Kerkorian later sold the studio for $1.3 billion, then bought it back in 1996 for the same amount. Turner sold it back just three months later for $300 million amid financial trouble but kept the library of pre-1986 MGM films, including 'Gone With the Wind.' for $594 million, while retaining rights to the name.Īround that time, he also unloaded the MGM studio to cable TV mogul Ted Turner for a reported $1.5 billion.

In 1985, he sold the first MGM Grand to Bally Corp. In 2004, he agreed to sell the studio and its lucrative library of post-1986 films to Sony Corp., Comcast and other investors for about $3 billion. Kerkorian also bought stock in financially ailing MGM.īy 1970, he had working control of the company and began a more than 30-year run of deals involving the historic studio. With cash from his stock and shrewd land deals along the Strip, he built the International Hotel.

Nearly two decades later, he took TIA public and the stock soared. In 1947, Kerkorian bought a tiny charter line and renamed it Trans International Airlines. '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.Īfter the war, he refurbished a small twin-engine plane and flew passengers between Southern California and the growing desert gambling mecca of Las Vegas. 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. He brought Elvis Presley to perform there in 1969 as the rock legend relaunched his live performance career.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. After making his first fortune ferrying gamblers to Las Vegas with Trans International Airlines, he built the 30-story, 1,568-room International Hotel, the world's largest hotel when it opened in the late 1960s.

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