John Paul Getty III was born on November 4, 1956, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and spent much of his childhood in Rome, Italy, as his father was the head of the Italian division of the Getty family oil business. His parents divorced in 1964, and in 1966 his father remarried the Dutch model and actress Talitha Pol. Their marriage lasted five years, during which time Paul's father and stepmother lived like hippies (very wealthy hippies, it should be noted) and divided their time between England and Morocco.

In early 1971, Paul was expelled from St. George's English School in Rome. His father returned to England, and young Paul remained in Rome, where he led a bohemian life. At 3 am on July 10, 1973 Paul Getty was kidnapped in Piazza Farnese in Rome. The kidnappers sent a ransom note demanding $17 million in exchange for his safe return. After reading the note, some family members suspected that the kidnapping was staged by Paul himself and was the prank of a rebellious teenager , since he used to often joke that the only way to get money out of his tight-fisted grandfather was by arranging his own kidnapping.

Paul was blindfolded and taken to a mountain refuge in Calabria. The kidnappers sent a second ransom message, which was delayed by a strike by Italian postal workers. Paul's father, who did not have that kind of money, asked for it from his father, Jean Paul Getty, whose fortune was already estimated at $2 billion, but was refused. Getty Sr. said that if he paid the kidnappers, his remaining 14 grandchildren would be kidnapped one by one. In November 1973, the daily newspaper received an envelope containing a lock of hair and a human ear, along with threats to permanently mutilate Paul unless the extortionists received $3.2 million within ten days.

Then Getty Sr. agreed to pay the ransom, but only $2.2 million, since that was the maximum tax-free amount. He lent the missing money to save his grandson to his son at 4% per annum. In the end, the kidnappers received approximately $2.9 million, and Paul was found alive in southern Italy on December 15, 1973, shortly after the ransom was paid.

Police detained nine kidnappers: a carpenter, an orderly, a former criminal and an olive oil salesman from Calabria, as well as several high-ranking members of the local mafia group, including Girolamo Piromalli and Saverio Mammoliti. Two of them were convicted and went to prison, the rest - including the mafiosi - were released due to lack of evidence. Most of the money disappeared without a trace.

In 1977, Paul Getty underwent surgery to restore the ear he had lost due to kidnappers. A number of writers have used this incident as inspiration for their books.

In 1974, Paul Getty married German Gisela Martine Zacher, who was five months pregnant. Paul knew Gisela and her twin sister Jutta before the abduction. Paul was 18 years old when his son Balthazar was born. In 1993, the couple divorced.

The incident destroyed Paul Getty. He became an alcoholic and drug addict, and his 1981 cocktail of Valium, methadone and liquor led to liver failure and a stroke that left him paralyzed and nearly blind.

