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Kirk Kerkorian statue
The statue of the National Hero of Armenia, philanthropist Kirk Kerkorian has unveiled in Gyumri, the second largest city of Armenia.
The Gyumri Council of Elders had decided to install a statue of the benefactor in December 2013.
Owing to Kerkorian’s the Lincy Foundation, about 3,000 apartments were built for homeless families in Gyumri.
The well-known American Armenian benefactor had passed away on June 16, 2015, aged 98.
Kirk Kerkorian bought and sold numerous resorts in Las Vegas over the years, at one point controlling nearly half the Strip. (Isaac Brekken/ Associated Press)
The Washington Post has unveiled an article about Armenian American billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, who played an enormous role in shaping modern-day Las Vegas, along the way also shaking up Hollywood and the auto industry.
“Most of the world knows little else about Kerkorian, who was fiercely private even by billionaire standards. Now, almost three years after his death in 2015 at age 98, William C. Rempel’s “The Gambler: How Penniless Dropout Kirk Kerkorian Became the Greatest Deal Maker in Capitalist History” chronicles Kerkorian’s singular career and his engrossing life story: how the son of Armenian immigrants and an eighth-grade dropout became one of the most influential tycoons of the 20th century,” the article says.
“Rempel’s account is expansive and exhaustive, which is all the more impressive given that he had little authorized access. The official Kerkorian camp refused to cooperate (though Rempel, who spent 36 years as an investigative reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times, got many friends and associates to speak with him), and Kerkorian gave almost no interviews during his life.
“And what a life it was. Rempel spends more than half the book chronicling Kerkorian’s early years, but it’s hard to imagine a more cinematic rags-to-riches story. Born Kerkor Kerkorian, the future billionaire was the youngest of four children to Armenian immigrants who had settled in Fresno, Calif. His father, Ahron, saw success as a fruit peddler turned raisin farmer, but he lost the business when the market turned and debt loads came down, prompting a relocation to Los Angeles. Scrappy but strong, young Kerkor showed promise as an amateur prizefighter, earning the nickname “Rifle Right.”
“But a chance opportunity to ride along with a friend in a single-wing plane led him to become besotted with flying — and prompted a stint as a contract pilot for the Royal Air Force Ferry Command, a Montreal-based division that hired civilian pilots, including Americans, to ferry new bombers and fighter planes from their factories in America and Canada across the North Atlantic. The first scene in the book is a treacherous minute-by-minute account of one of these crossings that nearly led to a mid-air evacuation — one of Kerkorian’s several close brushes with death. Back in Los Angeles, he set up a small charter flight service that made enterprising use of surplus military planes, and was soon ferrying the likes of John Wayne and Bugsy Siegel to the then-nascent gaming mecca in the desert, Las Vegas.
“In 1962, Kerkorian began buying up land in Vegas, over time building three resorts that were the largest in the world for their time: the International Hotel, opened in 1969; the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, opened in 1973 and later acquired and renamed by Bally’s; and the new MGM Grand Las Vegas, opened in 1993, with a casino, Rempel says, that was bigger than the playing field in Yankee Stadium. He purchased MGM Studios in 1969 and would sell and buy it back three times, each time for a profit. He bought and sold plenty of other resorts, including the Mirage from younger rival Steve Wynn (now embroiled in allegations of sexual misconduct) in 2000 and Mandalay Resorts in 2004; at his peak, Kerkorian controlled nearly half of the Strip. An attempted takeover of Chrysler in the early 1990s would see him in and out of the auto industry for almost two decades.
