursuit.

PRICE OF CRIME

Although Rosenthal’s gaming control saga was portrayed in "Casino," what wasn’t included was the price regulators and other Las Vegas locals paid in peace and security by having organized crime infiltrate their communities.

Silver recalled being summoned to the local FBI office to review transcripts of conversations in which mobsters talked about killing him.

"They didn’t know who I was, and I couldn’t be controlled or influenced in any way. They thought maybe the best way would be to get rid of me and have someone else appointed," Silver said.

It wasn’t just regulators and police who were in danger.

Despite their portrayal in movies as paternalistic, and even benevolent casino operators, the mob men in Las Vegas could be cruel.

Locals who mobsters considered a threat to divulge secrets sometimes disappeared, and even casino workers trying to make an honest living could lose their livelihood without warning.

"If all of a sudden somebody didn’t like the way you dealt a card and you were terminated …  there was no appeal," Silver said. "There was no human resources to go to. Essentially the people who were in organized crime and ran these casinos controlled it with an iron fist."

Despite his experience as a regulator, Silver acknowledges there is more to the story of the mob and Las Vegas than violence and crooked casinos.

Until the 1990s, Las Vegas was a small city where longtime residents, whether they were in organized crime or not, knew one another.

Silver’s own family moved to Las Vegas in 1955 so his father, a business consultant, could work with Tony Cornero, who was developing the Stardust.

Cornero had been driven out of the floating casino business off the Southern California coast and sought to develop the Stardust.

But Cornero never got to see the casino come to fruition. He died while playing craps at the Desert Inn shortly before the Stardust opened, leaving Silver’s dad without a job.

Moe Dalitz, a high-profile operator with underworld connections, took over and opened the property.

"We were stuck here," Silver said of the sudden change. "We had already moved here, and we had to stay."

Silver, who grew up in Las Vegas, said organized crime figures blended into the community by getting involved in local causes, but much of the glamour of the Strip and its celebrity visitors was removed from daily life.

"We never locked our doors at night, yet around the corner we had all this other thing going on that was just like a Hollywood movie," he said.

HEAVY DOSE OF LAS VEGAS

Nuanced perspectives like those from Silver are what creators of the Mob Museum had in mind, especially since the venue is in Las Vegas where so many people remember the era of organized crime in casinos.

Creative director Dennis Barrie and curator Kathleen Hickey-Barrie, whose careers include work on the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, infused the nation’s history of organized crime with a heavy dose of Las Vegas.

The exhibits cover Las Vegas from its inception in 1905 when it had a small area set aside as a red light district but long before it became known as a haven for mobsters.

Las Vegas also weighs heavily in other exhibits, such as one that explains to visitors how mobsters skimmed casino profits and another that details the so-called "Kefauver hearings," a series of congressional field hearings that began in 1950 in Las Vegas and followed in other cities and raised national awareness of organized crime.

They said people like Silver, a Mob Museum board member, and others who have donated time, artifacts or memories, give the exhibits depth that couldn’t be achieved without first-hand knowledge.

"We can never find what they know in books," Hickey-Barrie said. "To have people who are doing first-hand accounts is so informative."

That said, getting regulators, cops, defense lawyers, mobsters’ children and others who still live in Las Vegas to collaborate on something as big as a museum can be complicated.

Not only do creators need to build exhibits that can stand the scrutiny of people who lived through the time period, but they also have to navigate tensions and uncomfortable truths that remain even as organized crime has dissipated from the ranks of casino owners and managers.

"We know there are stories in here that some people walking through are not going to like, and somebody on the other side is not going to like," she said. "There are people who are going to be avoiding each other at the opening."

Contact Benjamin Spillman at bspillman @reviewjournal.com or 702-229-6435.