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This skinny Yankee with cold blue eyes could easily go down in history as the richest man of his era - after all, he had more hot oil dollars than any of the Rockefellers. However, the world remembered him for another reason. Floor Getty Until his death he believed that his frail body was rented out to a powerful guest.
The mysterious creature that has taken over Paul Getty, forced him to wage oil wars, cold-bloodedly destroy competitors and hunt hundreds of women. It ruined his life and turned a vain American into the most unfortunate rich man on the planet.
As often happens, this man overwhelmed by passions was born into a family of Puritans who were accustomed to keeping their feelings in check. Irish George Getty and his wife Sarah, the daughter of Scottish emigrants, strictly followed the canons of the Methodist Church and believed that the Almighty rewards the observance of Christian commandments with wealth. Misfortune forced the devout Irishman to commit a dangerous act for a Christian: after the death of his ten-year-old daughter, who was carried away by the typhus epidemic that struck the Midwest in 1890, he began to seek solace in the occult sciences. George spent his evenings at seances, summoning spirits and begging them to facilitate the birth of an heir. One day, from the lips of a medium who had entered a trance, he finally heard the long-awaited news. A certain spirit, who told about himself only that during his lifetime he was endowed with imperial power in Ancient Rome, promised that in two years in the family Getty a son will be born.
The prophecy came true exactly. At Christmas 1892, a boy was born, to whom his parents gave the name Jean-Paul. The future creator of the oil empire grew up small, weak and ugly. Subsequently, he will remember that as a child he felt lonely and deprived of parental warmth. Sarah Getty she adored her son, but tried to restrain her feelings, fearing to spoil him, and forbade him to communicate with peers in order to avoid bad influence. Strict upbringing and numerous prohibitions played a bad joke on Paul: in the end, his violent temper burst out like steam from under the lid of a boiling cauldron. George was rarely at home, because he was busy with business - having started with the insurance business, he soon succumbed to the oil fever that had taken hold of Oklahoma and tirelessly pumped the magic liquid, steadily increasing his capital. In 1906 George Getty became a millionaire. Finally turning his attention to his grown-up son, he was surprised to discover that he had long been following not the Puritan principles accepted in the family, but his own, which caused horror in Father George. On the day he turned fourteen, Paul proudly announced that he had long since lost his virginity. At seventeen, he dropped out of school and plunged headlong into the nightlife, constantly bringing dubious girls into his house. The father did not know what to think: at times it seemed to him that he saw in front of him not his son Paul, but a completely different one, stranger. This “other” was resourceful, cunning and downright sex-crazed. Find an explanation for the changes that happened to his son George Getty I couldn't...
It all started with the statue of Caesar Trajan Adrian Augustus. Paul saw her image in a school textbook - and immediately the boy was overcome by a strange, inexplicable feeling, the nature of which he was able to understand much later. Many years later, he would experience a similar sensation, which he would call “a powerful attack of déjà vu,” when he picked up a broken piece of a marble statue. And then Paul was struck by the amazing resemblance of the mighty ruler’s face to his own. The boy, whom his teachers nicknamed him a walking encyclopedia, already knew something about reincarnation - the transmigration of souls. Gradually it began to seem to him that he was looking at the world through the eyes of a Roman dictator and hearing his menacing voice. This voice was terribly annoying, but it was impossible to resist his orders.
Unexpectedly for himself, Paul seduced two school girlfriends. But the restless spirit “sitting inside” did not calm down: it demanded more and more victims. And only after reading all the books on Roman history that he could find in the school library did Paul understand what was going on: Caesar Hadrian, one of the greatest rulers of Ancient Rome, was known for his excessive voluptuousness.
After death Getty stunned descendants found in his famous black notebook several hundred women's names written in a column in alphabetical order. And opposite each name is an address. Floor Getty mastered the most beautiful women planet - film actresses, millionaires, duchesses, seduced underage girls and traveled to brothels... They say that he was seriously planning to increase the number of mistresses on his Don Juan list to four hundred - according to legend, this is exactly how many concubines Caesar Hadrian had.
To wage sexual battles of this magnitude, money was needed. Only they could give the young man with the look and habits of a bat what the battle-hardened Roman emperor was used to taking by force. And Paul Getty began to create his own empire. He fanatically strived to achieve success, pumping oil tirelessly - from under a thick layer of orange Texas dust, from under snow-white Arabian sand... He waged endless oil wars, fighting for black gold with the rest of the world - and won, capturing more and more new ones. spheres of influence.
Getty creeping up on his victims slowly and carefully. Competitors did not immediately notice that mortal danger was threatening from a tiny office located on the third floor of the George V Hotel in Paris. Paul spent 24 hours in this office, sometimes even forgetting about food. I didn’t leave my office for months - I bought concessions over the phone, negotiated over the phone tax benefits with sultans and kings. By phone I ordered girls from Place Pigalle for a few hours. Just a few hours of sex - and he is ready for the oil war again... Ready to lead his army of sales agents, brokers and geologists, a whole fleet of tankers...
Within twenty years it had absorbed half of its competitors. And it is curious that each time the prey was several times larger than the predator. Yes, Paul Getty knew how to digest tasty morsels of any size.
In 1939, he tore to pieces and swallowed the giant Tide Water Oil concern - the former owners of this company for a long time did not even know about Paul’s existence Getty and his small office" Getty Oil" with a capital of only one and a half million dollars. A quarter of a century later, he defeats the once all-powerful Standard Oil, owned by the Rockefeller clan. By the mid-60s, profits " Getty Oil" reach fantastic proportions. According to the calculations of Fortune magazine, in those years Getty daily increased his capital by half a million dollars.
The British nobility hated him because he bought up the estates of bankrupt aristocrats on the cheap. "Floor Getty devours the corpses of bankrupts and unfortunate people,” Lord Beaverbrook once remarked and he was partly right. Paul’s own English estate Sutton Place Getty bought from the bankrupt Duke of Sutherland at a predatory price - for only 600 thousand pounds. In those years, the oil tycoon earned that kind of money in two days...
