John Paul Getty Biography

John Paul Getty’s Early Life and Education

John Paul Getty was born in Minneapolis Minnesota in the year 1892. He was the son of Sarah Catherine and George Getty. His father was an attorney in the insurance industry. Paul was raised in a Christian family, and his father was a devout Christian. In the year 1903 when Paul was just ten years old, Getty Paul's father moved to Oklahoma and purchased mineral rights for one thousand one hundred acres of land. In a few years, Getty had already established wells on the land, which were producing more than one hundred thousand barrels of oil every month.

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The family then moved to Los Angeles after accumulating millions from the oil business as they escaped the harsh winter season in Minnesota. When Paul reached the age of fourteen years, he attended the Harvard military school for one year after which he attended the Polytechnic High School in which his peers gave him the nickname Dictionary Getty for his love of reading. Paul became fluent in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Latin. Later on, he enrolled at the University of California where he left before he could attain a degree. In the year 1912, Paul enrolled at the University of Oxford where h obtained a degree in Economics and Political science after which he spent a few months traveling throughout Europe and Egypt after which he went to meet his parents in Paris and returned to America with them.

Paul Getty's Career Life

The first leadership quality of Paul was evidenced in the year 1914 when his father gave him ten thousand dollars to expand his oil business in Oklahoma State. He bought the oil site near Haskell Oklahoma, which gave him a breakthrough. In August 1915, it struck oil, which eventually made him a millionaire at the age of 25. Paul's father returned to Oklahoma to continue with his business. He added around three million dollars to his estate. Paul had a succession of marriages, and this really stressed his father is making him leave him just five hundred thousand dollars of ten million dollars fortune. Paul's mother Sarah Getty was left with two-thirds stock from George Getty Inc., Paul, on the other hand, was just left with one-third of the stock. Before George Getty died, he declared that Paul would destroy the family's company

In the year 1936, Sarah Getty managed to convince him to contribute to the establishment of 3.3 million dollars in the invested trust, to ensure that the family's income would be channeled into a secure income for the future generations of Getty's family. The investment trust allowed Jean Paul to have easy access to capital. Paul invested his resources during the great depression and acquired the Pacific Western oil. He also acquired the Mission corporation, which included the Skelly oil and the tidewater oil. During the year 1967, Paul merged the holdings into Getty oil. From the year 1953, Paul had become one of the richest people in the world.

Starting in the year 1949, Jean Paul Getty made leases with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Paul learned to speak Arabic, which assisted his expansion to the Middle East Paul died in the year 1976, and his family inherited a forty percent interest in the company. The billionaire status earned Paul Getty a lot of notoriety, and in 1966 the Guinness book of records named him as the world's richest private citizen. That title made him one of the most well-known people in the world. Paul Getty moved to Britain in the 1950's; he worked and lived at his traditional house at the Tudor estate. The house was the center of the Getty oil.

Among the accomplishments achieved by Paul Getty were that he owned an art gallery. He took inspiration from his New York landlord Mrs. Amy Guest in the late 1930s. He bought the furniture at knock down prices I the depressed art market. Paul Getty bought several books at bargaining prices so he could have returns on his investment. Paul Getty was quite stingy, and hence he could not buy enough collections since he could not pay the full price. However, at the time of his death, he already owned more than six hundred times which amounted to four million dollars in value. When he died, all these items were transferred to the Getty Museum and the Getty Villa in Los Angeles after he died.

In Paul's youthful years he happened to be a great womanizer. This behavior agonized his Christian family. At only the age of twenty-five, a paternity suit was filed against him by a woman by the name Elsie Eckstrom; she claimed that Paul was the father of her newborn daughter by the name Paula. He tried to defend himself by using his legal team by claiming that the lady had a history of promiscuity. In the 1917, Paul agreed to make a ten thousand settlement, and the woman left together with her baby never to be heard of again.

