LAS VEGAS (AP) — Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, an eighth-grade dropout who built Las Vegas’ biggest hotels, tried to take over Chrysler and bought and sold MGM at a profit three times, has died. He was 98.
MGM Resorts International says Kerkorian, a native of Fresno, died Monday.
He built the 30-story, 1,568-room International Hotel, the world’s largest hotel when it opened in the late 1960s.
photo credit: LVRJ.com
When Kerkorian opened the first MGM Grand in Las Vegas in the 1970s, it was again the world’s largest resort hotel, containing more than 2,000 rooms. Years later, he would build another MGM Grand, this one with more than 5,000 rooms — and again, the world’s largest.
Kerkorian also bought and sold the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio three times, each time realizing a profit. He also invested heavily in the auto industry and tried unsuccessfully to take over Chrysler.
“When you’re a self-made man you start very early in life,” Kerkorian told K.J. Evans of the Las Vegas Review-Journal in one of his rare interviews (reproduced on the website The First 100 Persons Who Shaped Southern Nevada ). “In my case it was at nine years old when I started bringing income into the family. You get a drive that’s a little different, maybe a little stronger, than somebody who inherited.” He was born Kerkor Kerkorian on June 6, 1917, to Ahron and Lily Kerkorian, Armenian immigrants who had settled in California’s San Joaquin Valley farming region. The youngest of four children, he spoke Armenian at home, learning English on the streets and during his intermittent schooling.
