American entrepreneur, aviator, philanthropist and billionaire owner of the world’s largest hotel, MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada and part owner of Chrysler Corporation. Never having finished high school, he was reviewed in Forbes Magazine as the 31st richest man in America. In 2000 Time magazine named him the 10th largest donor in the US.
Kerkorian was the youngest of four children (two brothers, Nishon and Art, one sister Rose) of illiterate Armenian immigrant Ahron Kerkorian, who owned hundreds of acres of orchards and ranch land in the Fresno area. Kirk described his father as “the toughest man I ever knew” and his mother as “very shy, very sweet.” Armenian was spoken in the home and patriarch Father Ahron encouraged strong, if not fierce, family values. The Kerkorian family enjoyed the wealth of Ahron’s vast land holdings, but poverty hit in 1923 with a series of bad business transactions. With all of his land sold or foreclosed to pay his debts, the bankrupt Ahron regrouped, putting his sons to work and two years later, established a lucrative business as a fruit vendor in the San Fernando Valley. Young Kirk worked selling newspapers, caddying, picking melons, and hauling rocks at MGM studio- a studio he would come to own.
After dropping out of high school, Kerkorian worked at odd jobs while training for a career in boxing. “Rifle Right Kerkorian” had the early ambition of supporting himself and hopefully, earning enough as a professional boxer to purchase an automobile.
A defining moment came in 1939 when a co-worker who took flying lessons finally persuaded the petrified Kerkorian to join him in the cockpit. After his first experience being airborne, he never looked back. His boxing career ended that day and the following morning he returned to the airfield with his life savings to enroll as a student. Two years later he was a civilian flight instructor. By 1943 he was a flight captain for Britain’s Royal Air Force in Canada and spent the remaining years of WW II delivering Canadian built mosquito bombers to England. The dangerous job of solo transatlantic flying paid very well and when the war ended, the savvy Kerkorian purchased military surplus Junkers left in remote places, flew them out and sold them.
With his savings of $50,000, Kerkorian purchased the three planes of the Los Angeles Air Service and began ferrying gamblers to Las Vegas, Reno and the race track at Del Mar, California. Plowing his profits into more planes, Kerkorian learned about professional gambling and, by the late 1950’s, was known to win and lose $50,00 in a single night.
After buying a jet in 1962, he renamed his company “Trans-International Airlines” and thus began his stellar career as an investor with leveraged buy-outs and stock swaps. He sold Trans-International Airlines in 1969 for $104 million and announced his plans to build the International Hotel in Las Vegas that same year. Purchasing shares in MGM, Columbia and United Artists, he began to leverage one studio against the other throughout the ’80s until he became the main owner of MGM studios. In June 1969 he made $104 million selling his aviation stock, using the proceeds to buy into MGM. Building his interest into 51% of MGM/UA, he later sold his interest to Ted Turner for $1.5 billion on 6 August 1985. He used proceeds from his trades to build the colossal MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Kerkorian was known to be modest and unassuming, with “ice water in his veins” while conducting his Byzantine business transactions. As a billionaire who donated over $550 million to charity, he described himself as “just a poor kid from Fresno who got lucky.” The man who discreetly paid Barbra Streisand $20 million to inaugurate the MGM Grand in a New Year’s Eve celebration diligently avoided the limelight and did not grant an interview since 1971. Frequently compared to Howard Hughes for his reclusivity and an avid tennis player who ran three miles daily, Kerkorian advised others to “Work like you’ll live forever. Play like you’ll die tomorrow.”
Kerkorian’s marriage to Hilda “Peggy” Schmidt on 24 January 1942 ended in divorce on 27 July 1951. Three years later he married Las Vegas show girl Jean Maree Hardy, on 4 December 1954. Their daughter Tracy was born in 1959 followed by second daughter Linda who was born in the ’60s. He legally separated from Hardy in 1981.
On 9 March 1998 he fathered a daughter, Kira, with former tennis pro Lisa Bonder, 32, who lived in Los Angeles, nearby to where Kerkorian kept his home. He and Lisa were together for ten years before they married – for one month to legitimize their daughter. In January 2002, she filed a request for a raise of child-support from its existing $50,000 a month to $320,000 a month. Kerkorian was listed by Forbes magazine as the 46th richest person in the world so it was a bare fraction of his estimated $6.5 billion but was, nonetheless, a bit excessive. Kerkorian counter sued for an unspecified amount in objection to Lisa’s manipulation. Though DNA testing proved that Kira is not his biological child, Kerkorian, adored her and had always played an active role as her dad.
Of Armenian American origin, Kerkorian provided over $1 billion for charity in Armenia through his Lincy Foundation, which was established in 1989 and particularly focused on helping to rebuild northern Armenia after the 1988 earthquake. Kerkorian also provided money to ensure that a film based on the history of the Armenian Genocide would be made. The resulting film, called “The Promise,” premiered in April 2017 in the United States.
Kerkorian died in Beverly Hills, California on 15 June 2015, nine days after his 98th birthday.

Link to Wikipedia biography