J. Paul Getty

Jean Paul Getty Sr. (; December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American petroleum industrialist who founded the Getty Oil Company in 1942 and was the patriarch of the Getty family. A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, he was the son of pioneer oilman George Getty. In 1957, Fortune magazine named J. Paul Getty the wealthiest living American, while the 1966 Guinness Book of Records declared him to be the world's wealthiest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion (approximately $8.8 billion in 2024). At the time of his death, he was worth more than $6 billion (approximately $26 billion in 2024). A book published in 1996 ranked him as the 67th wealthiest American who ever lived (based on his wealth as a percentage of the concurrent gross national product).

Getty was known for his frugality, going so far as to haggle with the kidnappers when his grandson was held to ransom in 1973. He had five children and divorced five times. Getty was an avid collector of art and antiquities. His collection formed the basis of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; more than $661 million of his estate was left to the museum after his death. He established the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1953. The trust, which is the world's wealthiest art institution, operates the J. Paul Getty Museum Complexes: the Getty Center, the Getty Villa and the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the Getty Conservation Institute.

Background

Getty was born in Minneapolis to Sarah Catherine McPherson (Risher) and George Franklin Getty, who was an attorney in the insurance industry. He grew up as a Methodist; his father was a devout Christian Scientist and both his father and mother were strict teetotalers. Jean was of part Scottish descent. In 1903, when Jean was 10 years old, his father traveled to Bartlesville, Oklahoma and bought the mineral rights for 1,100 acres (450 hectares) of land. The Getty family then moved to Bartlesville, where J. Paul Getty attended the Garfield School. Within a few years Getty had established wells on the land which produced 100,000 barrels (16 megaliters) of crude oil a month.

As newly minted millionaires, the family moved to Los Angeles, but J. Paul Getty later returned to Oklahoma. At age 14, he attended the Harvard Military School for a year, followed by Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley, Los Angeles studying reading. He became fluent in French, German and Italian, and conversational in Spanish, Greek, Arabic, and Russian. A love of the classics led Getty to acquire reading proficiency in ancient Greek and Latin.

Getty enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley but did not complete a degree. Enamored of Europe after traveling abroad with his parents in 1910, he enrolled at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England on November 28, 1912. A letter of introduction by President of the United States William Howard Taft enabled him to gain independent instruction from tutors at Magdalen College. Although he was not registered at Magdalen, he claimed the aristocratic students "accepted me as one of their own" and he fondly boasted of the friends he made, including the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom. He obtained a diploma in economics and political science from Oxford in June 1913, then spent months traveling throughout Europe and Egypt before meeting his parents in Paris and returning with them to the U.S. in June 1914.

Career

In the autumn of 1914, George Getty gave his son $10,000 (equivalent to $320,000 in 2025) to invest in expanding the family's oil field holdings in Oklahoma. The first lot he bought, the Nancy Taylor No. 1 Oil Well Site near Haskell, Oklahoma, was crucial to his early financial success. The well struck oil in August 1915 and by the next summer the 40 percent net production royalty he accrued from it had made him a millionaire.

In 1919, Getty returned to business in Oklahoma. During the 1920s, he added about $3 million to his already sizable estate. His succession of marriages and divorces so distressed his father that Getty inherited only $500,000 of the $10 million fortune his father left at the time of his death in 1930. Getty was left with one-third of the stock from George Getty Inc., while his mother received the remaining two-thirds, giving her a controlling interest. In 1936, Getty's mother convinced him to contribute to the establishment of a $3.3 million investment trust, called the Sarah C. Getty Trust, to ensure the family's ever-growing wealth could be channeled into tax-free, secure income for future generations of the Getty family. The trust enabled Getty to have easy access to ready capital, which he was funneling into the purchase of Tidewater Petroleum stock.

During the Great Depression, Getty acquired Pacific Western Oil Corporation and began the acquisition (completed in 1953) of the Mission Corporation which included Tidewater Oil and Skelly Oil. In 1967, Getty merged these holdings into Getty Oil. In 1948–49, Getty paid Ibn Saud $9.5 million in cash, guaranteed $1 million a year, and a royalty of 55 cents a barrel for the Saudi Arabian Neutral Zone concession, which was 2.5 times more than what other major oil companies were paying in the Middle East at the time. Oil was finally discovered in March 1953. Since 1953, Getty's gamble produced 16 million barrels (2.5 gigaliters) a year, which contributed greatly to the fortune responsible for making him one of the richest people in the world.

Getty's wealth and ability to speak Arabic enabled his unparalleled expansion into the Middle East. He owned the controlling interest in about 200 businesses, including Getty Oil. Getty owned Getty Oil, Getty Inc., George F. Getty Inc., Pacific Western Oil Corporation, Mission Corporation, Mission Development Company, Tidewater Oil, Skelly Oil, Mexican Seaboard Oil, Petroleum Corporation of America, Spartan Aircraft Company, Spartan Cafeteria Company, Minnehoma Insurance Company, Minnehoma Financial Company, Pierre Hotel, Pierre Marques Hotel, a 15th-century palace and nearby castle at Ladispoli on the coast northwest of Rome, a Malibu ranch home, and Sutton Place, a 72-room mansion near Guildford, Surrey.

Art collection

Getty's first forays into collecting began in the late 1930s, when he was inspired by the collection of 18th-century French paintings and furniture of the landlord of his New York City penthouse, Amy Guest, a relation of Sir Winston Churchill. A fan of 18th-century France, Getty began buying furniture from the period at reduced prices because of the depressed art market. He wrote several books on collecting, including Europe and the 18th Century (1949), Collector's Choice: The Chronicle of an Artistic Odyssey through Europe (1955) and The Joys of Collecting (1965). His stinginess limited the range of his collecting because he refused to pay full price. Getty's companion in later life, Penelope Kitson, said, "Paul was really too mean ever to allow himself to buy a great painting." Nonetheless, at the time of his death he owned more than 600 works valued at more than $4 million, including paintings by Rubens, Titian, Gainsborough, Renoir, Tintoretto, Degas, and Monet. Getty's reluctance to donate any more artworks to Los Angeles County after he realized how his first donations had been shabbily presented at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art caused Edward W. Carter to orchestrate the fundraising effort for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. During the 1950s, Getty's interests shifted to Greco-Roman sculpture, which led to the building of the Getty Villa in the 1970s to house the collection. These items were transferred to the Getty Museum and the Getty Villa in Los Angeles after his death.

Marriages, divorces and children

Getty was a notorious womanizer from the time of his youth, which horrified his conservative parents. His lawyer, Robina Lund, once said, "Paul could hardly ever say 'no' to a woman, or 'yes' to a man." Lord Beaverbrook called him "priapic" and "ever-ready" in his sexual habits. In 1917, when he was 25, Elsie Eckstrom filed a paternity suit against Getty in Los Angeles, claiming he was the father of her daughter. Eckstrom said that Getty had taken her virginity while she was drunk and fathered the child. His legal team tried to undermine her credibility by claiming that she had a history of promiscuity. Getty agreed to a settlement of $10,000, upon which Eckstrom left town with the baby.

Getty was married and divorced five times. He had five sons with four of his wives: