Kirk Kerkorian is a rags-to-riches American success story. The son of two Armenian immigrants, Kirk Kerkorian is a testament that the driven can succeed on vision, persistence, hard work, and calculated risk.

Kirk Kerkorian was born in California in 1917. After dropping out of school during 8th grade, he became a boxer and won the Pacific amateur welterweight belt under the moniker “Rifle Right Kerkorian.” Kirk Kerkorian became interested in aviation and during the Second World War. He opted to learn flying in order to avoid joining the infantry. After the war, Kirk Kerkorian bought his own Cessna plane and served as a commercial pilot. He spent a lot of time in Las Vegas, but quit gambling in 1947. In this same year, he bought Trans International Airlines for $60,000, a company he eventually sold to Transamerica for $104 million. Following this business success, Kirk Kerkorian invested heavily in Las Vegas, buying lands, stocks and businesses, including MGM, General Motors, and Daimler-Chrysler.

Kirk Kerkorian’s philanthropic efforts focus mainly on Armenian causes. Most of this charitable work is executed by The Lincy Foundation, which he named after his two daughters.

Kirk Kerkorian has donated $200 million to Armenia through The Lincy Foundation. The money was allocated to help Armenia build itself through infrastructure projects beginning in 2001. This includes the repairs of highways and the reconstruction of apartment complexes that were destroyed by the devastating 1988 earthquake.
In 1999, Kirk Kerkorian donated $15 million to the American Red Cross.
Kerkor “Kirk” Kerkorian (born June 6, 1917) is the Armenian-American president/CEO of Tracinda Corporation, his private holding company based in Beverly Hills, California. Kerkorian is known as one of the important figures in shaping the city of Las Vegas, Nevada and, with architect Martin Stern, Jr. the “father of the megaresort.” Kerkorian splits his time between his residences in Beverly Hills, California and Las Vegas, Nevada. The richest per… More
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Date of birth: Jun 6, 1917 (age 93 years)
Key facts about investor Kirk Kerkorian

NEW YORK, April 5 (Reuters) – Kirk Kerkorian’s investment vehicle, Tracinda Corp., said on Thursday it had offered to buy DaimlerChrysler’s DCXGn.DE money-losing Chrysler unit for $4.5 billion in cash.

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Here are some key facts about Kerkorian:

* Kerkorian, 89, was the largest investor in Chrysler before Germany’s Daimler-Benz bought it for almost $40 billion in 1998. In 1996, he had launched an unsuccessful bid for Chrysler.

* Estimated by Forbes magazine to have a fortune of about $15 billion, he was born in 1917 in California to Armenian immigrant parents. The youngest of four children, he dropped out of school and boxed before joining the Royal Air Force to fly supply planes from Canada to Britain during World War Two.

* After the war, Kerkorian bought surplus war planes to fly gamblers from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. He pocketed his first fortune when the business, called Trans International Airlines, went public in 1965. Then he sold it in 1968 to Transamerica Corp. for more than $100 million in cash and stock.

* Kerkorian has a record of trading properties in Las Vegas and Hollywood, most famously movie studio MGM, which he has owned three times. He sold MGM to Ted Turner in 1986 and bought it back months later. He sold MGM in 1990 and bought it for a third time in 1996 before selling it again for $3 billion to a group of investors led by Sony Corp.

* In 2000, he took over Mirage Resorts in a $6.4 billion buyout to create casino and hotel operator MGM Mirage. The hostile bid pitted Kerkorian against casino magnate Steve Wynn, who had built the Mirage into a multibillion-dollar operation.

* Tracinda Corp. is named after his daughters Tracy and Linda. He has been married three times.
About the MGM Grand Hotel

Fun Facts and History of the Famous Las Vegas Hotel

The MGM Grand Hotel has achieved news-making status many times since it was built in 1973. Here are some of the highlights of the MGM Grand history.

The MGM Grand Hotel has been a part of the Las Vegas Strip since 1973 in one form or another. The hotel baring the name has achieved multiple record-breaking events and made news as one of the great disasters of the 1980s and of Las Vegas. With each new milestone the owners of the MGM Grand have managed to reinvent the icon in newer and bigger ways.

The First MGM Grand Hotel

When Kirk Kerkorian opened the MGM Grand in 1973, it was the largest hotel on the strip, with 2,000 rooms. The MGM replaced the former New Bonanza Hotel Casino, which stood at the corner of Flamingo Road and the Strip.