“The deals seem innumerable, each recounted in hyper-specific, often suspenseful detail (lay readers may find those dealmaking details dense). There are plenty of historic moments in pop culture, whether it’s the International Hotel’s chief doing a deal on a tablecloth with Elvis Presley’s manager after an early record-setting sellout performance in 1969, or Kerkorian acquiescing to Paramount head Robert Evans’s request to let a young, unknown actor named Al Pacino out of a contract with MGM so Paramount could cast him with Marlon Brando in a movie called “The Godfather.” In the early 1960s, Kerkorian befriended an Armenian waiter and part-time tennis instructor named Manny Agassi at the Tropicana; they became lifelong friends, and when Agassi’s next child came along, he named him Andre Kirk Agassi, who became, of course, a tennis legend.
“Kerkorian’s character is as striking as his business adventures. While many masters of the universe are known for short fuses and big egos, Kerkorian, in Rempel’s telling, was the opposite. He was gentle and gracious, and didn’t assume that the world revolved around him. (“Do you have a minute?” was how he would start phone calls.) He despised displays of wealth. He refused comps at his hotels or anyone else’s, and he was reluctant to let employees know who he was. In one anecdote, a check-in clerk at the MGM Grand was having an argument with her boyfriend on the phone while Kerkorian waited at the counter; when she hung up, apologized and asked for his name, she was mortified. “We all have our days,” he reassured her.”
kirk kerkorian book
The US-based National Association for Armenian Studies and Resrearch is going to host a presentation of a book dedicated to Kirk Kerkorian.
The author of the biographical novel is William Rempel, a veteran journalist of The Los Angeles Times, who described the casino tycoon as a a controversial personality who was genious without having education and ready for business ties and risky affairs despite being shy, Rusarminfo.ru reports.
Kerkorian, traditionally referred to as the Las Vegas King, died on June 16, 2015
BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN
Since his passing on June 15, thousands of journalists have highlighted Kirk Kerkorian’s amazing business accomplishments and substantial charitable contributions. However, these journalists had never met this great man, as he rarely gave interviews to the media.
Having worked with Mr. Kerkorian for almost three decades as Senior Vice President of The Lincy Foundation and President of the United Armenian Fund, I would like to offer a personal tribute about this compassionate Armenian-American and wonderful human being.
I remember vividly the first time I met Mr. Kerkorian. It was at a Beverly Hills restaurant in the mid 1980’s during a small gathering of wealthy Armenians who supported Gov. George Deukmejian’s reelection. I was there as editor of The California Courier newspaper. When I walked over to introduce myself, Mr. Kerkorian recognized me right away and told me that he was a regular reader of my weekly columns. I was greatly surprised and flattered….
The next time I met Mr. Kerkorian was in his Beverly Hills office on November 1, 1989, eleven months after the devastating earthquake in Armenia. We discussed the possibility of forming a coalition of seven major Armenian-American organizations, including The Lincy Foundation, to airlift humanitarian aid to Armenia. Mr. Kerkorian offered to pay the full cost of transportation and went on to generously pledge to cover not only the cost of one airlift, but “all future airlifts as long as Armenia needed assistance.” Within a few days, the United Armenian Fund was born which successfully delivered over the next 25 years $700 million of relief supplies to Armenia and Artsakh, on board 158 airlifts and 2,250 sea containers.
In 1998, Mr. Kerkorian invited me to travel with him to Armenia, his first trip during which he pledged to Pres. Kocharian to allocate $100 million (raising it later to $242 million) to build or renovate tunnels, bridges and dozens of schools throughout Armenia and one in Artsakh; hundreds of miles of highways, roads and streets; 34 cultural institutions and museums; 3,700 apartments in the earthquake zone; and $20 million of loans to small businesses. These projects not only dramatically improved Armenia’s infrastructure, but also provided much needed employment to over 20,000 workers. Mr. Kerkorian asked me to supervise these projects, in my capacity as Senior Vice President of The Lincy Foundation.
Over the years, Mr. Kerkorian’s Lincy Foundation contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to Armenians worldwide, including $14 million to provide heating oil for Armenia’s freezing population during the harsh winter of 1993, $4.5 million in 2006 to all 28 Armenian schools in Lebanon, and millions of dollars to Hayastan All-Armenia Fund’s projects in Artsakh. It is estimated that from 1989 to 2011, The Lincy Foundation contributed over $1 billion, split equally between Armenian and non-Armenian charities.
