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{{short description|American industrialist
{{Distinguish|John Paul Getty Jr.|John Paul Getty III}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2023}}
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| death_place = [[Woking]],<!--Sutton Place is in the borough of Woking--> Surrey, England
| burial_place = [[Getty Villa]]<br>Los Angeles, California
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| occupation = [[Businessman]]
| parents = {{Plainlist|
* [[George Getty|George Franklin Getty]]
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}}
'''Jean Paul Getty Sr.''' ({{IPAc-en|'|g|ɛ|t|i}}; December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American-born British petroleum industrialist who founded the [[Getty Oil|Getty Oil Company]] in 1942 and was the patriarch of the [[Getty family]].<ref name=NYTobit>{{cite web|first=Alden|last=Whitman|author-link=Alden Whitman|title=J. Paul Getty Dead at 83; Amassed Billions From Oil|url=https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1215.html|department=On This Day|work=[[The New York Times]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161221174120/http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/1215.html|archive-date=December 21, 2016|date=June 6, 1976}}</ref> A native of [[Minneapolis]], he was the son of pioneer oilman [[George Getty]]. In 1957, ''[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]]'' magazine named him the [[Wealthiest Americans (1957)|wealthiest living American]],<ref>{{cite news|first=Robert|last=Lubar|url=
<!-- A paragraph about Mr Getty’s career here would be an improvement. This might necessitate the moving of the (frankly excessive) coverage of his net worth. -->
Getty is considered to have been
==Early life and education==
Getty was born in [[Minneapolis]], Minnesota, to Sarah Catherine McPherson (Risher) and [[George Getty]], who was an attorney in the insurance industry.
As newly minted millionaires, the family moved to [[Los Angeles]], but J. Paul Getty later returned to Oklahoma. At age 14,
==Career==
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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.<ref>{{cite book| title=Painfully Rich| author=John Pearson| year=1995| publisher=HarperCollins| page=47}}</ref>
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
In
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Getty's wealth and ability to speak Arabic enabled his unparalleled expansion into the Middle East.
===Art collection===
Getty's first forays into collecting began in the late 1930s, when he
==Marriages, divorces and children==
Getty was a notorious womanizer from the time of his youth,
In 1917, when he was 25, Elsie Eckstrom filed a [[paternity suit]]
Getty was married and divorced five times. He had five sons with four of his wives:<ref name=Lenzner/><ref name=Vallely>{{cite news|first=Paul|last=Vallely|url=http://www.kin.co.uk/news/41.html|title=Don't keep it in the family|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101226081524/http://www.kin.co.uk/news/41.html |work=The Independent|location=London, England|date=July 19, 2007|via=[[Wayback Machine|The Wayback Machine]]|archive-date=December 26, 2010}}</ref>
# Jeanette Demont (married 1923 – divorced 1926); one son, [[George Getty#George Getty II|George F. Getty II]] (1924–1973).
# Allene Ashby (1926–1928); no children.<ref>{{Cite book|first=Jean Paul|last=Getty|title=As I see it: the autobiography of J. Paul Getty|url={{Google books|k-_hLLdVhCwC|page=PA91|keywords=|text=|plainurl=yes}}|publisher=Getty Publications|location=Los Angeles, California|year=1976|page=91|access-date= September 13, 2011}}</ref> Getty met 17-year-old Ashby, the daughter of a [[Texas]] rancher, in [[Mexico City]] while he was studying Spanish and overseeing his family's business interests. They eloped to [[Cuernavaca, Mexico]], but the marriage was
# Adolphine Helmle (1928–1932); one son, Jean Ronald Getty (1929–2009), whose son, Christopher Ronald Getty, married [[Pia Getty|Pia Miller]], sister of [[Marie-Chantal, Crown Princess of Greece]]. Like his first and second wives, Adolphine was 17
# [[Ann Rork Light|Ann Rork]] (1932–1936); two sons, [[John Paul Getty Jr.]] (1932–2003) and [[Gordon Getty|Gordon Peter Getty]] (born 1933). Getty was introduced to Rork when she was 14