His trophies included not only swallowed oil companies and mansions bought for next to nothing, but also beautiful women. The biggest victory of my life Getty considered an affair with Marie Tessier, the grandniece of one of the Russian Grand Dukes. The eccentric blonde in every possible way emphasized her kinship with the Romanovs, and her many admirers were indeed inclined to find typically Russian royal traits in the character of this lady - reckless courage, sophisticated lordship and a penchant for drunken adventures.
They met at a social reception with the Dukes of Gloucestershire. Marie Tessier shone among young admirers. Getty I just recently turned fifty-five. For some time he kept an eye on her from the far corner of the palace hall. Then he quickly got up from the sofa, walked up with rapid steps, introduced himself, and spoke. A few hours later, the half-naked Marie Tessier was already decorating the interior of the boudoir in the Getty Sutton Place Castle. Subsequently, she admits to interviewers that the famous tycoon amazed her with his cold intellect, icy endurance and fantastic memory. “Oh, just think: he recited Lincoln’s speeches to me by heart!” - Marie admired. For the oil emperor, the relationship with Marie Tessier was a real triumph. Just think, a relative of the Russian tsars is in his bed!
However, he forgot her just like everyone else. Floor Getty quickly lost interest in his live trophies. None of his five wives managed to stay with Paul for more than three years. More and more often they said behind his back: “Mr. Getty seriously ill. He cannot love either women or his own children." A strange disease... Its symptoms were always the same. As soon as the next wife announced to him that she was pregnant, Paul ceased to experience any feelings other than irritation towards her , and to the unborn child. Even to those who knew Paul well Getty, it seemed inexplicable. They did not know that Emperor Hadrian fiercely hated everyone in whom he saw his successors, and died childless...
When the grandson of oil tycoon Jean-Paul Getty The third one was kidnapped by Calabrian mafiosi, an old man Getty refused to pay them a two million dollar ransom. Only after receiving the boy's severed ear in the mail did he agree to hand over the money. And, it seems, he regretted it for a long time. Until the end of his life, he was convinced that the kidnapping of his grandson was arranged by the 16-year-old boy himself and his cunning mother in order to force old Paul to fork out... When the mutilated boy was released from captivity, Getty refused to talk to him on the phone. Soon his granddaughter died of AIDS, he did not even send her parents a sympathetic telegram.
The fate of his children and grandchildren worried Paul much less than the future of the noble spirit that “dwelled” in his own body: Getty He was terribly afraid that after his death the Roman emperor would be forced to move into an unworthy shell. What if it turns out to be the frail body of some Chinese rickshaw puller or, worse, a long-tailed baboon... “Sexual activity is one of the nine causes of reincarnation,” he read in one of the books. “As for the other eight, they are insignificant.” Old man Getty perceived sex as medicine. It is known that he made love until his old age, carefully selecting his partners. Already in his nineties, he dragged his secretary into bed...
The purple toga of the formidable ruler of Rome had become firmly attached to him over the years. His idol donated huge amounts of money for the creation of monuments and museums; he built himself one of the most luxurious villas of that time in the Roman suburb of Tibur (now Tivoli). Getty in turn, he invested a fortune in works of art. His first purchase was a precious van Goyen landscape, which Paul liked simply because the rural house in the picture was somewhat reminiscent of the sweet haylofts of his native Oklahoma. The next acquisition was “Portrait of the Merchant Martin Luten” by the great Rembrandt. It is possible that at the time of purchase Getty I didn’t quite understand who Rembrandt was. He was attracted by its cheapness - it was in 1940, and the previous owner of the painting, frightened by the approach of the Nazis, a Dutch Jew, gave it up for only $65 thousand.
Columnists of secular magazines and just guests Getty did not miss the chance to mock the aesthetic taste of the owner of Sutton Place. “He chooses the masters’ canvases based on the principle of matching the color of the wallpaper,” we find in the Los Angeles Times of the late sixties. Paula Getty didn’t care about the reviews of poor clickers - he knew that he was guided not by the color of the wallpaper, but... by the price. He bought only what was sold at a bargain price - as a rule, from bankrupts and drunken aristocrats selling family heirlooms.
However, the only thing that really interested him was marble sculptures. Mister Getty felt an inexplicable craving for them: he acquired ancient Roman sculptures in parts from different owners, as if he was assembling marble “transformers” from disparate parts. In the late 60s, I bought a fragment of a Roman statue of Hercules from Lord Lansdowne - a fragment of a torso with a shoulder. And suddenly... Old Getty he trembled - it seemed to him as if he had seen this Hercules in a past life. He immediately called Lord Lansdowne back and asked where the sculpture had been found. The lord's answer made the unfortunate old man numb - he stood for several minutes in silence, pressing the telephone receiver to his ear. It turns out that the statue was discovered during excavations of the ancient palace of Villa dei Papiri, buried under a layer of volcanic ash after the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. (this eruption was fatal not only for the luxurious villa, but also for two cities - Pompeii and Herculaneum). Now to Semi Getty it seemed that he had found an explanation for why the marble Hercules seemed like an old acquaintance to him - after all, according to historians, the great Roman emperor Trajan Adrian Augustus lived for several years at Villa dei Papiri...
The fragment of the ancient statue had an inexplicable effect. The old man dropped everything and went to Italy - where archaeologists discovered the ruins of a palace under a layer of ash. Once again, he felt like he was experiencing a bout of déjà vu. “I have already been here in a past life,” the billionaire wrote in his diary. He ordered detailed drawings of the building to be made - the seventy-year-old American was already completely in the grip of a crazy idea. He decided to build an exact replica of Villa dei Papiri in Malibu. And he set to work with the energy of a young fanatic. By order Getty 16 tons of golden travertine stone were specially brought from Tivoli (it was from this stone that Trajan’s Villa in Tivoli was built). Oil millions, it seemed, were able to turn back time - the gardens of the luxurious ancient palace once again turned green under the sun, the splashes of fountains and waterfalls sparkled...
So private house Getty in Malibu has turned into a unique museum, a repository of precious paintings, sculptures and antiques. The paradox was that the owner of this luxurious estate never saw it with his own eyes. Floor Getty supervised the construction from London - across the ocean. He was not destined to visit the renovated Villa dei Papiri. The fact is that, due to his old age, he could no longer endure transatlantic sea voyages. And I was terrified of flying on airplanes.