In 2011, when The Lincy Foundation closed its doors, unfounded and false rumors began circulating about the supposed reasons for its closure. The fact is that Mr. Kerkorian had planned all along that at a certain advanced age he would no longer deal with the deluge of daily requests for funding from around the world and distribute the bulk of his wealth after his passing.
I would like to conclude by mentioning some of the likes and dislikes of this remarkable Armenian-American:
— Mr. Kerkorian detested the divisions among Armenians. It upset him to no end that Armenians could not get along with each other. He often said: “Why can’t they unite and march in the same direction?” He was pleased to see seven major Armenian-American organizations working together under the umbrella of the United Armenian Fund.
–He cared deeply about the destitute condition of the people in Armenia and was constantly worried about emigration. He sought to create jobs so Armenians won’t have to leave their homeland.
— He hated the limelight and never lent his name to any building or institution.
— He was extremely wealthy, yet lived very modestly and spoke gently and politely. He preferred that people address him as Kirk rather than Mr. Kerkorian.
Finally, no one had to prompt Kirk to donate money to worthy causes. He often volunteered to make large contributions without being asked.
The Armenian nation and the world owe him a great debt of gratitude.
Kirk Kerkorian’s loss has caused us pain.
One of the remarkable individuals, a source of inspiration and hopes for opportunities, has left us, Lilit Galstyan, Chairperson of the Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society, told Tert.am.
“We can never underestimate the activities of the Lincy Foundation established by him, especially in the context of the 1990s, the hardest period of our statehood – its road construction, cultural and education projects in Armenia. How can we forget that he sponsored the renovation of a dozen cultural centers in Armenia’s capital during those years of hardship? How can we be ungrateful? He was a humanitarian who never praised his philanthropy,” Ms Galstyan said.
Mr Kerkorian’s projects could have been implemented on a larger scale in Armenia if more efficient methods of cooperation had been employed.
“In any case, we will remember him as a great Armenian, with a bright smile, who did not speak Armenian, but lived as Armenian,” she said.
Asked if Kirk Kerkorian’s death could affect the Armenian community’s role in the United States, Ms Galstyan said:
“His death is, of course, a great loss in all respects. Such an individual’s role remains great and irreplaceable. But the Armenian community has different opportunities and its efficiency is more dependent on well-organized work. I am sure that Kirk will prove an infectious example to many. Such individuals will be born again. We are a talented sort.”
Billionaire financier Kirk Kerkorian, one of the founders of modern Las Vegas whose name is synonymous with some of the Strip’s best known hotel-casinos, died Monday night in Los Angeles after a brief illness.
Kerkorian, who tuned 98 on June 6, was the largest shareholder in MGM Resorts International, which he founded in the early 1990s.
Considered one of the central figures in making Las Vegas a premier global tourist destination, Kerkorian three times built and opened what were then the world’s largest hotel-casinos — the International (now the Westgate Las Vegas) in 1969, the original MGM Grand (now Bally’s Las Vegas) in 1973 and the current MGM Grand Las Vegas in 1993.
Kerkorian invested in and operated businesses in numerous industries, including airlines, auto makers and film studios, but no business held his interest as much as gaming. He owned, operated and sold a handful of historic Strip resorts, playing a paramount role in shaping the landscape of the Strip and Las Vegas.
Much of what Kerkorian accomplished was without fanfare.
When the $8.5 billion CityCenter development opened in 2009, Kerkorian, who had a key role in getting the development off the ground, celebrated the event quietly, away from the spotlight.
“Of all the wonderful Las Vegas properties with which I’ve been associated, CityCenter is simply the most amazing,” Kerkorian said in prepared remarks. “I’m extremely excited to see the public’s reaction and look forward to seeing how it changes Las Vegas.”’
