Transcript
Introduction
"There is an inspiring life story in the 98 years that belonged to Kirk Kerkorian, a boy who ran barefoot in the rich dirt of California's San Joaquin Valley before family financial chaos made him a city boy fighting for his place on the dirty sidewalks of Los Angeles. He was a tough guy who wept at funerals, a humble man privately proud of his accomplishments, a business genius who ignored his MBA advisers, a daring aviator and a movie mogul, a gambler at the casinos and on Wall Street who played the odds in both houses with uncanny skill."
That is an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is, The Gambler: How Penniless Dropout Kirk Kerkorian Became the Greatest Deal Maker in Capitalist History. So let's start with his personality, his early life and some of his accomplishments. So it says, "Kirk was uncomfortable in crowds and dreaded the attention of strangers. His lifelong aversions to the trappings of celebrity would make him what he remains years after his death, one of the least known of America's richest men. He seemed to burst out of nowhere onto the American business scene in the late 1960s, a small businessman with a gambling habit and a junior high school education who struck at rich at the mature age of 50."