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Kirk Kerkorian

Kirk (Kirko) Kerkorian was born on 6th June 1917 at Fresno, in California, to refugee Armenian parents. The youngest son of four children, his parents Ahron and Lily left their native Armenia because of the recession which was hitting the country in 1921-22. The parents decided to leave for California without knowing a word of English. The Kerkorian family spoke Armenian at home for long years, even though the children were born in the United States. Their first language was Armenian and the Kerkorian children learned Shakespeare’s language on the streets of California. At the age of nine Kirk began bringing his first income into the house by selling newspapers, then washing windows and other odd jobs.

The Kerkorian family often moved home and Kirk was always the new boy at school. His elder brother Nish, a boxer, instilled the rudiments of boxing in him and became his trainer. Kirk Kerkorian, a rebel, was sent to a school where authority was imposed by beatings with leather belts. Even so, Kirk never fought more than in that school with it strict methods. Boxing became an obsession for Kirk, who wanted to enter into the ring as a professional boxer, until he met Ted O’Flaherty.

In the autumn of 1939, Kerkorian was earning 45 cents per hour helping O’Flaherty install wall furnaces. Kerkorian’s future changed dramatically as soon as he went to Alhambra airport and saw O’Flaherty fly in a Piper Cub. Not very enthusiastic about boarding the aeroplane, Kirk agreed to accompany O’Flaherty. Seeing the Californian countryside between mountains and ocean, the very next day Kirk Kerkorian started taking flying lessons. Then, Europe being at war, in order to avoid being in the infantry, Kirk wanted to obtain his flying licence at all costs.
One day in 1940, Kerkorian went to the Happy Bottom Ranch in the Mojave Desert, near to Muroc Field. This ranch belonged to Florence “Pancho” Barnes, a pioneer female aviator who gave flying lessons and also managed a dairy farm. Kerkorian went to meet her, explaining that he didn’t have any money, nor any diploma, but was strongly motivated to fly. He asked Barnes for her help. Barnes made Kerkorian into a pilot who, thanks to relentless work, learned to control the joystick and also to do farm work. Kerkorian became a commercial pilot and flying instructor. Teaching was beginning to bore him and he heard talk of the Royal Air Force (RAF) based in Canada. He went there and was immediately recruited.

The RAF paid $1000 per mission… dangerous however, since the job consisted in flying Mosquito bombers from Labrador (Canada) to Scotland. Only 25% of the bombadiers arrived at their destination. The Mosquito fuel tanks carried enough fuel for 1,400 miles. However, Scotland was 2,200 miles away. Two routes were therefore possible to reach the Scottish coasts, one more dangerous than the other: the Montreal-Labrador-Greenland-Iceland-Scotland route, which was safer, despite the fact that the wings could become distorted by a thin layer of ice, causing the aircraft to crash. Numerous aeroplanes taking this route never reached land. The other soulution consisted in crossing the Atlantic via the air flow from West to East known as the “Iceland Wave”. The risks of violent winds were very high and could cause the loss of aeroplanes.

Kerkorian and his commander J. D. Wooldridge, left on their mission in May 1944 and Woolridge beat the record in six hours and 46 minutes whereas Kerkorian took seven hours and nine minutes. Kerkorian took this defeat badly, disappointed at not having arrived first. This mission was the first among the 33 aeroplanes that Kerkorian delivered to Scotland in the space of two and a half years. During this period Kirk earned an excellent income. Once his work in the RAF was finished, Kerkorian bought himself a Cessna for 5,000 dollars, in July 1945, during his first visit to Las Vegas. Kirkorian gave flying lessons in his private aeroplane and started to involve himself in business. Jerry Williams, a scrap metal dealer from Los Angeles, used Kerkorian’s services two or three times a week to fly to Las Vegas. “I was just completely overwhelmed by the level of excitement in this little town” he says. “The best moments of my life were at Las Vegas.” One morning, Kerkorian and Williams realised that they only had $5 left after playing the tables until dawn. Williams suggested keeping them to pay for breakfast. Kerkorian went to a Craps table to play again. Bingo! He won $700 dollars with his 5 dollars. During the years 1940-45, Kerkorian made a name for himself in the Las Vegas casinos as a big player. Some nights, Kerkorian lost as much as $80,000. He decided to give up gaming completely and never bet another cent.

Kerkorian married his second wife whom he met at Las Vegas. A former dancer at the Thunderbird, Jean Maree Hardy bore him two daughters: Tracy and Linda. Kirk Kerkorian named his holding company Tracinda Corp (shortening of his daughter’s names Trac(y) (L)inda (ed.)). In 1947, he bought a small air-charter line, Los Angeles Air Service, that he renamed Trans International Airlines and offered his first services outside of the airline companies and outside of the regular services. In 1962, Fortune magazine presented Kerkorian as one of the greatest land speculation success stories in Las Vegas’s history. He bought 80 acres across the Strip from the Flamingo Casino for only 960,000 dollars. The price was derisory and he negotiated with the owners for a few acres on which it was not possible to build. Jay Sarno contacted him to build what would become Caesars Palace. Kerkorian would receive 4 million dollars by way of rents and 5 million dollars in 1968 by selling him the land.  En 1965, Kerkorian took over the TIA buying all the shares. The latter rose from $9.75 to $32! Kerkorian became a millionaire (85 million dollars ed.) at share value. With the money amassed from the sale of the land to Caesars Palace and the Trans America shares, Kerkorian was ready to create his own casino at Las Vegas.

At the beginning of 1967, Kerkorian had bought 82 acres on Paradise Road for 5 million dollars and hired Fred Benninger. The latter created the MGM Hotel Casino which was a resounding success. In November 1980, an elecrical problem caused a fire in the hotel, 85 people tragically died in the flames and a certain number were injured. Eight months later, the MGM Grand reopened its doors. In 1986, he sold the Las Vegas and Reno MGM to Bally manufacturing for the tidy sum of 584 million dollars. In 1993, he opened a 5,000 room complex, a 15,000 seat theatre, eight restaurants and a fitness club at MGM Grand Garden with a theme park identical to Disneyland. Kirk Kerkorian bought the famous Mandalay Resort Group casino and owns other MGM casinos outside of Las Vegas, notably at Atlantic City and also Macao. Kirk Kerkorian sold the Las Vegas Sands to Sheldon Adelson for 128 million dollars in 1988.

In the 1990s, Kirk Kerkorian invested in the automobile industry, where he was the principal shareholder in Chrysler and bought 10% of the capital of General Motors. The Americal multimillionaire has not forgotten his origins and has funded the renovation, for 170 million dollars, of Armenia’s roads and infrastructure.

Kerkorian is a major name in American casinos comparable with Sheldon Adelson and Stanley Ho. After a difficult childhood and thanks to strength of will, the American of Armenian origin has built a considerable empire, for which Forbes magazine places him at 31st place among the world’s richest men, weighing in at 15 billion dollars.

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