“The Frank Rosenthal Show” has gained legendary status since airing on local Las Vegas TV from 1977-79.
In fact, the mind boggles that there was ever such a thing as “The Frank Rosenthal Show.” Taking the idea of hiding in plain sight to the height of WTF, a mafia associate not only refused to hide from the spotlight, but hosted his own TV talk show?
A Frank Assessment
Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal ran the Stardust from 1974 to 1978 — as well as the Fremont, Marina and Hacienda casinos in Las Vegas — without possessing a gaming license.
That’s because the secret owner of these properties was the Chicago branch of the mafia. Its bosses installed Rosenthal because he was also in charge of the illegal skim operation that netted the mob at least $1.6 million — and probably many times more.
In the ’50s, Rosenthal purchased contracts to fix sporting events, earning multiple sports-bribery indictments. In 1963, he pleaded no contest to bribing a New York University basketball player to shave points. And, he was a suspect in multiple business and car bombings in Miami in the ’60s, which is allegedly why he fled to Las Vegas in 1968 in the first place.
Actually, there was a method to the madness of Lefty’s TV hosting gig. He used the show to prove to the Nevada Gaming Commission that his presence at the Stardust, where his show taped, consisted of something other than running it for the syndicate.
This is portrayed accurately in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 film “Casino,” which shows Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro’s character, who was based on Rosenthal) interviewing the real Frankie Avalon for his TV talk show, “Aces High,” shortly after being denied a gaming license.
For several reasons, however, “The Frank Rosenthal Show” — which aired on KSHO-TV, the ABC affiliate that became today’s KTNV-TV — didn’t fool anyone.
A Whole Host of Bad
First off, Rosenthal was the worst talk show host who ever lived.
This isn’t just an opinion. Stiff, uninformed and uniquely unfunny, Rosenthal never failed to achieve boredom immediately out of the gate. Go ahead — try to watch one of the show episodes uploaded to YouTube in its entirety. We’ll wait…
See? We tried warning you.
“Wokay, now what do you want to do, Frank?” Don Rickles said during the first of many lulls on Rosenthal’s Nov. 27, 1977 episode. Turning to the crowd, the legendary comic then offered, “I’ll give you 500 dollars to get me off of this!”
It wasn’t only Rosenthal’s cardboard personality, but also the show’s high school AV club production values that made New York’s similarly unprofessional yet charming “The Joe Franklin Show” look like Carson in comparison.
Even the talk show that Kramer hosted in his living room on “Seinfeld” was better.
Famously Suspicious Guests
It was the incongruously high profiles of this literal shit show’s guests that kept its viewers coming back for more each week.
Somehow, Liberace, Bob Hope, O.J. Simpson, and Sammy Davis, Jr. all ended up granting Rosenthal interviews.
The “somehow” part no doubt was another reason gaming officials — who by 1988 included Rosenthal in their “black book” of people banned from every Nevada casino for life — didn’t buy the charade.
Especially since Rosenthal’s choice of a first guest for his very first show was Frank Sinatra, the man whose friendship with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana cost him his relationship with John F. Kennedy and his casino license for the Cal-Neva Lodge.
By the way, anyone who tells you they saw Rosenthal interview Sinatra on that show is either mistaken or lying. The only witnesses were the couple of hundred people who attended the taping on Aug. 22, 1977.
And that’s because, seconds after the opening, the VCR that was playing the prerecorded tape broke.
All viewers saw for most of the hour was a “One Moment Please” sign, according to Mike Weatherford’s 2001 book, “Cult Vegas.” And no attempt was ever made to replay the episode.
Sinatra did appear on a later Rosenthal show — alongside Rickles in the very same episode from which we quoted the comic earlier. The clip is actually hysterical, but not because of Rosenthal.
“Just do what you’re told,” Rickles laid into the host. “Read the lines, what it says on the sign: ‘Help me, I am a dummy.’”
“Lost Vegas” is an occasional Casino.org series spotlighting Las Vegas’ forgotten history. Click here to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.
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