On the evening of Oct. 4, 1982, Lefty Rosenthal, the talented professional gambler and gangster-when-necessary who had brought sports betting to casinos in Las Vegas and illicitly run an empire of four hotel casinos, walked out of Tony Roma’s on East Sahara Avenue with an order of takeout ribs. He had just finished dinner with some fellow handicappers, and he was bringing the food home for his two children. When he got into his car, it blew up.

Rosenthal survived the explosion — later he could not remember whether he had turned the ignition key — but the attempt on his life, for which no one was ever prosecuted, ended his career as one of the most powerful men in Las Vegas. He left the city early the next year, and on Monday, at home in Miami Beach, he died. He was 79 and had lived in Florida since the late 1980s.

His death was confirmed by Eric Yuhr, assistant chief of the Miami Beach Fire Department, which removed the body. He did not give a cause.

Rosenthal’s rise and fall in Las Vegas, which took place over a mere 14 years, was at the center of Nicholas Pileggi’s 1995 book “Casino,” and the subsequent film of the same name, directed by Martin Scorsese, though in the movie, the account was somewhat fictionalized. (Rosenthal’s character, played by Robert DeNiro, was named Ace Rothstein.) He began his career as a horse player, oddsmaker and studiously disciplined sports bettor in Chicago, where his nonviolent but illegal enterprises were protected by the mobsters for whom he made money.

On to Vegas

After various run-ins with the law in Chicago and in Florida, he moved to Las Vegas in 1968. Six years later, he was working in a relatively unimportant position on the staff of the Stardust Hotel and Casino when he was placed, effectively, in control of it, and three other hotels owned by a company known as Argent Corp., by the mafiosi who controlled the pension fund for the Teamsters union, which had financed Argent’s purchase of the hotel.

Allen Glick, the man who owned Argent, was surprised to learn he had to take orders from one of his own employees, a discovery that came about in a conversation with Rosenthal in October 1974.

Glick recounted it to Pileggi this way:

“He said, ‘It is about time you become informed of what is going on here, and where I am coming from, and where you should be. I was placed in this position not for your benefit, but for the benefit of others, and I have been instructed not to tolerate any nonsense from you, nor do I have to listen to what you say, because you are not my boss.’”

Glick’s recollection continued: “He said, ‘When I say you don’t have a choice, I am not just talking of an administrative basis, but I am talking about one involving health. If you interfere with any of the casino operations or try to undermine anything I want to do here, I represent to you that you will never leave this corporation alive.’”

Frank Rosenthal was born in Chicago on June 12, 1929. His father was a produce wholesaler who also owned horses, and young Frank hung out at the track and devoured the Racing Form.

His nickname, from childhood, was of the simplest origin; he was left-handed. Nonetheless, the story persists that it resulted from his testimony in 1961 in front of a Congressional subcommittee on gambling and organized crime, during which he invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself 37 times, refusing to answer the simplest of questions, including whether he was left-handed.