Towards the end of his life, he began to be haunted by fears and inexplicable manias. According to the servants, Adrian’s evil spirit had completely subjugated the old man’s psyche and was now mocking him. At first, Paul surrounded himself with lions. Lions... noble royal predators... only they can protect - an inner voice whispered to him. Love for predators was accompanied by attacks of misanthropic anger towards children and servants. Getty got himself a live lion named Nero. And he placed a stuffed lion cub on the tabletop of his work bureau...
Having learned from somewhere that Caesar Hadrian had died in his own bed, he ordered the bed to be removed from his room and spent his nights sitting in an easy chair and wrapped in a blanket. IN last years life, his face, disfigured by unsuccessful plastic surgery(the third in a row), looked like the mask of an ancient Greek tragic actor. Or not: on the death mask of the Roman emperor. He sat motionless for hours in a chair with eyes closed. On his lap the stuffed lion cub Nero was “napping”...
Floor Getty died in his sleep. The great Don Juan of modern times was killed by prostate cancer. The coffin was flown from England to California. And immediately after death the shadow of this strange man, who put his life on the altar of serving his own mania, hung over his heirs.
It all started with a will. The announcement of the document had the effect of a bomb exploding. Paul's four sons and fourteen grandchildren Getty For quite a long time they could not realize what had happened: the old man had practically deprived all his loved ones of their inheritance. Paul's sons received a pittance. Devoted servants - the head of security, a massage therapist, a doctor and a permanent secretary - little more. All your billions Getty bequeathed... to a museum in Malibu.
It was a desperate attempt to break into immortality. Like Emperor Hadrian, who immortalized his name with the construction of the renewed Roman Pantheon, the old Getty tried to put all the energy of his dollars into one giant leap to eternal glory. A villa in Malibu overnight turned into the richest museum in the history of mankind (today experts estimate its active funds at two and a half billion dollars). Such a clear demonstration of love for art brought the children of the newly-minted philanthropist to the brink of bankruptcy. But this, as it turned out, was only the first act of a family tragedy. Getty. He was followed by a second and a third.
The eldest son George, until recently a thriving businessman, owner of golf clubs and thoroughbred horses, was quickly destroyed by alcoholism. Raised in constant fear In front of his all-powerful and contemptuous father, he committed suicide by taking a dozen sleeping pills and washing them down with a glass of Kentucky bourbon. And to top it off, he stuck a roast fork into his stomach. "He was killed by his own father!" - the wife of the deceased will shout to reporters through tears.
Second son Getty- Ronald, born from a marriage with a blond German woman, Fini Helmle, grew up away from his father and always believed that he hated him. “Even after his death, my father, like a ghost, invisibly participated in my fate,” Ronald admitted in an interview. From the wealthy owner of the California chain of Radisson Manhattan Beach hotels, he turned into a poor citizen of South Africa, wandering around the Bantustans in a mobile home on wheels. The late father almost finished him off, leaving Ronaldo in his will... only his own diary with contemptuous remarks about his son, found on almost every page.
The third son of the oil emperor - Paul Getty Jr.- went down in history as the “golden hippie from Morocco.” For a long time he caroused and debauched himself in his African villa with the strange Arab-French name Palais de Zahir - Palace of Passion. This villa on the outskirts of Marrakech became a hangout for dozens of wandering hippies: here, in the late sixties, they added hashish to the culinary cream for cakes and held long sessions of group sex under the southern stars. According to friends Getty Jr., he tried to “outdo” his dad in the sweet hobby of breaking women’s hearts - they say that the billionaire’s son managed to drag Brigitte Bardot into his bed. However, the drug “idyll” in the Moroccan palace collapsed overnight: Getty Jr. was forced to go to the clinic, where he was diagnosed with diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver and a whole bunch of chronic venereal diseases.
The youngest of the old descendants Getty- Gordon - suffered from family misfortunes to a lesser extent. Perhaps only because during his father’s lifetime he preferred to communicate with him as little as possible. However, he was also touched by the heavy paw of fate: all Gordon’s hopes of opening his Opera theatre. To a certain extent, he relied on the funds that were due to him according to his father’s will, and he miscalculated.
The fate of the grandchildren was also tragic. Paul Jr.'s eldest son, Jean-Paul Getty The third, returning from the basement where his mafia kidnappers hid him, was forced to live the rest of his days with a plastic prosthesis instead of an ear. His psyche was forever crippled: he could not believe that his grandfather refused to pay a ransom for his release. He soon became addicted to whiskey and drugs. A gigantic dose of heroin plunged him into a protracted coma that lasted several weeks. Jean-Paul woke up blind and paralyzed.
A few years later, his beloved sister Eileen, who had recently married the son of actress Elizabeth Taylor, died of AIDS.
All this forced the youngest of the grandchildren, Mark Getty, seriously think about the mystery " generational curse"Mark carefully studied the history of other wealthy families in America and came to the conclusion: tragedies plagued only those clans where relatives hated each other. Mark even wrote several articles on this topic; he mentioned the Rockefeller family as a positive example. "The Rockefeller house was dominated by world, because there they heard a lot about Christ’s commandment of love for one’s neighbor, wrote Mark Getty. - And in the house Getty, on the contrary, no one knew about this commandment, but everyone was too well aware of the whims of Caesar Hadrian..." This conclusion did not help the unfortunate family in any way - the misfortunes continued. The powerful spell that deprived him of well-being lost its power only after the centenary of Paul's birth has passed Getty.
By the mid-90s, Heaven seemed to take pity on the descendants of the oil emperor. Emaciated and hunched over, Paul Getty Jr. finally recovered from drug addiction and even became interested in cricket on the advice of his old friend Mick Jagger. Gordon Getty got rich, bought himself a Boeing and a mansion in California. The impoverished Ronald had hope - his daughters, as if by agreement, married millionaires. Even in the house of a paralytic Getty III things went smoothly: the son of an unfortunate disabled person, Baltazar, began a successful career in Hollywood, starring in the film “Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves.”
Offspring Getty, who had been at enmity for a long time, began to visit each other...
There's only one place on earth that none of them like to go to, and that's the old family estate in Malibu. Here in the main hall of the museum there is a marble bust of the late owner, made during his lifetime. A long, straight nose, thin, compressed lips... The sculptor, on the orders of the old man, especially emphasized the similarity of the original with the ancient statues of the Roman Caesar Hadrian. And now for everyone who is familiar with the history of this strange billionaire, the marble statue raises the same question: is the irrepressible spirit of the Roman emperor looking for a new refuge?

"All the Money in the World"
in 30 amounts

History of the Getty Family from George to Ridley

Ridley Scott's "All the Money in the World" is being released - the story of the kidnapping of Paul Getty III, for whom his grandfather, the richest man on the planet, refused to pay the demanded ransom. Weekend looked into the history of the scandalous dynasty and compiled a brief financial report on what you need to know to watch the film

Founder famous dynasty - George Getty- started his career selling insurance. After receiving a law degree from the University of Michigan, 30-year-old Getty moved to Minnesota in 1884 and joined a law firm, deciding to focus on corporate and insurance law. The cost of insurance was $18 (about $430 in modern dollars) - the work was considered very lucrative, and that same year Getty started a family, marrying Sarah McPherson Reisher. In 1892, two years after the death of their first daughter from typhoid fever, their son was born - Jean Paul Getty. The history of this family would hardly be of particular interest if in 1903 George Getty had not quit his law firm, moved to Oklahoma and started oil production. Thus began the Getty dynasty.

George Getty turned out to be a successful businessman - in the first couple of years he earned about $1 million. In 1906, he registered his own oil production company Minnehoma Oil Company and moved his family from Oklahoma to Los Angeles.

His son Jean Paul turned out to be an equally successful businessman. Having successfully invested money borrowed from his father in his own oil developments in Tulsa, he earned his first million before he turned eighteen. A few years later, he and his father merged the oil fields, founding the company on which they would later create Getty Oil.

Prosperous oil magnates needed their own residence. The Tudor-style house was built in 1921 by order of George Getty and cost the family $83 thousand, which is about 1 million in today's equivalent. In 1975, the family donated the residence to the city - since then "Getty House" became the official residence of the mayor of Los Angeles.

Getty family residence in Los Angeles, 1920s

Despite the success that accompanied father and son, the relationship between them invariably deteriorated. During the 1920s, Jean Paul managed quadruple your wealth, marry three times and divorce twice. The father, an ultra-conservative descendant of Irish Calvinists, categorically did not approve of his son’s lifestyle, believing that his love for women would ruin the family business. He expressed his dissatisfaction with his son in the most obvious way - in his will.

George Getty died in 1930, leaving behind $10 million. Of this, Jean Paul received only 500 thousand George Getty bequeathed his main asset to his wife Sarah, who also received the oil producing company George F. Getty, Inc. However, she immediately appointed Jean Paul to the position of manager.

Jean Paul Getty and Teddy Lynch, 1939

In 1939, Jean Paul Getty married for the fifth and last time. By this time, he has four sons aged from 5 to 15 years. Life with opera singer Teddy Lynch, who will give birth to his fifth child, began with the signing of a prenuptial agreement - Jean Paul agreed to pay for his wife’s studies in Italy on the condition that she undertakes to pay him 10% from each subsequent fee. According to Lynch herself, Getty “earned” the most money, $100, thanks to her role in Billy Wilder’s “The Lost Weekend.” Their marriage, however, lasted 19 years - Lynch filed for divorce from Getty only in 1958, after Getty refused to come from England to the funeral of their 12-year-old son, who died of brain cancer.

In 1949, Jean Paul made a deal with the king Saudi Arabia Abdul-Aziz II: for $9.5 million and another 1 million annually, Getty Oil received exclusive rights to develop a plot of land on the border of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Launch of the tanker Jean Paul Getty in Le Havre, 1960

It took four years and $30 million before an oil deposit was discovered on the site acquired in Saudi Arabia. In total, the Getty Oil company invested about $600 million in this area. Since 1953, the company began to consistently produce 16 million barrels of oil per year here.

In 1957, Jean Paul Getty was given the official status of a billionaire: the business magazine Fortune estimated his fortune at least $700 million, and Forbes - at $1.6 billion. In the same year, in an interview, Jean Paul admitted that he spends money only on business and works art and never carries more than $25.

In 1960, Jean Paul Getty moved to England. The year before, he had purchased a 16th-century mansion in Surrey. Sutton Place for $840 thousand. By the time Jean Paul arrived, the mansion was surrounded by an additional wall - the estate was guarded around the clock by several dozen people and 20 specially trained dogs. Jean Paul himself moved around the area exclusively by car, causing genuine hatred from his neighbors.

Jean Paul Getty in front of Sutton Place, 1960

Getty also took his collection of paintings with him to Surrey, which by this time already included Titian and Rubens. Getty had been buying old masters over the previous ten years; the exact cost of the collection was impossible to determine, but, according to Forbes, it was at least $4 million.

In 1962, Getty installed a payphone in Sutton Place; a call from it cost visitors an average of 10 cents. The billionaire's close friends called on his personal line, while others had to pay for the connection. Getty himself said that he installed the payphone after his visitors began using the house as an international call center.

In 1966, Jean Paul Getty was inducted into Guinness Book of Records as the richest man on the planet. His fortune was estimated at $4 billion, he owned about 200 different businesses, he was divorced five times and had four sons. Three of them - George Franklin Getty II, John Getty Jr. and Gordon Getty - worked for their father's company.

Liberation of Paul Getty III, 1973

In 1973, Getty's 16-year-old grandson, aspiring actor Paul Getty III, had just been expelled from British International School St. George's, was kidnapped in Rome near the Farnese Palazzo. The kidnappers demanded $17 million as ransom. Jean Paul Getty refused to pay. “I have fourteen grandchildren, and if I pay even a penny today, then tomorrow I will have fourteen kidnapped grandchildren,” - said the billionaire in an official address.

