American-born British petrol-industrialist, and the patriarch of the Getty family. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, while the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world’s richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion (approx. $7.2 billion in 2018). At his death, he was worth more than $6 billion (approximately $21 billion in 2018).
An only child, he was raised by a mother who was deaf and dour and he grew indifferent toward her. His father was a strong influence, a hard-working Christian Scientist who amassed considerable wealth in the oil business. In 1914, he worked in his father’s oil fields for a year, after which he bought an interest in an Oklahoma field where he began his own production. At his father’s death, he inheriting $15 million that he parlayed into an empire.
In 1953 he became the world’s richest man by striking oil in the Middle East but was notoriously cheap, at one time putting a pay phone in his English castle for house guests to use. Also vain, he had periodic facial cosmetic surgery.
With a strong sex drive, he was a lifelong philanderer noted for his prowess and it was reported in a biography that he had a penis close to 9 inches (23 cm) long. He married five times to women who gave him five sons, George, Ronald, J. Paul II, Gordon and Timmy. The family was too dysfunctional to be called a dynasty, but splintered into generations of divorce, drug abuse and suicide. When his oldest grandson was kidnapped by Italian gangsters in 1973, Getty responded with the same hard edge that made him the world’s wealthiest man. He refused to pay the demanded $3.2 million, afraid that doing so would jeopardize the lives of all of his kin. The kidnappers hacked off 16-year-old Jean Paul III’s right ear and mailed it to a Rome newspaper. The boy was released when Getty reluctantly loaned the boy’s father part of the money – at 4% interest.
Getty was afraid of flying. He wrote three autobiographies. His primary hobby was that of filling his country estate with mistresses – as many as five at a time in residence. He made a parlor game out of revising his will, manipulating obsequious by promising reward. Finally, he left half of his estate to his museum.
After his death there were a series of law suits generated over his money. He died of cancer of the prostate on 6 June 1976, near London, at age 83.
In December 1997, the $1 billion Getty Center opened in Los Angles with a world-class collection of classical art. Getty was an avid art collector and left $700 million for the creation of the extraordinary museum.
Link to Wikipedia biography