J. Paul Getty
Jean Paul Getty, born in 1892, was an influential American oil tycoon and art collector whose business acumen made him one of the wealthiest individuals of his time. He began his journey in the oil industry in Oklahoma, leveraging family resources to establish his own company. By the 1920s, Getty had amassed significant wealth and founded the Getty Oil Company, which became one of the largest corporations in America. His strategic investments during the Great Depression and in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia significantly contributed to his fortune.
Aside from his business endeavors, Getty was a passionate art collector, starting his collection in 1938 with significant pieces such as a Persian carpet and works by renowned artists like Gainsborough and Raphael. In 1954, he opened the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, intending to share his passion for art with the public. His legacy includes not only his immense wealth but also the cultural institutions he supported, establishing a lasting impact on both the art world and the oil industry. Getty passed away in 1976, leaving behind a complex legacy celebrated for its contributions to art and commerce.
J. Paul Getty
Business Person
- Born: December 15, 1892
- Birthplace: Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Died: June 6, 1976
- Place of death: Sutton Place, Surrey, England
American oil magnate and art collector
Getty accumulated a fortune that made him the richest living American by 1957, and he eventually was worth more than $2 billion. His interest in art and antiquities led him to acquire an enviable collection of paintings, sculpture, and other art objects that formed the basis of his outstanding Getty museums in Los Angeles and Malibu.
Source of wealth: Oil
Bequeathal of wealth: Charity; museum
Early Life
Jean Paul Getty was born in 1892 to George Franklin Getty, a lawyer, and his wife, Sarah Catherine McPherson Risher. The couple’s daughter, Gertrude Lois, died in the 1890 typhoid epidemic. In 1904, George moved the family to Oklahoma, a major oil-producing state, with the intention of getting into the oil business, and he successfully attained this goal. Two years later, he moved the family again, this time to California. Jean Paul attended the Harvard Military Academy and in 1909 graduated from Polytechnic High School. At seventeen, he was strong and athletic, an amateur boxer and weightlifter, and a fine swimmer. Physically capable of handling the job of an oil field roustabout, he worked during the summer on his father’s Oklahoma oil rigs.
Getty began his college education at the University of Southern California and then briefly attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied political science and economics. In 1912, he transferred to Magdalen College at Oxford University in England, graduating in 1914 with a degree in economics and political science. He took time to travel around Europe before returning to the United States to begin working.
First Ventures
Getty settled in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he started his own oil company with his father’s financial support. His father’s business, the Minnehoma Oil Company, was thriving. Getty had a shrewd talent for buying and selling oil leases, and in 1916, when one of his own wells struck oil, he made his first $1 million.
When Getty was in his early twenties, he decided to take some time off to enjoy his money. He went back to Los Angeles, where, as a wealthy young bachelor, he lived a playboy’s life. Hollywood offered film stars, such as the Gish sisters, Norma Talmadge, Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Cary Grant, and Charlie Chaplin; the attraction of celebrity; beautiful women; and an exciting social life—all heady stuff for a young man with plenty of money. Within a decade, Getty managed to meet, marry, and divorce three women. His father disapproved of his lifestyle and lost respect for him.
Getty apparently either got tired of this Hollywood life or could not resist the lure of business, because he returned to work in 1919, continuing to buy and sell oil leases and drill his own wells. He went to Mexico, studied Spanish, and acquired oil leases there. During the 1920’s, his fortune grew to more than $3 million, and Getty became owner of a one-third interest in the firm he would soon name the Getty Oil Company.
After his father died in 1930, Getty became the president of the George Getty Oil Company, the changed name of the Minnehoma Oil Company. His mother, who like his father had become concerned about the lifestyle Getty adopted during his Hollywood sojourn, retained controlling interest in the company. Getty, however, continued to increase the business’s profits and expanded its holdings. During the Depression, he shrewdly bought shares in companies with depressed stock prices. He acquired controlling interest in one of California’s largest oil companies, the Pacific Western Oil Corporation, and in 1933 he bought shares in the Petroleum Corporation of America. His mother was finally persuaded to give him controlling interest in the company his father had started.
