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Fortune: Founder of Getty Oil Company
Legacy: Getty Trust
Foundation Assets: $8,623,795,970
2002 Giving: $21,047,815
Major Funding Areas: research, education, conservation of art, leadership, professional development. |
Jean Paul Getty, the founder of Getty Oil Company, was born on Dec. 15, 1892 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The son of lawyer and oilman George Franklin Getty and Sarah Risher Getty, the younger Getty inherited $500,000 of his father’s $10 million fortune in 1930, but it was his own knack for discovering, buying and selling oil fields that made him a billionaire.
Getty attended private school in Los Angeles, California and graduated from Polytechnic High School in 1909. He then toured Europe before attending the University of Southern California and the University of California at Berkeley. He finally graduated from Oxford University in England with a degree in economics and political science in 1914.
During the summers, Getty worked for his father’s Minnehoma Oil Company. After graduating he returned to Tulsa, Oklahoma to try to strike it rich in the oil business. Getty operated independently of Minnehoma Oil, but his father’s financial backing helped him buy and sell oil leases in the red-bed area of Oklahoma.
Getty went against the grain of the oilmen of the time, utilizing geological data instead of relying solely on the instinct of veteran oilmen. He loved the gambling nature of the oil business and the fact that it gave him a chance to strike it rich. In 1916 he made his first million as a wildcatter and oil lease broker.
From 1916-18 Getty lived the life of a playboy in Los Angeles. He went back to buying and selling oil leases with his father in 1920 and began to amass his personal fortune, including a one-third interest in what was to become the Getty Oil Company. He also began a series of five unsuccessful marriages at this time, which did not please his father.
Getty had five sons, two of whom predeceased him. His reclusive third son, Sir J. Paul Getty Jr. was a reformed drug addict who donated more than $200-million to a variety of charitable causes before dying of a chest infection in April 2003. His grandson, J. Paul Getty III was kidnapped in Italy in 1973 and had part of his ear cut off before being released for a ransom.
When Getty’s father died in 1930, he became president of the George Getty Oil Company (successor to Minnehoma Oil), but his mother inherited the controlling interest in the firm. Getty continued to acquire assets during the Great Depression, gaining a controlling interest in Pacific Western Oil Corporation and eventually securing control of Getty Oil Company. He also began to dabble in real estate, purchasing the Hotel Pierre in New York City.
At the outbreak of World War II, Getty volunteered for service in the Navy, but was rejected. At the request of the Navy however, he did take over personal management of Spartan Aircraft, a Skelly and Getty subsidiary.
In 1949 Getty gambled and secured oil rights in Saudi Arabia's Neutral Zone, a barren tract between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Three years and $30 million later, Getty found the massive oil deposits that would make him a billionaire.
Getty had a knack for business deals and by 1953 he had obtained control of Mission Corporation and its holdings in Tidewater Oil and Skelly Oil Company. Also in 1953, Getty founded the J. Paul Getty Museum near Malibu, Calif.
In 1957, Fortune magazine published a list of the richest men in America and Getty's name headed the list. He defied this label by wearing rumpled suits and damaged sweaters and he continued to invest and reinvest his fortune, which consisted not of cash, but of stocks, corporate assets, and real estate.
The public was fascinated by both Getty’s wealth and his stinginess. In 1959 he stopped living out of hotel rooms and established his home and offices at Sutton Place, a 16th-century, 700-acre manor in Surrey, England, featuring gardens, pools, a trout stream and priceless furnishings.
In 1967 Getty’s companies were merged into the Getty Oil Company, which became the $3 billion base of Getty's fortune. He now owned 80 percent of Getty Oil and its nearly 200 affiliated companies and he remained president of Getty Oil until his death on June 6, 1976 at Sutton Place.
Getty’s other major life passion was art, which he started collecting in the 1930s. He believed that art was a civilizing influence in society, and that it should be made available to the public for its education and enjoyment. Most of Getty's personal estate, including his art collections, passed to the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1982.
Under the umbrella of the trust are the J. Paul Getty Museum; the Getty Conservation Institute; the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities; the Getty Education Institute for the Arts; the Getty Information Institute; the Getty Leadership Institute of Museum
Management; and the Getty Grant Program.
The majority of the Trust's annual budget is spent on running the Getty Center and expanding the museum's art collection, but a selection of grants are made every year.
For more information about the Getty Trust please visit:
http://www.getty.edu/
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