Robert De Niro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein in Casino (1995)
Vitals
Robert De Niro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein, Vegas casino executive and mob associate
Las Vegas, Spring 1973
Film: Casino
Release Date: November 22, 1995
Director: Martin Scorsese
Costume Design: Rita Ryack & John A. Dunn
Background
For my first post in several years about Robert De Niro’s colorfully memorable style in Casino as it celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, it feels appropriate on this mid-February #MafiaMonday to revisit the scene when the otherwise rational “Ace” Rothstein gets blinded by love upon meeting the vivacious hustler Ginger (Sharon Stone) while she’s causing commotion at the craps tables.
Ace was directly inspired by the real-life Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, a mob-connected gambler who started working at the Stardust Hotel and Casino in the 1960s. Around 1968, he began dating Geraldine “Geri” McGee, a topless dancer at the Tropicana who made extra money as a side hustler. Lefty relayed to author Nicholas Pileggi for his source book Casino an evening when he surprised Geri in action at the Dunes casino, where she was hustling a client:
When I got there the place was hot. She was throwing pass after pass at the craps table, and the guy with her was stacking rack after rack. She must have pulled in sixty thousand dollars for the guy, judging by the racks of hundred-dollar chips he had in front of him. She looked up, and when she saw me, she gave me a dirty look. I knew she didn’t like that I’d come by to see her. She rolled again and crapped out.
Meanwhile, she had made the guy a small fortune. Of course, every time she made a pass I noticed that she was snatching little black hundred-dollar chips off his pile and dropping them into her purse.
When the guy was getting ready to cash in the roll, Geri looked at him and asked, “Where’s my end?” The guy looked at her purse and said, “You’ve already taken your end in there.” It’s understood, after a girl makes a run like that for you, you give her five, six, seven grand. Geri hadn’t picked up anything like that, even in hundred-dollar chips. “I want my end,” she said very loudly. The guy reaches for her purse. He’s gonna empty her purse right there in front of us. But before he can do that, Geri leans over and grabs his chip racks and tosses them into the air as high as she can.
Suddenly, the whole casino is raining hundred-dollar black chips and twenty-five-dollar green chips. They’re falling and bouncing off the tables, people’s heads, and shoulders, and rolling along the floor. Within seconds everybody in the casino is diving for chips. I mean players, dealers, pit bosses, security guards—everybody’s fishing for the guy’s chips on the floor. The guy she was with is screaming and scooping up as many as he can. The security guys and dealers are handing him six and pocketing three. It’s a wild scene.
At that point, I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s standing there like royalty. She and I are the only two people in the whole casino who aren’t on the floor. She looks over at me and I’m looking at her.
“You like that, huh?” she says, and walks out the door. That’s when I realized I had fallen in love.
The real Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal and Geri McGee around the time they met in the late 1960s. This was the closest photo I could find of Frank in a blue suit, white shirt, and blue tie like Robert De Niro wears during the scene where the two meet in Casino.
Casino condenses this episode into the first time Ace and Ginger meet, during a sequence that begins with a seemingly straightforward introduction to contemporary casino security, scored by Les McCann and Eddie Harris’ live February 1969 recording of Gene McDaniels’ protest song “Compared to What”. As Ace’s narration explains the dynamics among the dealers and on-the-floor security, we follow him and casino manager Billy Sherbert (Don Rickles) from the Tangiers casino floor up to the all-seeing “eye-in-the-sky”, where he spots Ginger slyly pocketing her client’s chips.
Back down at the craps tables, Little Richard’s rollicking 1956 hit “Slippin’ and Slidin'” appropriately sets the scene when Ginger’s antics send the Tangiers’ patrons doing just that, scrambling all over the floor to recover her ungrateful client’s chips as she tosses rack after rack in protest to his measly $2,000 tip for her time. Once she and a transfixed Ace lock eyes, the song shifts with the mood to Mickey & Sylvia’s bluesy R&B single “Love Is Strange”, also from 1956—previously featured on the soundtracks of Deep Throat (1972), Badlands (1973), and Dirty Dancing (1987).
Compared to What (Live) Slippin' and Slidin' Love Is Strange“What a move,” Ace narrates. “I fell in love right there. But in Vegas, for a girl like Ginger, love costs money.”
What’d He Wear?
Casino‘s million-dollar wardrobe budget gave costume designers Rita Ryack and John A. Dunn abundant resources to dress “Ace” Rothstein as colorfully as his real-life counterpart, Frank Rosenthal. Through the movie’s two-decade timeline, Ace’s tailoring runs the gamut from bright pastels and primary colors to distinctive checks.
