American industrialist and art collector (1892-1976) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean Paul Getty (December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American industrialist.[1] He founded the Getty Oil Company. In 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American.[2] The 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1,200 million.[3] When he died he was worth more than $2 billion.[4] A book published in 1996 ranked him as the 67th richest American who ever lived. (The book ranked his wealth as a percentage of the United States gross national product.)[5] Despite his wealth, Getty was known for being a miser.
J. Paul Getty | |
|---|---|
 J. Paul Getty, circa 1944 | |
| Born | December 15, 1892 Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Died | June 6, 1976 (aged 83) Sutton Place, Surrey, England |
| Cause of death | Congestive heart failure |
| Occupation | Business |
| Spouse(s) | Jeanette Demont, Allene Ashby, Adolphine Helmle, Ann Rork, Louise Dudley Lynch |
| Children | George Franklin Getty II, Jean Ronald Getty, Eugene Paul Getty, later Jean Paul Getty Jr, Gordon Peter Getty, Timothy Ware Getty |
| Parent(s) | George Franklin Getty and Sarah Catherine McPherson Risher |
Getty enjoyed collecting art and antiquities. His collection formed the basis of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. He left $661 million to the museum after his death.[4] He established the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1953. The trust is the world's wealthiest art institution. It operates the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the Getty Conservation Institute.[6]
| "The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights." |
| — dictum attributed to John Paul Getty[7] |
His father George Getty owned a petroleum business in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He enrolled at the University of Southern California, then at University of California, Berkeley before graduating in 1914 from Magdalen College, Oxford with degrees in economics and political science. He spent his summers between studies working on his father's oil fields in Oklahoma. Running his own oil company in Tulsa, he made his first million by 1916. In 1917, he announced that he was retiring to become a Los Angeles-based playboy. Although he eventually returned to business, Getty had lost his father's respect. Just before George Getty died in 1930, he believed that Jean Paul would destroy the family company, and told him so.
After taking a few years off from the money-making grind to enjoy spending his money on women, Getty returned to Oklahoma in 1919. During the 1920s he added about $3 million to his already sizable estate. His marriages and divorces (three during the 1920s, five throughout his life) distressed his father. J. Paul inherited only $500,000 of the $10 million the senior Getty left at his death in 1930.
Getty carefully invested his resources during the Great Depression. Getty bought Pacific Western Oil Corporation. He began buying (completed in 1953) the Mission Corporation, which included Tidewater Oil and Skelly Oil. In 1967 he merged them into Getty Oil.
Beginning in 1949, Getty paid Ibn Saud $9.5 million in cash and $1 million a year for a 60-year concession to a tract of barren land near the border of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. No oil had ever been discovered there. After spending $30 million over four years, oil was discovered there. From 1953 onward, Getty's gamble produced 16,000,000 barrels (2,500,000 m3) a year. This contributed greatly to the fortune which made him one of the richest people in the world.
Getty learned to speak Arabic which helped him expand his business into the Middle East. Getty owned the controlling interest in nearly 200 businesses, including Getty Oil. Associates identified his overall wealth at between $2 billion and $4 billion. It did not come easily. Perhaps it inspired Getty's widely quoted remark—"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."[8]
He moved to England in the 1950s and loved English culture. He lived and worked at his 16th-century Tudor estate, Sutton Place near Guildford. This traditional country house became the centre of Getty Oil and his associated companies. He used the estate to entertain his British and Arabian friends (including the British Rothschild family and numerous rulers of Middle Eastern countries). Getty lived the rest of his life in the British Isles. He died of heart failure at the age of 83 on June 6, 1976.
Getty was married and divorced five times. He had five sons with four of his wives:[4][9]
He was quoted as saying "A lasting relationship with a woman is only possible if you are a business failure".[9]
Getty wrote a very successful book entitled How to Be Rich.
Getty famously had a pay phone installed at Sutton Place, helping to seal his reputation as a miser.[10] In his autobiography, he described his reasons:
Getty placed dial-locks on all the regular telephones, limiting their use to authorised staff, and the coin-box telephone was installed for others. When speaking in a televised interview with Alan Whicker, Getty said that he thought guests would want to use a payphone [source?].
On July 10, 1973 in Rome, 16 year old John Paul Getty III was kidnapped and a ransom of $17 million was demanded over the phone for his safe return. However, "the family suspected a ploy by the rebellious teenager to extract money from his miserly grandfather."[12] John Paul Getty II asked his father for the money, but was refused.[13]
In November 1973 an envelope containing a lock of hair and a human ear was delivered to a daily newspaper. The second demand had been delayed three weeks by an Italian postal strike.[12] The demand threatened that Paul would be further mutilated unless $3.2 million was paid: "This is Paul’s ear. If we don’t get some money within 10 days, then the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little bits."[12]
When the kidnappers finally reduced their demands to $3 million Getty senior agreed to pay no more than $2.2 million - the maximum that would be tax deductible. He loaned his son the remaining $800,000 at 4% interest. Paul III was found alive in southern Italy shortly after the ransom was paid. After his release Paul III called his grandfather to thank him for paying the ransom but Getty refused to come to the phone.[14] Nine people were later arrested for the kidnapping, but only two were convicted.[15] Paul III was permanently affected by the trauma and became a drug addict. After a stroke brought on by a cocktail of drugs and alcohol in 1981, Paul III could not speak. He was nearly blind and partially paralyzed for the rest of his life. He died thirty years later on February 5, 2011 at the age of 54.[15]
Getty defended his initial refusal to pay the ransom on two points. First, he argued that to submit to the kidnappers' demands would immediately place his other fourteen grandchildren at the risk of copy-cat kidnappers. He added:
The 2017 movie All the Money in the World is based on these events. Christopher Plummer plays J. Paul Getty. In 2018, a television series based on the events, Trust, premiered with Donald Sutherland playing Getty.
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