John Paul Getty

American-born British philanthropist

• Born: September 7, 1932
• Birthplace: Italy
• Died: April 17, 2003
• Place of death: London, England

After a difficult young adulthood, John Paul, the third son of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, became a philanthropist in his adopted Great Britain, supporting social, artistic, political, and sporting causes. During his lifetime he donated œ200 million, making him the most generous British philanthropist, and he was awarded a knighthood in 1986. His charitable trust continues its funding in the United Kingdom.

Early Life

The third son of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty and his fourth wife, Ann Rork, was christened Eugene Paul Getty after his birth at sea. Getty Jr.’s mother, who had met his father when she was just fourteen years old, attempted suicide during her pregnancy; his parents divorced when he was three years old.

Getty Jr. grew up with his mother and his younger brother, Gordon, in California. Except for his father’s indifference toward his family, his childhood was uneventful. Getty Jr. attended San Francisco State University, studying English, but he did not graduate. He was drafted into the U.S. Army to serve during the Korean War between 1952 and 1953. He became a heavy drinker, and upon his return from the service, he worked pumping gas at one of his father’s gas stations, earning about $100 a week. He married his childhood sweetheart, Gail Harris, in 1956, and they had a son later that year. Even though Getty Jr. was not officially given the suffix “junior” by his own parents, he nevertheless named his own first child J. Paul Getty III. Daughter Aileen was born soon after in 1957, son Mark was born in 1960, and another daughter, Ariadne, arrived in 1962.

Life’s Work

It was 1957 when the name J. Paul Getty became a household name. Forbes magazine named Getty Sr. the richest person in the United States. Getty Sr. summoned his son, who had been largely unaware of how wealthy his father really was, to Europe, training him quickly and putting him in charge of the Italian branch of the family business. At this point, the younger Getty decided to change his name to J. Paul Getty, Jr.

Getty Jr. hated the oil business, a hatred that only increased his drinking problem; it also affected his marriage. In 1965 he met Dutch model Talitha Pol at a party held by his father’s personal assistant, Claus von Bülow. In no time, Getty Jr. and Pol were a couple, and he filed for divorce from his wife Gail. Pol was born in 1940 in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and had been in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp with her mother. (Her father was in a separate prison camp.) Pol was the step-granddaughter of Welsh artist Augustus John and the daughter of painter Willem Jilts Pol. The couple married in December, 1966, and moved to London, essentially abandoning Getty Jr.’s business commitments in favor of the swinging London lifestyle. The Gettys were friends with singing stars Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, and by the end of the 1960’s were heavy drug users as well. They had one son, Tara Gabriel Galaxy Gramophone Getty, before Pol died of a heroin overdose in 1971.

Pol’s death ended Getty Jr.’s self-destructive tendencies. He became a near-recluse in their London home, getting out of the house only for cricket, which he took up at the urging of Jagger. Pol’s death, however, marked the beginning of a difficult, and sensational, period for Getty Jr. First, his father, repulsed by the thought of his son as a drug addict, made arrangements for Getty Jr.’s first wife, Gail Harris, to raise Tara with Getty Jr.’s other children. He also wrote Getty Jr. out of his will. Second, Getty Jr.’s oldest son, J. Paul III, was kidnapped in 1973 by Italian terrorists and chained for five months to a post in a cave in the mountainous Italian province of Calabria. Getty Jr. was unable to pay the ransom and his father refused to pay, on the excuse that falling to the demands of the terrorists would only make his other grandchildren vulnerable to similar kidnapping schemes. Harris eventually persuaded Getty to loan the money to Getty Jr., but only after the terrorists cut off the ear of his hostage son and sent it to an Italian newspaper through the mail. Getty Jr. never again spoke with his father, who died in 1976. (The kidnapped teenager, although released, was psychologically traumatized, and he overdosed in 1981 and suffered a stroke that left him blind and partially paralyzed.)

