Arlene Blut
Arlene Blut, 2000
Actor, director, friend, mother, producer, wife, and volunteer extraordinaire Arlene Piekoff (now Blut) arrived in Las Vegas in 1971 with two young children and husband, Michael Peikoff, who was opening a surgical practice. Arlene was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota, where she attended a Conservative Jewish temple but had mostly non-Jewish friends. She met Michael at the University of Minnesota, and they married before he began medical school in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Arlene and Michael followed his residencies and fellowships to California, Michigan, and Manitoba before they came to Las Vegas.
Through her brother in law and Ayn Rand's intellectual heir, Leonard Peikoff, Arlene was exposed to Ayn Rand Objectivism, a philosophy that still influences her political outlook. After her 1975 divorce she began working at the Jockey Club; founded the Meadows Playhouse, Las Vegas’s first professional black box theater; and started Renta Yenta, the valley's first full-service event planning business. In 1980 she married tax attorney Jerry Blut in a Renta-Yenta produced, Fiddler-on-the-Roof-themed wedding at Paul Anka's Jubilation Restaurant.
Source:
Blut, Arlene. Interview, 28 May 2015. Transcript. OH-02421. Oral History Research Center, Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nevada.
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