His friends and colleagues in and out of the gaming industry recalled Kerkorian as a quiet and humble pioneer.
MGM Resort Chairman Jim Murren said Tuesday the company was “honoring the memory of a great man” and that he has lost a good friend.
“Mr. Kerkorian combined brilliant business insight with steadfast integrity to become one of the most reputable and influential financiers of our time,” Murren said. “Personally, he was a friend and coach, who taught me the importance in looking forward, and to look back only to understand how things could be done better.”
Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who became acquainted with Kerkorian as an attorney representing the businessman’s brother in the 1960s and 1970s, took to the Senate floor Tuesday morning to discuss Kerkorian.
“He was just a really interesting, wonderful man,” Reid said. “He is one of the personalities I will never forget. My relationship with him is one of the special things in my life. I feel so fortunate to be able to talk on a personal basis about this man. He was one of a kind.”
David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at UNLV, said Kerkorian “may have had the biggest impact of any one individual” ever on the Strip. Schwartz said Kerkorian, while creating jobs through his development of Strip resorts, forced “Las Vegas to think big.”
“Today we accept that the city has a good percentage of the world’s biggest hotels and some of its most profitable casinos, restaurants, and nightclubs,’ Schwartz said. “Kerkorian was the first one to think of Las Vegas in those terms and to actually deliver. Without him, our city would be much smaller in many ways.”
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Born in Fresno, Calif., in 1917 to Armenian immigrants, Kerkorian never had it easy. After the Kerkorians lost their farm in 1922, the family moved to Los Angeles where at age 9 Kerkor sold newspapers on street corners.
From those humble beginnings, Kerkorian became one of the world’s richest men. At the time of his death, Forbes Magazine ranked him No. 393 among the world’s billionaires and No. 130 in the U.S., with a net worth of $4 billion.
Tracinda Corp., Kerkorian’s privately held investment company named for daughters Tracy Kerkorian and Linda Ross Hilton Kemper, is MGM’s largest shareholder with an 18.6 percent stake. In a securities filing Tuesday, Tracinda said nothing would change with its ownership in the company.
Over the years Kerkorian had reduced his one-time majority stake in the company, and retired from its board in 2011, becoming a senior adviser to the company and emeritus board member.
“I just didn’t care to keep going back to meetings,” Kerkorian said at the time. “(The board meetings) got to be very lengthy. I do stay busy. I like new challenges.”
But Kerkorian’s presence was still felt in the company. Tracinda’s two representatives on the board in April threw their support behind the company’s management to help end a contentious proxy fight.
Until his illness, Kerkorian spoke weekly with Murren.
“His is very proud that Las Vegas and MGM Resorts is on a global stage,” Murren said in an interview last week.
Kerkorian had a similarly close relationship with the late Terry Lanni, Murren’s predecessor and the company’s chairman and CEO for 14 years.
“Kirk is a very humble person,” Lanni told the Review-Journal in 2007. “I’ve seen a lot of people who own 2 percent of something who call it their company. Never once in my 12 years with Kirk have I heard him refer to MGM Mirage as ‘my company.’ Whenever we propose something, he wants to know how it will affect the other shareholders. He has majority control, but he’s very cognizant of all the other shareholders.”
BUILDING AN EMPIRE
In his youth, he was known as “Rifle Right Kerkorian” for his punching power as a small-time boxer after abandoning reform school in the eighth grade. He had little formal education after that.
A friend with whom he worked installing furnaces changed his life by taking him on a flight in a small plane. Kerkorian then paid for flying lessons with famed pilot Pancho Barnes by milking cows and shoveling manure at her ranch. A skilled aviator, Kerkorian flew dangerous missions delivering warplanes from Canada to Britain during World War II, and later opened a charter airline ferrying gamblers from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
He began buying property in Las Vegas in 1962 after selling his charter airline, which he later repurchased. After selling the land where Caesars Palace now stands, he bought 82 acres on Paradise Road in 1967. The site would eventually be home of the 1,512-room International. Before that resort opened, Kerkorian bought the Flamingo as a way to train the International’s staff.