Six months after the abduction, the Getty family received a letter containing a lock of hair and the severed ear of Paul Getty III, and the elder Getty had to enter into negotiations with the criminals, after which the ransom amount was reduced to 2.9 million. The billionaire agreed to pay $2.1 million - this was the maximum amount that was not subject to tax. He lent the remaining 800 thousand to his son John Getty Jr. (father of the kidnapped person) at 4% per annum. Paul Getty III was found at a gas station in Lauria. Nine people were subsequently arrested in connection with his kidnapping, including two senior members of the Calabrian County mafia.

In 1974, Getty opened Getty Museum- the main thing of my life. The billionaire’s personal collection of European art was now located in the center of Los Angeles, and anyone could look at it - admission to the museum was free.

Jean Paul Getty and his legal adviser Robina Lund at an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, 1965

Jean Paul Getty died in England in 1976 at the age of 83. His fortune was estimated at $6 billion. His son Gordon received the most, 2 billion, according to his will. He also took over control of Getty Oil. Parallel to business Gordon Getty, a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory, continued his studies in academic music - in 1986 he received the Kennedy Center Award for outstanding achievements in music.

According to the will, the Getty Museum received more than 661 million immediately and another 1.2 billion five years later. In 1982, it became one of the richest cultural institutions in the world - the average annual budget of the Getty Museum is estimated at 40 million.

Unknown author, probably Lysippos. "The Athlete of Fano", 300 BC. uh

In 1977, the museum paid a sensational $4 million for a Hellenistic sculpture. "The Athlete from Fano". The auction was won by the Metropolitan, and the sculpture, whose authorship is attributed to Lysippos, became one of the main exhibits of the museum. The legality of the purchase is still disputed by Italian authorities. In 1990, the Getty Museum purchased "Irises" Vincent Van Gogh for $54 million - the transaction became one of the most expensive purchases in the history of the museum.

The death of Jean Paul, although it increased the fortune of his heirs, did not improve relations between them. In 1981, Paul Getty III, never fully recovered from his kidnapping, suffered a stroke caused by a drug overdose—the 25-year-old heir to the Getty empire went blind and ended up in a wheelchair. His father, John Getty Jr., who was once again being treated for drug addiction at that moment, refused to pay for his son’s treatment. Paul Getty III achieved a monthly payment of $28 thousand through the court.

Faithful to his father's behests, John Getty Jr. also preferred to spend money on business and art rather than on family. An avid Anglophile, in 1984 he made one of the largest private donations in the history of London's National Gallery - literally from the ward of a London hospital, where he was once again being treated for drug addiction, he donated £50 million. According to legend, this ward was to thank him Margaret Thatcher herself came for her generosity. That same year, he donated £100,000 to a fund to help British miners.

That same year, John Getty Jr. opened a grant program on behalf of the Getty Foundation to support art historical research. By 1990, about $20 million had been spent on the program, and the fund's projects included electronic cataloging of all art museums in Los Angeles, digitization of the collection of the National Gallery in Prague, and a personal grant for the Museum fine arts Houston for the preservation of Latin American art.

$ 10 000 000 000

While John Getty Jr. was engaged in cultural philanthropy, his brother Gordon, who once joined his father’s company so as not to upset him and then took over its management, dealt with the family business. In 1984, he sold Getty Oil to Texaco for $10 billion.

Of all the children of John Getty Jr., his son Mark inherited his entrepreneurial talent. In 1995, he founded the Getty Images photo agency, which now has an archive of about 80 million images with an average price of $100 per photo. In 2008, Mark Getty sold Getty Images to Hellman & Friedman for $2.4 billion.

A book was published in 1995 English writer John Pearson's "The Tormentingly Rich: The Scandalous Successes and Misfortunes of the Getty Heirs." First fictionalized family chronicle Getty enjoyed modest success, the NYT summed it up: “The author wanted to portray greed as a tragedy, but it turned out vulgar at best.” However, the image of a greedy family with a cruel and insane tyrant at its head naturally took root in popular culture. John Getty Jr. died in 2003, his son Paul Getty III died in 2011. In 2015, after the death of all participants in the tragic story, David Scarpa wrote the script for “All the Money in the World” based on Pearson’s book.

$ 25 000 000 000

The script immediately made it onto Hollywood's Script Blacklist, an annual report by former Universal Pictures producer Franklin Leonard of the best and yet to be purchased new scripts, which he has compiled since 2005. Films based on scripts from The Black List are consistently nominated for Oscars and have earned the studios a total of $25 billion since 2005. Ridley Scott took on the film adaptation of the story of the kidnapping of Paul Getty III, and Kevin Spacey was cast in the role of Jean Paul Getty.

The original budget for Ridley Scott's film was $40 million. In October 2017, 15 men accused Kevin Spacey of sexual assault. After this, Ridley Scott announced that he would completely cut Spacey out of the film and re-shoot all his scenes with another actor. The new performer of the role of Jean Paul Getty was Christopher Plummer. The additional nine-day shoot for All the Money in the World cost the studio $10 million.

Kevin Spacey as Jean Paul Getty, 2016

The additional fee for additional filming for the performer of one of the main roles in the film, Mark Wahlberg, amounted to $1.5 million. His colleague, actress Michelle Williams, who played the role of Abigail Harris-Getty, the mother of Paul Getty III, received $800 per working day. After the difference in salaries between Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams became known to the press, Wahlberg, on behalf of Williams, donated his fee for the film to the Time's Up movement, organized by Hollywood actresses, screenwriters, agents and directors to combat sexual harassment in the workplace. The movement arose after more than 50 women accused one of Hollywood's most powerful producers, Harvey Weinstein, of sexual assault.