Mature Wealth
While still expanding his company’s oil business and holdings, Getty also ventured into real estate, purchasing the Hotel Pierre in New York City. During World War II, he volunteered to serve in the U.S. Navy (he was an accomplished yachtsman), but he was rejected. The federal government, however, recognized his exceptional business acumen and persuaded him to take leadership of the Spartan Aircraft Company, which produced aircraft components and the NP-1 trainer airplanes that made a major contribution to the nation’s war effort.
One of Getty’s most audacious moves occurred in 1949, when he obtained the Saudi Arabian oil rights in the “neutral zone” between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; the zone was an area of land between the borders of both nations. Dealing directly with King Ibn Saՙūd of Saudi Arabia, Getty paid $9.5 million in cash and committed to pay $1 million a year for sixty years for the land, on which oil had yet to be found. For four years, Getty’s company looked for oil on the land, spending $30 million before striking oil on the Wafra tract in 1953. This oil field produced sixteen million barrels a year, helping to make Getty one of the richest people in the world.
By this time, he had also acquired control of Mission Corporation, as well as its holdings in Tidewater Oil Company and the Oklahoma-based independent Skelly Oil Company, both connected to the beleaguered Standard Oil Company. Tidewater was a particularly significant acquisition as it was an integrated oil company with its own refineries, transport facilities, and gas stations.
Getty developed the Getty Oil Company into one of America’s largest corporations and had what almost amounted to a monopoly on North American and Arabian oil concessions. The company maintained the world’s largest fleet of oil tankers. Getty was described as the “world’s richest private person” in 1957, with a personal fortune estimated at about $10 billion in stocks, corporate assets, and real estate.
By 1960, he had moved his home and offices to England, where he lived out the rest of his life in a sixteenth century Tudor estate. He died of heart failure in 1976 at the age of eighty-three.
Legacy
As early as 1938, Getty began collecting fine artworks. One of his first significant purchases was the Ardabil carpet, a sixteenth century Persian rug for which he paid £14,000. Around the same time, he also purchased paintings by Thomas Gainsborough and Raphael. His collection soon included rare watches, furniture, Roman and Greek sculpture, European paintings, tapestries, and other objets d’art. He kept his collection in his homes in England and California, until in 1954 he converted a wing of his home in Malibu, California, to the J. Paul Getty Museum.
By the twenty-first century, Getty’s collections and many other artworks were exhibited in two museums—a Roman-style villa on his Malibu property and a major cultural institution in Los Angeles. Getty had said that art was a “civilizing influence in society” and as such should be available to the public. These museums and the other institutes he supported were the generous legacy of his wealth.
Further Reading
DeChair, Somerset. Getty on Getty: A Man in a Billion. New York: Sterling, 1989. A look at Getty, the man, written by a personal friend who also edited his memoirs.
Getty, J. Paul. As I See It: The Autobiography of Jean Paul Getty. Rev. ed. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2003. The second of two autobiographical books, this one depicts Getty as highly educated, a multilingual world traveler, a committed art collector, and an associate of famous people who discusses his life, successes, and failures. Contains black-and-white photographs.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. How to Be Rich: His Formulas. New York: Jove, 1986. Getty’s advice for becoming wealthy by developing the proper mind-set and productive, beneficial habits.
Hewins, Ralph. The Richest American: J. Paul Getty. New York: Dutton, 1960. A biography written with Getty’s cooperation.
McDonald, James. Gettyrama: Little Known Facts About Jean Paul Getty and More. Boca Raton, Fla.: Universal, 2000. McDonald is a former officer at Tidewater Oil Company. His book includes several articles previously published in Pacific Oil World relating to Getty and his business.
Pearson, John. Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. Tells of the dynasty built from Getty’s “obsessions” and the often disastrous effects great wealth had on his heirs.
Walsh, John, and Deborah Gribbon. The J. Paul Getty Museum and Its Collections: A Museum for the New Century. Los Angeles: Getty, 1997. Written by longtime directors of the museum, the book contains a biographical sketch of Getty, a selective catalog of the museum’s collections, and a history of the three “eras” of the museum. Two hundred color plates illustrate the collections.