'Regardless of what people think, there was no great master plan,' Kerkorian once said. He also invested heavily in the auto industry and made unsuccessful attempts to take over Chrysler. Flew for RAF in WWIIĮlsewhere, Kerkorian bought and sold the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio three times, each time realizing a profit on his investment. 'He built the rooms and attractions to bring an incredibly broad base of affluent people to Las Vegas,' Hal Rothman, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, once said. Years later, he would build another MGM Grand, this one with more than 5,000 rooms - again, the world's largest. When Kerkorian opened the first MGM Grand in Las Vegas in the 1970s, it was again the world's largest hotel, containing more than 2,000 rooms and a 1,200-seat showroom. 'I had total confidence or I wouldn't have gone into the project,' Kerkorian later said. (The Associated Press)Īlthough medium-size by today's Sin City standards, the hotel, now the Westgate Las Vegas, represented a major risk when most properties averaged 250 rooms. Financier Kirk Kerkorian is shown in a photo for a year-end business story on Dec.
