The centre of the real story was the Stardust Hotel & Casino (which was still thriving in 1995 when the film was made).
Based on Nicholas Pileggi’s non-fiction account of the fall of the old-school mob control of Las Vegas casinos in the 1970s and the takeover by faceless corporations, Martin Scorsese’s epic suffered a little by coming hard on the heels of the peerless Goodfellas with a similar style and some of the same cast members.