Jean Paul Getty

Not to be confused with John Paul Getty, Jr. or John Paul Getty III.

Jean Paul Getty - ENLARGE

Jean Paul Getty (December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an Anglo-American industrialist. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, whilst the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion (approximately $8.5 billion in 2012). At his death, he was worth more than $2 billion (approximately $8.1 billion in 2012). A book published in 1996 ranked him as the 67th richest American who ever lived, based on his wealth as a percentage of the gross national product. Despite his wealth, Getty was known for being a miser.

Getty was an avid collector of art and antiquities; his collection formed the basis of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, and over $661 million (approximately $2.7 billion in 2012) of his estate was left to the museum after his death. He established the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1953. The trust is the world's wealthiest art institution, and operates the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the Getty Conservation Institute.
Born into George Getty's family in the petroleum business in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he was one of the first people in the world with a fortune estimated at over one billion U.S. dollars.

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 June 1916. The Nancy Taylor No. 1 Oil Well Site near Haskell, Oklahoma, was crucial to his early financial success. This oil well was the first to be drilled by JP Getty. However, 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 Franklin 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 earnings on women, Getty returned to Oklahoma in 1919. During the 1920s, he added about $3 million to his already sizable estate. His succession of marriages and divorces (three during the 1920s, five throughout his life) so distressed his father, however, that J. Paul inherited a mere $500,000 of the $10 million the senior Getty left at his death in 1930. Read more »»»