Meshulam Riklis, the billionaire financier and corporate raider known for the innovative production shows he brought to the Las Vegas Strip as owner of the Riviera died in Tel Aviv on January 25. He was 95.
Riklis, who grew up in Palestine in the years before Israeli independence, emigrated to the United States after serving in the British Army in World War II and made a fortune in the 1950s and ’60s as an aggressive pioneer of junk bond-fueled leveraged buyouts.
“If you are a Rockefeller or a hotel owner, you build an empire based on the company’s worth,” he told Business Week in 1974. “If you are Meshulam Riklis, you build an empire using every possible trick.”
His holdings at various times included BVD, Playtex, Fabergé, liquor distiller Schenley and retail chains such as McCrory-McLellan and Lerner Shops. He also co-financed the start-up of Carnival Cruise Lines and bankrolled a syndicated television show starring female pro wrestlers that became the inspiration for the popular Netflix series GLOW.
His purchase of the Riviera Hotel in 1973 heralded a second career as a show business impresario, which he capped four years later by marrying a 24-year-old Pia Zadora, then a relatively unknown actress and singer 30 years his junior and bankrolling her to a brief fling with stardom. Zadora is now a legacy entertainer in several Vegas locations.
The couple became a staple of the ’80s tabloid scene, sealing their notoriety after Riklis spent lavishly to win Golden Globe consideration for Zadora for her role in the 1982 film Butterfly, which he produced. When she won for “best new star of the year,” rumors swirled through a shocked Hollywood establishment that Riklis had somehow engineered the award.
He fathered two children with Zadora. They divorced in 1993.
“Pia didn’t hurt his reputation as a businessman,” Marcia Riklis, his daughter by his first wife Judith (Stern) Riklis, told The New York Times. “It was quite the opposite. He created her celebrity and enjoyed it. And he enjoyed being known as Mr. Zadora while he was still working on his business deals.”
In Las Vegas, he restored the Riviera to prominence with long-running productions like “Splash, Evening at La Cage” and “Crazy Girls” although under his ownership the resort wound up filing for bankruptcy protection in 1983.
“We were the first hotel to have two shows running at the same time,” said Frank Marino, who was discovered by Riklis at a musical theater in Fort Lauderdale, Florica, and parlayed his role as Joan Rivers in “La Cage” into a career as a Strip headliner. “It was honestly a dream come true to headline in Las Vegas, with all the glitz and glamour. I’m very lucky to say it did happen, and he made it possible.”
“Splash” producer Jeff Kutash hailed Riklis in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal as “a man of vision willing to back what he believed in”.
“He believed in me𑁋during a time when a hotel owner’s decision ruled. We changed the Las Vegas entertainment landscape with ‘Splash’. He was legendary. I learned a lot from him.”