Third, Getty Jr.’s friend, von Bülow, spent years on trial for the murder of his heiress wife during the early 1980’s, and Getty Jr. largely funded his defense. Fourth, Getty Jr. and Gail’s daughter, Aileen, who had married and had two children with Elizabeth Taylor’s son Christopher Wilding, was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1984, an early year of the HIV-AIDS crisis. Lastly, Getty Jr. spent a great deal of time throughout the 1980’s in the hospital with respiratory problems and the symptoms of liver cirrhosis.

Although Getty Jr. had been written out of his father’s will, his financial situation improved remarkably in the mid-1980’s, when the sale of Getty Oil to Texaco increased the value of his portion of the family trust to more than $1 billion. At that point, he became an avid philanthropist. He was passionate about his adopted country and spent the remainder of his life handing out money to English causes in particular. Two notable cases include his support for social projects in the north of England through the Cheyne Walk Trust, and his financial assistance to striking miners’ families during the miners’ strike of 1984. He purchased art objects in danger of being bought by museums or collectors outside the United Kingdom, and he was especially enthusiastic when he could keep them from moving to his father’s museum in Malibu, California.

Getty Jr. received a personal visit from British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who thanked him for his generous private grant to the National Gallery (œ50 million). He also funded the British Film Institute (œ20 million), St. Paul’s Cathedral (œ5 million), and the Churchill Papers project (œ1 million). Although not particularly politically active, he gave œ5 million to the British Conservative Party in 2001. He was made an honorary Knight of the British Empire in 1987, in recognition of his philanthropic contributions and his affection for English culture. He could not use the title until 1997, after he gained British citizenship and renounced his U.S. citizenship.

Getty Jr. remained close friends with Jagger and von Bülow, and in 1994 he married another longtime friend and companion, Victoria Holdsworth, a British-born former model. The couple had a private wedding ceremony in Barbados Getty Jr.’s first trip away from England in twenty years. Getty Jr. credited Holdsworth with helping him conquer his drug addiction and with encouraging his bibliophilia, or love of books. He was a member of the Garrick Club, committed to preserving the written history of the English theater, as well as Brooks, a Whig Gentleman’s Club. At Holdsworth’s urging, Getty Jr. purchased a three-thousand-acre country estate in Buckinghamshire, called Wormsley Lodge, which was his primary residence for the last decade of his life. The couple restored the estate and built a library and private cricket ground there.

Failing health led Getty Jr. to spend winters in the Caribbean as often as possible during his later years, traveling there on his restored 1920’s-era yacht named the Talitha G. He died of a lung infection in 2003 at London Clinic at the age of seventy.

Significance

Getty Jr. preferred small projects to large. He gave innumerable grants to preserve small churches and to assist inmates and juvenile offenders. He spent a great deal of money on cricket, which was his passion, funding local clubs and providing cash to construct the Mound Stand at Lord’s Cricket Grounds in London. His J. Paul Getty Jr. Charitable Trust, distinct from his father’s J. Paul Getty Trust, continues to promote the arts, conservation, and social welfare.

Although Getty’s philanthropic contributions were wide ranging, many consider his greatest legacy to be his personal library, an extraordinary collection of rare and illuminated manuscripts that includes a copy of the earliest manuscript in English, the bishop of Caesarea’s Historia Ecclesiastica, as well as a first edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s works and folios of the works of William Shakespeare. The Wormsley Library, housed in a special building at the Buckinghamshire estate, is open to scholars. Works in the collection travel to libraries across the globe; a large exhibition came to the United States in 1999 under the supervision of the Pierpont Morgan Library in were chosen.

Bibliography

Getty, J. Paul. As I See It: The Autobiography of J. Paul Getty. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976. Published shortly after his death, the autobiography of Getty Sr. openly discusses his five marriages and his family.

Lenzner, Robert. The Great Getty: The Life and Loves of J. Paul Getty Richest Man in the World. New York: Crown, 1985. A lurid account of Getty Sr.’s private life, including his relationship with his children.

Pearson, John. Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. A chronicle of the dysfunctional lives of Getty Sr.’s sons and their families.

“Sir Paul Getty.” Daily Telegraph (London), April 18, 2003. An informed obituary of Getty Jr.