At the International, Kerkorian brought in Barbara Streisand and Elvis Presley as the hotel’s first two performers.
By the end of 1971 he had sold both properties to Hilton Hotels Corp.
Kerkorian then took majority ownership of MGM Studios, decided to put the studio’s name on a new hotel-casino, the MGM Grand, which opened in 1973 at a cost of $107 million. With 2,084 rooms, the MGM Grand surpassed the International as the world’s largest hotel-casino.
In 1986, he sold the MGM Grand and a sister resort in Reno to Bally Manufacturing of Chicago for $594 million. At the time, gaming analysts said it was the largest single hotel sale ever.
Kerkorian didn’t stay sidelined for long. In 1987, he bought both the Desert Inn and the Sands for $167 million from Summa Corp., the legacy of the Howard Hughes casino empire.
“He went toe-to-toe with Howard Hughes and won,” Schwartz said.
A year later, Kerkorian sold the Sands to then trade-show magnate Sheldon Adelson for $110 million. (The Sands was demolished, making way for The Venetian).
In 1989, while remodeling the Desert Inn, Kerkorian announced he was acquiring the troubled Marina and the adjacent Tropicana Country Club. He said the 115 acres at the corner of Tropicana Boulevard and the Strip would be the site of the $700 million MGM Grand hotel and theme park, which opened in 1993 with 5,000 rooms and became — at the time — the world’s largest and most expensive hotel-casino.
“Kirk Kerkorian was one of the true pioneers of Las Vegas whose vision and drive brought us some of the most iconic properties in our history,” Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Rossi Ralenkotter said. “From the International, complete with Elvis, to the MGM Grand, Mr. Kerkorian was always eyeing bigger and better things for tourism in Las Vegas.”
THE ART OF HIS DEAL
At an age when most of his contemporaries were retired or deceased, Kerkorian was still refining the art of the deal. The word retirement was absent from his vocabulary.
Friends said he had an agile mind and a keen business acumen. He never wavered in the way he negotiated transactions and struck financial agreements. Friends and rivals alike said Kerkorian was like a seer, gazing 10 years to 20 years into the future when viewing how a potential investment opportunity could affect the gaming industry.
On the occasion of Kerkorian’s 90th birthday in 2007, the late Burton Cohen, who knew Kerkorian for more than half a century and operated some of the businessman’s Las Vegas hotel-casinos, said his friend “absolutely loves making the deal. That’s what drives him.”
Kerkorian engineered two buyouts that grew MGM Grand into one the gaming industry’s largest companies.
In 2000 he negotiated the $6.4 billion purchase of Steve Wynn’s Mirage Resorts, and in 2005 helped seal the Mandalay Resort Group acquisition.
“He loves the game, pure and simple, and he knows how to make money for himself and his stockholders,” South Point owner Michael Gaughan said in 2007.
UNLV history professor Michael Green once humorously likened Kerkorian to Zelig and Forrest Gump, fictional literary and cinematic characters who miraculously pop up in many world-changing events. Kerkorian appears to have played a role in many of Las Vegas’ historical moments.
“It seems like he’s been involved in everything that has gone on here,” Green said.
As a businessman, Kerkorian touched industries besides gaming.
He dabbled in airlines, once owning about 17 percent of now defunct Western Airlines in the 1970s. In 1991, he made a failed bid for Trans World Airlines. He also created the short-lived MGM Grand Airlines.
Hollywood also held his interest. Three times Kerkorian bought and sold the film studio MGM/United Artists — making a profit all three times.
The U.S. auto industry also captivated Kerkorian.
In the 1990s, he bought a large chunk of the Chrysler Corp., but sold the stock after launching a failed hostile tender offer.
