Geri Rosenthal had an affair with Tony Spilotro, the Chicago Outfit’s overseer in Las Vegas and a childhood friend of Lefty Rosenthal. A version of the driveway incident is dramatized in the movie Casino, which Pileggi co-wrote with director Martin Scorsese.
This scene on the driveway, and Geri Rosenthal’s complicated relationship with her husband and romantic involvement with Tony Spilotro, are depicted in Nicholas Pileggi’s 1995 nonfiction book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas. Nancy Spilotro ended up wrestling her friend Geri Rosenthal to the ground and, with police officers helping, retrieved the handgun. Nancy Spilotro, the wife of mobster Tony Spilotro, had arrived in a blue Oldsmobile with Utah license plates. In addition to her husband, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, police officers were at the house at 972 Vegas Valley Drive that day.
Geri Rosenthal’s name was engraved on the pearl handle. In September 1980, during an argument with her husband, Geri Rosenthal waved a gun around outside their house in the gated Las Vegas County Club Estates. Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal and his wife, Geri, had a tempestuous relationship that inspired a primary storyline in the 1995 movie Casino.