From left to right: Mark Wahlberg, Ridley Scott and Christopher Plummer on the set of All the Money in the World, 2017

On this moment“All the Money in the World” grossed nearly $14 million less than its budget. Ridley Scott has already stated that this is the consequences of the scandal with Kevin Spacey. Christopher Plummer, however, for his role as Jean Paul Getty was nominated for an Oscar in the category "Best male role supporting actor." However, the Getty family was dissatisfied with the nomination: Ariadne Getty, sister of Paul Getty III, publicly criticized the film. "The film supports the misconception that our family is obsessed only with money. But that's not true. We weren’t raised that way, and we’re not raising our children that way,” she said in an interview.

He was also an avid collector of art and antiques, and his collection became the basis for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California, to which Getty's will bequeathed $661 million upon his death. In 1953, he founded the J. Paul Getty Trust, the art world's wealthiest organization, which governs the Getty Museum, the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the Getty Conservation Institute. .

Jean Paul Getty was born on December 15, 1892, the son of George Franklin Getty, who was in the oil business in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Getty studied at the University of Southern California, then the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1914 graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford with a degree in economics and political science. During the summer holidays, Jean Paul worked for his father's oil company in Oklahoma.

Having founded his own fuel company in Tulsa, Getty made his first million by June 1916, but already in 1917 he announced that he was quitting and was going to settle in Los Angeles to lead the life of a rich playboy. Although Getty eventually returned to business, he lost his father's respect. Getty Sr. died in 1930 and before his death he was tormented by the thought that Jean Paul would destroy the family enterprise - and, of course, he told him about it.

For a couple of years, young Getty spent the money he earned on women and pleasures, but in 1919 he returned to Oklahoma and in the 1920s added $3 million to his already considerable fortune. A long series of marriages and divorces (Getty was married 5 times) upset his father so much that George left him only $500,000 of the $10 million upon his death. The Great Depression spared Getty's capital because he was a very shrewd investor. On the contrary, it was during these years that he launched a series of mergers and acquisitions, ending only in 1967 with the creation of the giant oil corporation Getty Oil. Beginning in 1949, Getty paid millions of dollars to Arab sheikhs for the concession of a piece of barren land on the border of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. No one found oil there, and Getty spent what seemed like $30 million for nothing in four years, but Getty's oil rigs have produced 2.5 million cubic meters of oil a year since 1953, making him one of the richest men in the world. In addition, he learned to speak Arabic and enjoyed unprecedented influence in the Middle East.

In the 50s he moved to England and became a famous Anglophile. He lived and worked in a 16th-century Tudor mansion called Sutton Place near Guildford, inviting British and Arab friends and business associates to his traditional English country home.

Getty remained in Great Britain (UK) for the rest of his life and died of heart failure on June 6, 1976, at the age of 83.

Getty married and divorced 5 times. The second marriage was childless, and the remaining four wives bore him five sons. He wrote a very successful autobiography called How to Be Rich. His stinginess was legendary. At Sutton Place, for example, Getty replaced telephones with payphones after noticing that his telephone bills were rising, and those of his guests and employees who wanted to use telephone services had to pay for it out of their own pockets.

The episode with the kidnapping of Getty’s grandson, John Paul Getty III, in Rome is widely known, when extortionists demanded a ransom of 17 million dollars for the life of a 16-year-old teenager and sent the boy’s severed ear to the relatives to intimidate him. In the end, the kidnappers had to reduce the amount to $3 million, but even then Getty agreed to pay no more than $2.2 million—the maximum tax-free amount. He lent the remaining 800,000 to his son at 4% per annum. Paul was found alive, but this incident broke him - addicted to alcohol and drugs, he spent most of his life as an invalid. Jean Paul Getty explained his refusal to comply with the kidnappers' demands by saying that if he had agreed to the ransom, his grandchildren (15 in total) would have been kidnapped one by one.

To understand the story of Paul Getty's kidnapping, you need to know something about his family. Paul, also known as John Paul Getty III, was the grandson of Jean Paul Getty, the man who founded the Getty Oil Company in the 1940s and became extremely wealthy. He worked hard to earn his money and even studied Arabic to strengthen his position in the Middle East. Despite his enormous wealth, he was a very modest person in life, and he was very careful when it came to giving money to his children and grandchildren.

He was such a curmudgeon that his fifth wife, Teddy Getty Gaston, described in her 2013 memoir how upset she was. ex-husband due to the fact that he spent too much on the treatment of his six-year-old son Timmy, who had a brain tumor and was blind. When Timmy died in 1958, his father did not attend the funeral.

Not surprisingly, Getty refused to pay ransom for Paul after his abduction. But does this mean that money was more important to him than the call of blood?

Paul's father was a drug addict, and his stepmother died of a heroin overdose.

John Paul "Eugene" Getty Jr. and wife Gail Harris had four sons. Their son Paul was born in 1956, and when he was eight years old, his parents divorced. Eugene moved to Rome and married the Dutch actress Talita Paul. Both were addicted to drugs, and in 1972 Talita died of a heroin overdose. Police believe John Paul Getty Jr. was partly responsible for his wife's death, but no charges were brought against him.