In 2005 and 2006, Kerkorian made moves on General Motors Corp., becoming the automaker’s largest shareholder before cashing out altogether. In April 2007, Kerkorian made one last stab at Chrysler Corp., offering $4.5 billion. The bid failed.
Gaming, however, remained his passion.
PERSONAL LIFE
Kerkorian was married four times, and his third marriage brought the normally shy businessman tabloid headlines.
He had a decade-long romantic relationship with former tennis player Lisa Bonder, but they were married for only a month in 1999.
In high-profile legal battle in 2002, Bonder demanded $320,000 per month in child support for her then-4-year-old daughter. A judge granted $50,316 per month.
But Bonder later admitted she faked a DNA paternity test by using saliva she obtained from Kerkorian’s adult daughter. It was later revealed that Hollywood producer Steve Bing was the father after a security guard working for Kerkorian nabbed dental floss from Bing’s trash to obtain a DNA sample.
Meanwhile, Kerkorian’s longtime confidant and attorney, Terry Christensen, paid celebrity private investigator Anthony Pellicano $100,000 to tap Bonder’s phone. Kerkorian later denied knowledge of the wiretapping, and Christensen was sentenced to three years in federal prison for his role.
Kerkorian was a dedicated philanthropist who quietly donated a fortune to charities worldwide. His charitable work included hundreds of millions of dollars in support of Armenia. He started providing medical and other supplies following a damaging 1988 earthquake in Armenia and helped build homes and repair infrastructure.
In 2011, Kerkorian transferred his $200 million charitable Lincy Foundation to the University of California at Los Angeles. The foundation was established in 1989 and had given more than $1.1 billion to schools, hospitals and Armenian charities.
Kerkorian is survived by his daughters and three grandchildren. Funeral services are pending.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Kirk Kerkorian
LOS ANGELES–Armenian-American billionaire and philanthropist Kirk Kerkorian died Monday at his home in Beverly Hills, his business partner said Tuesday. He was 98.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Kerkorian’s death was confirmed Anthony Mandekic, the president and CEO of Kerkorian’s company Tracinda.
A casino and entertainment magnet, Kerkorian was also the founder of the Lincy Foundation, which for years supported Armenian schools, as well as launched several development projects in Armenia. In 2011, the Lincy Foundation was shut down and the balance was transferred to UCLA, which established the Dream Fund. The fund continues Kerkorian’s legacy of assisting Armenian schools and other community educational endeavors.
Long a fixture on the Forbes list of riches people in the world, in 2014 Kerkorian was ranked the richest Armenian on the Forbes billionaires list.
As recently as Monday, Asbarez reported about Kerkorian’s effort to produce a big-budget film on the Armenian Genocide. The film, called ” The Promise,” is set to star Christian Bale and Oscar Issac and will be directed by Terry Jones of “Hotel Rwanda” fame.
In 2008, Kekorian was honored for his philanthropy by the USC Armenian Studies Institute. During a brief chat with Horizon correspondent Hayk Tovmasyan, Kerkorian reflected on his vision for Armenia.
“I’d like to see a more happy, more free, more prosperous Armenia. I want everything for Armenia,” Kerkorian said.
This article will be updated.
Kirk Kerkorian
Armenian-American billionaire Kirk Kerkorian is funding a secret feature film about the Armenian Genocide, Showbiz411 reports citing sources.
The Ottoman Empire, precursor to the country known as Turkey, killed around 1.5 million to people in the effort to destroy Armenia and establish itself. Kerkorian is hoping to produce the Armenian “Schindler’s List” to memorialize the holocaust.
There is already an Oscar nominated director and screenwriter signed to the project. Various actors’ names have come up, and some of that may become clear soon. The movie is described by the director– who’s asked not to reveal his name yet– as a “Reds” or “Dr. Zhivago”, a sweeping World War I romance set against the Armenian Genocide.
Kerkorian, who’s always been fascinated with Hollywood, is said to have contributed over $1 billion to Armenian charities and causes over his long life time.