J. Paul Getty

Lore & Background

Getty was born in Minneapolis to Sarah Catherine McPherson (Risher) and George Franklin Getty, who was an attorney in the insurance industry. He grew up as a Methodist; his father was a devout Christian Scientist and both his father and mother were strict teetotalers. Jean was of part Scottish descent. In 1903, when Jean was 10 years old, his father traveled to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and bought the mineral rights for 1,100 acres (450 hectares) of land. The Getty family then moved to Bartlesville, where J. Paul Getty attended the Garfield School. Within a few years Getty had established wells on the land which produced 100,000 barrels (16 megaliters) of crude oil a month. As newly minted millionaires, the family moved to Los Angeles, but J. Paul Getty later returned to Oklahoma. At age 14, he attended the Harvard Military School for a year, followed by Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley, Los Angeles, studying reading. He became fluent in French, German and Italian, and conversational in Spanish, Greek, Arabic, and Russian. A love of the classics led Getty to acquire reading proficiency in ancient Greek and Latin. Getty enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, but did not complete a degree. Enamored by Europe after traveling abroad with his parents in 1910, he enrolled at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, on November 28, 1912. A letter of introduction by President of the United States William Howard Taft enabled him to gain independent instruction from tutors at Magdalen College. Although he was not registered at Magdalen, he claimed the aristocratic students 'accepted me as one of their own' and he fondly boasted of the friends he made, including the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom. He obtained a diploma in economics and political science from Oxford in June 1913, then spent months traveling throughout Europe and Egypt before meeting his parents in Paris and returning with them to the U.S. in June 1914.

Reader's Guide

In the autumn of 1914, George Getty gave his son $10,000 (equivalent to $320,000 in 2025) to invest in expanding the family's oil field holdings in Oklahoma. The first lot he bought, the Nancy Taylor No. 1 Oil Well Site near Haskell, Oklahoma, was crucial to his early financial success. The well struck oil in August 1915 and by the next summer the 40 percent net production royalty he accrued from it had made him a millionaire. In 1919, Getty returned to business in Oklahoma. During the 1920s, he added about $3 million to his already sizable estate. His succession of marriages and divorces so distressed his father that Getty inherited only $500,000 of the $10 million fortune his father left at the time of his death in 1930. Getty was left with one-third of the stock from George Getty Inc., while his mother received the remaining two-thirds, giving her a controlling interest. In 1936, Getty's mother convinced him to contribute to the establishment of a $3.3 million investment trust, called the Sarah C. Getty Trust, to ensure the family's ever-growing wealth could be channeled into tax-free, secure income for future generations of the Getty family. The trust enabled Getty to have easy access to ready capital, which he was funneling into the purchase of Tidewater Petroleum stock. During the Great Depression, Getty acquired Pacific Western Oil Corporation and began the acquisition (completed in 1953) of the Mission Corporation which included Tidewater Oil and Skelly Oil. In 1967, Getty merged these holdings into Getty Oil. In 1948–49, Getty paid Ibn Saud $9.5 million in cash, guaranteed $1 million a year, and a royalty of 55 cents a barrel for the Saudi Arabian Neutral Zone concession, which was 2.5 times more than what other major oil companies were paying in the Middle East at the time. Oil was finally discovered in March 1953. Since 1953, Getty's gamble produced 16 million barrels (2.5 gigaliters) a year, which contributed greatly to the fortune responsible for making him one of the richest people in the world. Getty's wealth and ability to speak Arabic enabled his unparalleled expansion into the Middle East. He owned the controlling interest in about 200 businesses, including Getty Oil. Getty owned Getty Oil, Getty Inc., George F. Getty Inc., Pacific Western Oil Corporation, Mission Corporation, Mission Development Company, Tidewater Oil, Skelly Oil, Mexican

Did You Know?

• Getty obtained a diploma in economics and political science from Oxford in June 1913.
• His father, George Franklin Getty, was an attorney in the insurance industry.
• Getty grew up as a Methodist; his father was a devout Christian Scientist.
• In 1903, his father traveled to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and bought the mineral rights for 1,100 acres of land.
• In the autumn of 1914, his father gave him $10,000 to invest in expanding the family's oil field holdings in Oklahoma.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Jean Paul Getty (December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American industrialist and founder of the Getty Oil Company." — J. Paul Getty "If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars." — J. Paul Getty "My father said, 'You must never try to make all the money that's in a deal. Let the other fellow make some money too, because if you have a reputation for always making all the money, you won't have many deals'." — J. Paul Getty "The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights." — J. Paul Getty