💰Wealth & ExchangeWealth & Exchange
🏠 Home🌐 中文
Wealth & ExchangeWEALTH
🛢️

J. Paul Getty

Original nameJ. Paul Getty

"Oil tycoon," once the richest man in the world

Those Who Made Money Beget Money · Capital & Finance
OilMiddle EastCollectingMiserliness

Who they are

An American oil tycoon, for a time in the mid-twentieth century the richest man in the world. Keenly ahead of the crowd, he secured oil concessions in the Middle East (especially the neutral zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait), and in the age of exploding oil demand grew rich as a state. He was also a fervent art collector, and the Getty Museum he left behind is one of the wealthiest art institutions in the world. Yet he was famed for extreme miserliness — worth billions, he installed a pay phone for guests in his own mansion, and when his grandson was kidnapped, dragged his feet over the ransom for grudging the money. He is the most famous sample of that contradiction, "extreme wealth and extreme stinginess."

Primary sourcessources on J. Paul Gettythe Getty Museum

Key stories

Haggling Even Over a Ransom

In 1973 Getty’s grandson was kidnapped in Italy and the kidnappers demanded a huge ransom. The world’s richest man at first refused to pay a cent, on the reasoning that "I have fourteen grandchildren; if I pay once, I’ll have fourteen kidnapped." Only after the kidnappers mailed him one of the boy’s ears did he grudgingly pay — and even then, it is said, most of it as a "loan" to his son, at interest. The story became the extreme footnote to "rich as a state, yet miserly to the extreme."

Relationships

Disciple
🛢️John D. Rockefeller　another oil magnate after Rockefeller

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

A sample of "extreme wealth and extreme stinginess"Getty was once the richest man in the world, and the story of his refusing his grandson’s ransom is widely told, the extreme footnote to "rich as a state yet miserly to the extreme"; the Getty Museum he left is one of the wealthiest art institutions in the world.
← Back to Figures