Ace’s blue plaid suit when he first encounters Ginger may be bold in anyone else’s closet, but it’s relatively subdued for him. Most of Ace’s tailoring is made from silk or a silk blend, so this suit likely follows the same example. The twill suiting is an all-blue Prince of Wales check, consisting of a duo-toned blue glen plaid framed horizontally and vertically by navy stripes and bisected by a rust overcheck that presents the only tonal contrast.
The single-breasted jacket has a soft-edged “cran necker” lapel—a unique narrow-notched style also known as a “Parisian” or “fish-mouth” lapel—that detailed many of Ace’s screen-worn suit jackets through these early ’70s-set scenes, including the preceding sequence handling VIPs like senators and businessmen. The two-button jacket has a long double side vents, a welted breast pocket, slanted flapped hip pockets, and single-button cuffs.
The suit’s matching trousers lack front pleats, though I can’t tell if they have a true flat-front or if they feature front darts, a contemporary fashion which Matt Spaiser describes for Bond Suits as “essentially a pleat that is sewn shut… so the trousers can better curve over the hips.” Consistent with Ace’s fondness for exactitude, the beltless waistband has been tailored to perfectly fit Robert De Niro’s waist without the need for additional suspension. They are rigged with the western-style full-top “frogmouth” front pockets that were especially popular on men’s tailoring through the 1960s and ’70s.
The plain-hemmed bottoms have a full break that envelop much of his black leather cap-toe lace-up shoes. According to the inventory of his Casino wardrobe at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, De Niro’s screen-worn shoes were made by Bally, Bruno Magli, Di Fabrizio, Florsheim, and Johnston & Murphy.
Ace often wears shirts and ties made from a matching color; indeed they were often made by Frank Rosenthal’s original shirtmaker Anto Beverly Hills using the same swathes of silk, with the shiny side used for the tie and the matte side reserved for the shirt. however, this is an inversion as he wears a more conventional combination of a white shirt with a colored tie—in this case one of light-blue silk to coordinate with the overall tones of his outfit.
The ice-white matte-silk shirt has the fashionably long point collar that Ace prefers through these ’70s scenes, plain button-up front, and a breast pocket. The incongruously formal single cuffs are appropriately idiosyncratic for Ace, fastened in this scene with 14-karat yellow-gold rectangular cuff links that each boast two light-blue synthetic stones in the center.
Ace maintains a wide array of pinky rings and wristwatches that he chooses from to match his outfits. In this case, the ring gleaming from his right pinky appears to match his cuff-links, made from 14-karat yellow-gold with a light-blue emerald-cut stone set in a geometric polished shank. All that we can see of his wristwatch in this scene is the flat white-gold herringbone bracelet around his right wrist, but it’s likely one with either a silver or a lapis blue square dial—probably a Bueche Girod, who made several of the watches that De Niro wore on screen.
How to Get the Look
Robert De Niro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein in Casino (1995)
If you want to incorporate Ace Rothstein’s style into your wardrobe without embracing garish green or pastel pink sport jackets, this more restrained approach could be your winning ticket—a tasteful but still visually interesting blue plaid silk suit, tonally coordinated with a lighter blue satin tie and a white shirt with an icy cast to the silk fabric that avoids the monochromatism of Ace’s all-blue outfits.
- Blue-on-blue Prince of Wales glen check silk twill suit:
- Single-breasted 2-button jacket with cran necker lapels, welted breast pocket, slanted flapped hip pockets, 1-button cuffs, and long double side vents
- Flat-front trousers with fitted waistband, full-top “frogmouth” front pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
- Ice-white matte-silk shirt with long point collar, plain front, breast pocket, and single cuffs
- Gold cufflinks with two light-blue stones
- Light-blue satin silk tie
- Black leather cap-toe lace-up shoes
- Gold pinky ring with light-blue emerald-cut stone
- White-gold Bueche Girod wristwatch with flat herringbone-textured bracelet
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie.
The Quote
In Vegas, everybody’s gotta watch everybody else. Since the players are looking to beat the casino, the dealers are watching the players. The box men are watching the dealers. The floor men are watching the box men. The pit bosses are watching the floor men. The shift bosses are watching the pit bosses. The casino manager is watching the shirt bosses. I’m watching the casino manager. And the eye-in-the-sky is watching us all.
The post Casino: Ace Rothstein’s Blue Plaid 1970s Suit appeared first on BAMF Style.