Kirk Kerkorian

Many people, even some well-read historians, associate the early history of Las Vegas with gangsters, thugs and con men.  While it is true that many of the first casinos in Las Vegas were primarily run by organized crime figures, it was the son of an immigrant, with only an eighth-grade education, who developed the idea of the “mega-resort” that populates the Las Vegas Strip today.

Kirk Kerkorian was born in 1917 in Fresno, California, the son of an Armenian immigrant.  When he was four years old, his family moved to Los Angeles to find work.  During his school years, he helped out his family financially by selling newspapers or working other odd jobs.  He dropped out of school during the Depression and became an amateur boxing champion with the nickname “Rifle Right” Kerkorian, for his devastating right hook.

During World War Two, Kerkorian was a pilot, flying bomber planes from Canada to Scotland.  He had saved most of his wartime salary and, after the war, bought a plane and started a transportation service that flew passengers nonstop between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.  With the money from his successful airline business, he bought eighty acres across the Las Vegas Strip from the Flamingo Hotel in 1962, a site that would eventually become the home of Caesars Palace.

Five years later, Kerkorian bought another parcel of land off the Strip near Paradise Road, which would become the home of the largest hotel in the world at that time, the International Leisure (now the Las Vegas Hilton).  In July 1973, Kerkorian topped his own record for the biggest hotel when he opened the first MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, on the site of what is now Bally’s Casino on the Strip.  Although a November 1980 fire destroyed much of the hotel, with eighty-seven guests perishing in the blaze, Kerkorian was determined to rebuild, and the original MGM Grand reopened the next summer.

Even at ninety-two, when most men his age are well past retirement, Kerkorian is still living and working in Las Vegas.  The MGM Mirage Corporation, in which Kerkorian holds a large share, has numerous properties on the Las Vegas Strip.  Names like Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Excalibur and New York New York all fall under the MGM Mirage banner.  Each of those properties is synonymous with the Vegas megaresort and, thus, owes its existence to “Rifle Right” Kerkorian.