The High Ride on Free Time

"I can see it only getting better and better. Wages are going higher, and hours are getting shorter. People have got to have a place to spend it." That is the basic business maxim of Kirk Kerkorian, the travel-and-leisure entrepreneur whose retiring manner belies the fact that in 20 years he has amassed a fortune estimated at $275 million.

By betting on his conviction that the leisure field is bound to grow, Kerkorian has become second only to Billionaire Howard Hughes as a developer in Las Vegas. Kerkorian dislikes being compared with Hughes, saying, "He is a mountain, but I'm a molehill." Still, he outdid Hughes by building a 1,519-room hotel, the International, opposite Hughes' new 476-room Landmark Hotel (TIME, July 11). The International cost Kerkorian $52 million and is designed for family-style leisure amidst pools, lagoons and tennis courts; there is even a special camp for juvenile guests. Kerkorian is also the largest stockholder in Western Airlines, which serves Las Vegas and other Western cities. That investment could bring him into even closer competition with Hughes, who is trying to win control of Air West, which flies approximately the same routes.

Flight by Cattle Boat. Kerkorian does not care much for the thrill of the roulette wheel. He lives with his British-born wife and their two young daughters in a $250,000 ranch house next to Las Vegas' Desert Inn golf course. Only recently has the slim, dark-haired entrepreneur begun to show signs that the jet-set life might appeal to him. Last winter, he launched a 147-ft. motor yacht and traded up from a Lockheed Jetstar to a white-and-green DC-9 jet in which he installed a lavish office. It was the first such plane in the world acquired for personal use; a second was sold later to Playboy Hugh Hefner.

The son of Armenian immigrants who fled a Turkish massacre by cattle boat, Kerkorian was reared on a farm in California's San Joaquin Valley. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade to help the family and was signed on as a logger for $25 a month in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Every spare penny that he earned in a variety of odd jobs went for flying lessons, and he qualified as a civilian flying instructor with the Army Air Corps at the beginning of World War II. Later, as a civilian pilot for Britain's Royal Air Force, he ferried bombers from Montreal to England.

Like many wartime pilots, Kerkorian started his own little airline after the war. His capital investment was $17,000. The company, Los Angeles Air Service, kept busy mainly by flying gamblers to Las Vegas. Kerkorian got to know them and their town well.

Military contracts in the Korean War gave his airline a mighty boost. By 1959, with a worldwide charter business, Kerkorian renamed his outfit Trans International Airlines; three years later, he started switching to jets. The new planes were so expensive that Kerkorian overextended himself, but he managed to turn a near-disaster into a financial coup. He sold TIA to Studebaker in 1962, retaining a share of the airline's subsequent earnings as part of the sales price. Record profits produced by the jets enabled him to buy back the entire line two years later. He sold TIA a second time in 1968 for $90 million worth of Transamerica Corp. stock, which he completely unloaded by last month for about $108 million in cash. Part went to pay for Kerkorian's 31% interest in Western Airlines and part to finance the International Hotel.

Preferably Acapulco. In Las Vegas, Kerkorian has been lucky from the start. His earliest real-estate deal involved the purchase of a 40-acre plot on the Strip for $900,000. Caesars Palace was built there; its owners paid Kerkorian $660,000 annual rent, until he sold out last year for $5 million. He also bought control of the famed but money-losing Flamingo in 1967, then reorganized, redecorated and earned 33% on his investment in the next year.

Should Las Vegas become too confining for Kerkorian, there are plenty of other places in the world to go. "I'd sooner do something in Acapulco than in Europe," he says, "but if there's a good deal, I'll go anywhere." Wherever it is, the busy entrepreneur expects to wring handsome profits from other people's free time.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.