Paul's Marriages, Divorce and Children

Paul was married and divorced five times. He had five kids from the four marriages. His first wedding was with Jeanette Demonte, which occurred in the year 1923. It is from this marriage that he got his first-born George Franklin Getty. They later divorced in the year 1926. George Franklin Betty was born in 1924 and died in the year 1974. His second marriage was in 1926 where he married a lady by the name Allene Ashby who was the daughter of a rancher in Texas. Allene did not sire any kid. The marriage, however, was bigamous since he had not divorced from Jeanette. The union, however, was short-lived, and it was dissolved in 1928 while he was still in Mexico.

Two years after the dissolution, Paul got married to his third wife who was named as Adolphine Helmle. They got a son whom they named Jean Ronald. Jean Ronald got a son by the name Christopher Getty who married Pia Miller the sister the princess of Greece. Helmle's father was a German doctor, and he was very opposed to the marriage since Ronald was divorced twice. The two decided to elope to Cuernavaca and finally settled in Los Angeles. After the birth of their first child, Paul developed disinterest in the marriage, and Helmle's father managed to convince her to return to Germany together with their child in the year 1929. The divorce was finalized in the year 1932, and Adolphine received punitive damages and was given custody of their son Ronald. Ronard was born in the year 1929 and died in the year 2009.

Paul then got married to his wife Ann Rork in the year 1932. Paul met Ann when she was just 14 years old. She became his romantic partner in the year 1930 and got married in 1932 since he had not finished his divorce process with Adolphine. Ann and Paul got two children, Eugen Paul Getty and Gordon Peter. Ann sued Paul for divorce in the year 1936 on the grounds of absenteeism and emotional abuse. She described to the court that there was a particular time that Paul forced her to view the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and she was heavily pregnant at the time. The court ruled in her favor, and she was awarded two thousand five hundred dollars per month as alimony. She was also awarded one thousand dollars as child support for her sons.

Paul's final marriage was with a singer by the name Louise Lynch. They got married in 1939 and were blessed with only one son who was named Timothy. Timothy died in the year 1958 after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was only 12 years old when he died. Getty's family found its way to the media when Teddy published a memo reporting how Paul scolded for spending too much money as she sought treatment for their son. Getty who was living in England at the time did not attend the funeral. Teddy later divorced him later that year. Teddy died at the age of 103 in April 2017.

Kidnapping of Getty's Grandson John Paul Getty Junior

On the year 1973 in July, Getty's 16-year-old grandson was abducted in Rome. Before the kidnapping, the young man had already been expelled from more than seven schools in total, and he was already involved in drugs. In school, Paul was regarded as a bad influence and parents mostly advised their kids against his company. The kidnappers demanded a ransom worth seventeen million dollars for the young man to be released. The family had thought it to be a ploy by the teenager to extort money from the grandfather. Paul Getty infamously said that he had fourteen grandchildren and if he paid the ransom he would have fourteen kidnapped children. Paul also stated that agreeing to the demands of terrorists and criminals only led to increased lawlessness. After this, an envelope with a lock of hair and an ear arrived together with the daily newspaper. The kidnappers threatened to mutilate the young man unless the family paid the required ransom.

After the incident, the family realized that the kidnappers meant business. After a series of negotiations, the kidnappers reduced the ransom money. John Getty junior was found alive in the Lauria filling station in the province of Potenza not long after the ransom was paid. The nine kidnappers were later arrested, but only two of them were convicted. The young man was severely traumatized by the event, and he resorted to drugs and became a heavy drug addict. In 1981 John Paul junior suffered a stroke which left him nearly blind and partially paralyzed for the rest of his life. He later died 30 years later at the age of 54. He had been married to a German model by the name Gisela, and at just the age of nineteen, he bore his first son by the name Balthazar. Paul junior later divorced his wife Gisela in the year 1993, but he remained in touch with his former wife. It is said that she occasionally too him for rides while he was in the wheelchair. His mother took care of him to his death.

Balthazar, the great-grandson of Paul Getty, was an actor and a musician. He worked in films since he was twelve years old. In the film the lord of flies, he was given the role of the schoolboy. Since then he has made several films including the young guns and the natural born killers and also the hit series by the name brother and sisters. He also worked as a fashion model in the year 2000. They have a son by the name Cassius Paul and three daughters. The marriage almost ended in the year 2008 after he was photographed kissing a model. His life has however been found to be successful as compared to that of his grandfather and father...