The MGM Grand Hotel Fire

In November 1980, an electrical fire erupted inside the hotel between the walls of the hotel and a restaurant within the hotel causing the worst fire in Nevada history. The fire killed 87 people and injured 650 others. Both firefighters and patrons were treated for smoke inhalation which occurred mainly on the upper floors. While the MGM Grand re-opened months later, it never overcame the stigma of the fire and Kerkorian sold the hotel to Bally’s Entertainment.

The Second MGM Grand Hotel

In 1989, Kirk Kerkorian bought the Marina Hotel and the adjoining Tropicana Country Club. Two years later, ground was broken for the new MGM Grand and the hotel was opened for the public in 1993. The second MGM Grand was bigger than the first and again set records for being the biggest and the best on the Strip with over 5,000 rooms on 30 floors. This hotel was set in the theme of the “Wizard of Oz” throughout. It also had an original entrance where you walked through a lion’s mouth to enter. The lion was replaced when Chinese patrons refused to enter the front doors because they had to walk through the lion’s mouth and considered this bad luck.

The Grand Adventure Theme Park

An addition to the second MGM Resort was the Grand Adventure Theme Park which also opened in 1993. The theme park was built behind the casino as part of a marketing effort to include the entire family in the Las Vegas experience. It was part of the Kirkorian goal to make the hotel a destination resort. The theme park, however, didn’t do well. The price of admission, originally $25, was dropped by $10 to revive interest, but this also failed. The theme park was closed in 2001.
The Legacy of the MGM Grand

Through its history and reincarnations, the MGM Grand created many firsts and a legacy for itself. The MGM Grand holds the distinction of being the largest hotel built in Las Vegas and Nevada, twice. The MGM Grand is also the first mega-casino and resort on the Strip. Until 2005, when the Wynn Hotel Resort was built, the MGM Grand held the title of biggest casino on the Strip. The MGM Grand was also the first, and is still the only, hotel to have had a theme park as of 2009.

EncyclopediaCaesars Palace, is a luxury hotel and casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, an unincorporated township in Clark County, Nevada, United States in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. Caesars Palace is owned and operated by Harrah’s Entertainment. Caesars is located on the west side of the Strip, between the Bellagio and the Mirage.

Caesars has 3,348 rooms in five towers: Augustus, Centurion, Roman, Palace, and Forum. The Forum tower features guest suites with of space.
History

In 1962, Jay Sarno, a cabana motel owner, used $10 million that had been lent to him by the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund to begin plans for a hotel on land owned by Kirk Kerkorian. Sarno would later act as designer of the hotel he planned to construct.

Building of the 14-story Caesars Palace hotel began in 1962. That first tower would have 680 rooms on the 34 acre (138,000 m²) site.

Sarno struggled to decide on a name for the hotel. He finally decided to call it Caesars Palace because he thought that the name Caesar would evoke thoughts of royalty because of Roman general Julius Caesar. Sarno felt that guests should feel they were at a king’s home while at his hotel. It is called “Caesars” and not “Caesar’s” because every guest is a Caesar.

Sarno contracted many companies to build the hotel, from the Roman landscapes it presents, to the water fountains that have been stages of various events and the hotel’s swimming pools.

On August 5, 1966, the hotel was inaugurated, with Andy Williams and Phil Richards providing entertainment; they both played Julius Caesar at a play that night. Two days later, Latin bandleader Xavier Cugat and flamenco guitarist Charo became the first couple to marry in the new establishment.

On December 31, 1967, Evel Knievel unsuccessfully tried to jump the hotel’s water fountain with his motorcycle.

In 1969, Stuart and Clifford S Perlman, founders of the Lums chain of restaurants, purchased the hotel. On July 15 of that year, executives lay ground on an expansion area of the hotel, and they buried a time capsule in the area, but the time capsule was stolen days later.

In 1973, the Del Webb company was contracted to build a 16-story building adjacent to the Palace. The project was finished in 1974.

Many top performers, such as Celine Dion, Bette Midler, Liberace, Elton John, George Burns, Pat Cooper, Diana Ross, Cher, Julio Iglesias, Judy Garland, David Copperfield, Gloria Estefan,
Phyllis Diller, Frank Sinatra and Mariah Carey have performed at the hotel.
1980s

In 1980, Gary Wells gained much media coverage, and much physical suffering, when he unsuccessfully tried to jump a motorcycle over a water fountain at the Caesars Palace. He sustained injuries to many different parts of his body.

