Jean Paul Getty
Jean Paul Getty was an American industrialist and founder of the Getty Oil Company. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota into a family already in the petroleum business, he was one of the first people in the world with a fortune of over $1 billion U.S. dollars. He was an avid collector of art and antiquities, and his collection forms the basis of the J. Paul Getty Museum in California.
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He enrolled at the University of Southern California, then at Berkeley before graduating in 1914 from Magdalen College, Oxford with degrees in economics and political science. He worked during the summers on his father's oil fields in Oklahoma. Running his own oil company in Tulsa, he made his first million by 1916. 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 1929, he believed that Jean Paul would destroy the family company, and told him so.
He moved to England in the 1950s, where he lived and worked at his 16th-century Tudor estate, Sutton Place near Guildford, until his death.
Despite his vast wealth, he was notoriously tight-fisted: he had pay phones installed in his home, saved bits of string until he had enough to tie up a parcel, and washed his own underwear. Whenever he stayed in London he had a suite at Claridge's Hotel and according to staff he never tipped. In 1973, his grandson, J. Paul Getty III, was kidnapped. Getty refused to pay the ransom until he was sent the boy's severed right ear. In his will he left his eldest surviving son £500.
Getty married five times: to Jeanette Tremont (1923-25), Allene Ashby (1926-28), Adolphine Hemle (1928-1932), Ann Rork (1932-1935), and Theodora Lynch. He had five sons: George Franklin Getty (d.1973) by his first wife, Jean Ronald Getty by his third wife, John Paul Getty and Gordon Getty by his fourth wife, and Timothy Getty (died aged 12) by his fifth wife.
(cf : wikipedia)
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Los Angeles County Museum of Art
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