It’s only fitting the film “Casino” was playing on the living room big screen as prospective buyers toured the former Las Vegas home of Chicago mob enforcer Tony Spilotro.
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Las Vegas attorney John Momot Jr. was as fine a man as people said after he died April 12 at age 74. I liked and admired his legal abilities as a criminal defense attorney. But there was a mysterious moment in Momot’s past.
Steve Messer said the five owners of the former Las Vegas Country Club home of gangster Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, who was depicted by Robert De Niro in the film “Casino,” are part of a club.
The stories about the mob and the media were amusing and riveting at a recent Mob Museum panel, but I’d heard most of them, covered them or lived them. Except for this one.
Most made-in-Vegas movies — from “Ocean’s Eleven” (1960 or 2001, take your pick) to “The Hangover” — are just like tourists. They hit the town, they gaze in wonder at the neon-bedecked excess, they survive assorted hijinks. Then they go home. But a few Vegas movies get us, really get us, right where we live. And no movie fills that bill better than “Casino.”
Las Vegas was once regarded as an “open city” for more than two dozen Mafia families across the country. Many had representatives in Las Vegas for decades, with Chicago being the most dominant.