In 1982 Ronnie Vannucci, now playing in Las Vegas-based The Killers, became the youngest musician to play with a band at age six in a lounge in Caesars Palace.

The Caesars Palace Grand Prix car race (a Formula One World Championship event) was held at Caesars Palace in 1981 and 1982. After the Watkins Glen race course was removed from the schedule following the 1980 season, Formula One included an event in Las Vegas for the 1981 campaign. The new race was not popular among the drivers, primarily because of the desert heat. The track was laid out in the parking lot of the Caesars Palace hotel and was surprisingly well set up for a temporary circuit: wide enough for overtaking, it provided ample run-off areas filled with sand, and had a surface that was as smooth as glass. Its counter-clockwise direction, however, put a tremendous strain on the drivers’ necks. When Nelson Piquet clinched his first World Championship by finishing fifth in 1981, it took him fifteen minutes to recover from heat exhaustion. The 1982 race was won by Michele Alboreto in a Tyrrell, but the race was not renewed for the following season due to poor attendance.

During the 1980s, the hotel opened an Atari game room that had over 60 Atari video game arcade machines.

In 1989, Robbie Knievel successfully completed what his father could not do years before by completing the fountain jump.

Several championship boxing matches were held in Caesars Outdoor Arena. Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, and Roberto Duran all headlined here, along with Larry Holmes against both Muhammad Ali and Gerry Cooney. England boxing captain Errol Christie was on the supporting bill with Hearns when he fought Duran. Also, three bouts between Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe were contested here, one of which included the infamous “Fan Man” incident which saw a parachuter with a fan attached to his back parachute down to the ring in the middle of the fight. Michael Moorer also won the Undisputed Heavyweight Championship of the World when he defeated Holyfield. The fight led to Holyfield’s first of several retirements. Oscar De La Hoya also headlined several boxing cards here during the mid-to-late ’90s, as did Shane Mosley.

1990s
The hotel’s management wanted it to have a new, family-oriented atmosphere as the 1990s approached, a trend mirrored by many of the big Las Vegas resorts. This move was not strange to Las Vegas hotel owners, as most hotels there were planning to modernize anyway by adding more children features and making Las Vegas hotels seem more family friendly and less gambler oriented.

In 1992, The Forum Shops at Caesars opened; it was one of the very first venues in the city where shopping, particularly at high-end stores, was an attraction in itself. Store-fronts were made to look like exteriors, in corridors with sky-painted ceilings. At points where the corridors change directions, elaborate marble fountains were placed, one with a sound-and-light show which played periodically. The fourth phase, which opened on October 22, 2004, has the second-built circular escalator in the United States. The other is at the Westfield San Francisco Centre.

WrestleMania IX, one of the annual World Wrestling Federation spectacles promoted by Vince McMahon, was held here in 1993. The theme was “The World’s Largest Toga Party”.

In 1993, the NBC game show Caesars Challenge was taped here.

Magician David Copperfield was a headliner for several stints in the Circus Maximus Theatre.

Comedian George Burns had performed there a number of times in the early ’90s and had stated that he wanted to perform there on his 100th birthday but could not due to failing health.
2000s

Caesars has opened the Roman Plaza, an open-air area with a cafe on the corner, and the Colosseum theater, where Céline Dion (A New Day…) and Elton John (The Red Piano) were regular performers. The Colosseum was specifically built for Dion’s show, A New Day…, a spectacular produced by former Cirque du Soleil director Franco Dragone. Dion’s show was also notable for having some of the highest ticket prices for any show in the city, with seats as high as $220 each; nonetheless, the show regularly sold out.

On October 2, 2004, big-time boxing returned to the Palace, as Wladimir Klitschko and former Olympian Jeff Lacy headlined a card televised on Showtime.

Caesars Palace opened the Augustus Tower in August 2005 (designed by Bergman Walls Associates). It stands 46 floors high and is perpendicular to the Strip.

In 2005, Harrah’s Entertainment acquired Caesars Entertainment and became the owner of Caesars Palace.

On May 4, 2006, Mike Metzger became the first person to ever backflip on a motorcycle over the fountains.

In May 2007, Bette Midler was announced as Dion’s formal replacement. Midler will reportedly only perform about 100 shows a year, with Elton John continuing to perform his popular Red Piano show 50 nights a year while Midler is on hiatus. After taking a three-year hiatus, Cher, following her Farewell Tour, is also returning to the stage with a three-year contract to perform 200 shows beginning May 6, 2008.