# [[Teddy Getty Gaston|Louise Dudley "Teddy" Lynch]] (1939–1958); one son, Timothy Ware Getty (1946–1958).
In 2013, at age 99, Getty's fifth wife, Louise, known as Teddy Getty Gaston, published a memoir
Getty was quoted as saying "A lasting relationship with a woman is only possible if you are a business failure
==Kidnapping of grandson John Paul Getty III==
{{main|Kidnapping of John Paul Getty III}}
In Rome on July 10, 1973, [['Ndrangheta]] kidnappers abducted Getty's 16-year-old grandson, [[John Paul Getty III]], and demanded
In November 1973, an envelope containing a lock of hair and a human ear arrived at a daily newspaper. The second demand had been delayed three weeks by an Italian postal strike.<ref name=TelegraphPaulObit/> The demand threatened that Paul would be further mutilated unless the victims paid $3.2 million. The demand stated: "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."<ref name=TelegraphPaulObit/>
When the kidnappers
Getty defended his initial refusal to pay the ransom on two
Nine of the kidnappers were apprehended, including [[Girolamo Piromalli]] and [[Saverio Mammoliti]], high-ranking members of the [['Ndrangheta]], a Mafia organization in Calabria.<ref name="tim280174">[https://web.archive.org/web/20081222050935/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,911066,00.html Catching the Kidnappers], ''Time'', January 28, 1974</ref> Two of the kidnappers were convicted and sent to prison; the others were acquitted for lack of evidence, including the 'Ndrangheta bosses. Most of the ransom money was never recovered.<ref name="NYT Obituary">[https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/world/europe/08gettyobit.html J. Paul Getty III, 54, Dies; Had Ear Cut Off by Captors], ''The New York Times'', February 7, 2011</ref><ref name="L.A. Times">[https://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-john-paul-getty-iii-20110208,0,1147525.story "J. Paul Getty III dies at 54; scion of oil dynasty"], ''Los Angeles Times'', February 7, 2011</ref>
==Reputation for frugality==
Many anecdotal stories exist of Getty's
*Getty's secretary claimed that Getty did his laundry by hand because he did not want to pay for his clothes to be laundered. When his shirts became frayed at the cuffs, he would trim the frayed
*
*When Getty took a group of friends to a dog show in London, he made them walk around the block for 10 minutes until the tickets became half-priced at 5 pm, because he did not want to pay the full 5 [[Shilling (British coin)|shillings]] per head.<ref name="Refinery29.com"/>
*Getty moved to [[Sutton Place, Surrey|Sutton Place]] in part because the
*Getty drove his own car to work every day.
Author [[John Pearson (author)|John Pearson]] attributed part of Getty's extreme penny-pinching to the [[Methodist]] sensibility of Getty's upbringing, which emphasized modest living and personal economy. His business acumen was also a major factor in Getty's thriftiness. "He would allow himself no self-indulgence in the purchase of a place to live, a work of art, even a piece of furniture, unless he could convince himself that it would appreciate in value."<ref>{{cite book| title=Painfully Rich| author=John Pearson| year=1995| publisher=HarperCollins| page=42}}</ref> Getty claimed his frugality toward others was a response to having been taken advantage of. "It's not the money I object to, it's the principle of the thing that bothers me", he said.<ref name="nytimes1976"/>
===Coin-box telephone===
Getty famously had a
{{blockquote|Now, for months after
==Later years and death==
On June 30, 1960, Getty threw a 21st birthday party for a relative of his friend, the [[Bernard Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk|16th Duke of Norfolk]], which served as a housewarming party for the newly purchased Sutton Place.<ref name="autogenerated119">{{cite book| title=Painfully Rich| author=John Pearson| year=1995| publisher=HarperCollins| page=119}}</ref>
Getty remained an inveterate hard worker, boasting at age 74 that he often worked 16 to 18 hours per day overseeing his operations across the world.<ref name="nytimes1976"/> The value of Getty Oil shares quadrupled during the Arab-Israeli [[Yom Kippur War]] of
Getty met the English interior designer Penelope Kitson in the 1950s and entrusted her with decorating his homes and the public rooms of the
Getty's insatiable appetite for sex also continued into his 80s. He used an experimental drug, ''H3'', to maintain his potency.<ref name="vanityfair.com"/> Mistresses who resided at Sutton Place included
''[[The New York Times]]'' wrote of Getty's domestic arrangement
On June 6, 1976, Getty died of heart failure at
==Media portrayals==
[[Rudy De Luca]] portrayed Getty in the 1991 [[Mel Brooks]] film ''[[Life Stinks]]'', in which Brooks plays a real estate tycoon who
[[Christopher Plummer]] portrayed Getty in the 2017 film ''[[All the Money in the World]],'' which dramatizes
The kidnapping is also dramatized in the first season of the American anthology drama series ''[[Trust (U.S. TV series)|Trust]]'',
==Quotations==
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[[Category:American industrialists]]
[[Category:American people of Scotch-Irish descent]]
[[Category:Businesspeople from Los Angeles]]
[[Category:Businesspeople from Minneapolis]]
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[[Category:Philanthropists from California]]
[[Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni]]
* {{ Find a grave|6730}}
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