As of December 2007, Harrah’s Entertainment runs some of their corporate offices inside the Caesars Palace Resort.

Harrah’s Entertainment announced in January 2009 that completion of the new Octavius Tower has been stalled due to lower demand. Only the exterior of the tower will be completed.

On May 26 2009, US President Barack Obama performed in the Colosseum in the one-night show ‘A Good Fight’ alongside Sheryl Crowe, Bette Midler and Rita Rudner, as a tribute to Nevada’s senator Harry Reid. Obama became the first president to stay overnight in the hotel.
Caesars Magical Empire

In mid-1996, a new venue known as “Caesars Magical Empire” was created on the property, showcasing major magicians such as Jon Armstrong, Lee Asher, Whit Haydn, Jeff “Magnus” McBride ,Scott and Jenny Alexander and Alain Nu. This development coincided with the 1990s campaign to reinvent Las Vegas as a destination for family vacations, by creating attractions appropriate for children as well as adults. The “Empire” was an extravagantly-themed immersive dining and entertainment experience, housed in a 66,000 sq. ft. specially-built building constructed with 800 tons of steel. Guests with ticketed reservations entered through the “Celestial Court” to the ”Chamber of Destiny,” which, through elaborate effects, appeared to be a magical elevator which transported them underground to a “subterranean catacombs.” In reality the guests didn’t descend at all; the walls of the room were raised by a large electric winch and the floor of the room shaken by pneumatic actuators. “Roman gladiators” led the guests through winding dimly-lighted passages, assuring them of their safety, and then humorously pretending to have taken a wrong and dangerous turn.

The guests then arrived at the circular, domed, and ornately appointed Sanctorum Secorumhttp, a central, 70-ft. high rotunda, from which other areas of the “Empire,” such as the mirrored “Infinity Hallway,” could be accessed. An audio-visual welcome from a heroic statue of Caesar was enhanced by music, a light show, and a 20-ft. gas flame curling up from a fissure in the “rock.” A large vase seemingly floating in space near a statue poured a continuous stream of water into a pool. The guests were next divided and escorted to ten dining chambers, each seating 24 persons (for a total of 240 guests at each seating). In addition to a wait staff which interacted comically with the guests, magic was performed in each dining room by a sorcerer host. In one amusing trick, guests were given paper “menus” on which were images of a cow, chicken, fish and vegetable, and were instructed to tear one of the pictures as indication of their choice of a beef, chicken, fish or vegetable entre. The menus were then collected and seemingly all thrown haphazardly together, but nevertheless, each guest correctly received his or her chosen dinner.

The interior of the entire complex was decorated in a combination of pseudo cave-and-classic architecture, with faux rock-work and stone, real marble floors, triumphal arches, brass railings, painted mosaics, atmospheric sky domes, banners, torches, Roman “classical” furniture and lamp reproductions, statuary, caryatids and telemons, bas-relief faces of mythical personages, and intricately cast “carved” designs, all theatrically lighted.

After dining, the guests were free to visit one of two lounges, The “Spirit Bar” (flanked by two “Seance Rooms”) or the “Forbidden Crypt.” Additionally, they could see more magic performed in one or another of two incongruously-named-and-designed theatres: the 75-seat “Pagoda Theatre,” or the 150-seat “Great Sultan’s Palace.”

While the endeavor was popular and profitable, accommodation of several audiences of 240 diners each day at capacity was no match for the potential income from the enormous audiences which could be accommodated in a large concert space. Thus the six-year reign of the “Empire,” came to an end on November 30, 2002, after which the structure was razed to make room for a large concert hall created for singer Celine Dion.

Ownership

Over the years, the hotel has been owned by various companies, including Sheraton and The Hilton International Corporation. Caesars Entertainment (originally known as Park Place Entertainment) bought the property in 1999 before it merged with Harrah’s in 2005. That year, Caesars Palace was affected by a large flood.

Caesars Palace is the flagship property of Harrah’s Entertainment. The company has reported that they would like to change the name to Caesars Entertainment corporation. In 2007 the 8 properties in Las Vegas had total revenue of $3.6267 billion (54% from casino).
Future

With the success of the Augustus Tower, Harrah’s Entertainment was planning to expand by building a new hotel Octavius Tower (stalled) and sports complex. The sports complex will replace the events center. The project cost $1 billion and Harrah’s planned to open it in summer 2009. In January 2009, Harrah’s said it would postpone the opening of the new tower, citing a lack of demand for hotel space.
Film history