Paul Jr. was expelled from school and lived a free life in Rome

Sixteen-year-old Paul lived in Rome near his father, who managed the Italian branch of the family business, Getty Oil Italiana. After Paul was expelled from private school, he lived independently and enjoyed a carefree teenage life without any obligations. Paul attended clubs and took part in political demonstrations. He made money by acting as an extra and selling jewelry and paintings.

He was kidnapped at age 16 and his captors demanded a multimillion-dollar ransom

On the night of his abduction, July 10, 1973, Paul was reported to be walking around Piazza Navona with a Belgian dancer. Italian mafiosi kidnapped Paul, dragging him into the back of a van, and then took him 500 kilometers from the capital, to the mountainous Calabria. The kidnappers contacted Paul's family and demanded a ransom of $17 million.

Paul's family thought he had made up the kidnapping story to get money.

Although kidnappings were not at all unusual in Italy at the time, there were indeed doubts at first that Paul had been kidnapped. People believed that he did it himself in order to get money from his grandfather, who broke up with his son. Paul was even known to make jokes about his kidnapping.

As a result, both the police and Paul's friends did not take the report of the kidnapping seriously. But Paul wrote a letter to his mother, begging her for help. It was published in TIME on July 30, 1973:

“Dear mother, I fell into the hands of kidnappers. Don't let them kill me! Make sure the police don't interfere. You absolutely should not take this as a joke... Do not make my kidnapping public.”

His grandfather refused to pay the ransom because he didn't want to set a precedent

It is common knowledge that Paul's grandfather was very careful with his money. Even though he was the richest man in the world, he did not like to waste his fortune. He was so “frugal” that it was said that in his London home, guests had to use a payphone specially installed for this purpose. His grandfather stopped supporting his son J. Paul Getty Jr. and daughter-in-law Gail Harris, so Paul's parents could not pay the ransom. They begged the head of the family for help, but he did not want to pay the kidnappers because he was afraid to create a precedent that could put all the other family members in danger. He told the newspapers: “If I pay even one cent now, I will have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”

The kidnappers cut off Paul's ear, after which the family finally paid a ransom for him

Gail, Paul's mother, was so outraged by her ex-father-in-law that she publicly shamed him to make him pay. After about four months, Paul's captors began to become restless. In November 1973, they sent a package with terrible contents to a Roman newspaper - a clump of bloody hair and a severed ear. The kidnappers wrote:

“This is Paul's first ear. If within 10 days the family still thinks this is a joke, we will send a second ear. In other words, we will send it to you in small pieces."

The kidnappers demanded $3.2 million, but the family patriarch reduced the price to $2.89 million. J. Paul Getty paid $2.2 million, which was tax-exempt; his son had to pay the rest. He borrowed this money from his father - at 4% per annum.

Exhausted and exhausted, Paul was released from captivity

On December 15, 1973, five months after his abduction, Paul was finally released. He stood in the rain on an Italian motorway for several hours before being picked up by a truck driver. Paul explained that he had been kidnapped and that he needed to call his mother. When the police arrived, Paul identified himself and said that the kidnappers had blindfolded him and transported him from place to place in different areas of Calabria several times over these months. It is clear that he was exhausted and hungry. Although he was generally unharmed (except for a missing ear), Paul suffered deep emotional and mental shock.

The police eventually tracked down the thieves.

To catch Paul's kidnappers, former American intelligence agent Fletcher Chase was entrusted with handing over the bags of lyres. Chase and a police officer were driving along a road outside Naples when the kidnappers' car pulled alongside them. The detectives handed them the ransom on the way, but were able to clearly see and remember the gang members. Upon returning to Rome, they were able to identify the criminals, and a month later they were detained. Paul returned to Italy to conduct an identification parade. A total of nine suspects were arrested, but only two were convicted.

After his release, Paul became addicted to drugs and alcohol

About a year after his release, 18-year-old Paul married 24-year-old Gisele Sacher, who was a photographer from Germany. Paul tried to get his life back on track and studied at Pepperdine University for one semester. He had two children, daughter Anna and son Balthazar, who became famous actor. But the consequences of the kidnapping made themselves felt. After some time, Paul and his family moved to New York, where he began to communicate with Andy Warhol and other artists. Soon he began to actively abuse drugs and alcohol.

Paul's grandfather didn't leave him a cent after his death.

When his grandfather passed away in 1976, Paul received nothing (his father only received $500). The family patriarch donated much of his fortune to charities and non-profit organizations such as the Getty Museum. Although he did not favor many members of his family, he was always generous towards women. The will included 11 women, including his wife, who was given a lifetime pension of $55,000 a year, a London widow, and a decorator, who each received a substantial stake in Getty.

Paul abused drugs and was wheelchair bound. He sued his father over medical bills

In 1981, after taking Valium, methadone and alcohol, Paul nearly died from an overdose. The consequences of the affect were devastating. Paul suffered a stroke and almost completely lost his speech and vision. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Paul was looked after by his mother, but this was not enough. Finding himself in dire financial straits, Paul sued his father, demanding $28,000 a month to pay for his medical expenses. He died in 2011 at the age of 54.

A 2017 film about Paul's life sparked controversy.

The film “All the Money in the World” was released on Christmas Eve at the end of 2017. Its release was accompanied by articles in newspapers, which had not been interrupted over the previous few weeks. The fact is that at the last minute the filmmakers decided to replace actor Kevin Spacey with Christopher Plummer - after Spacey was embroiled in a scandal due to allegations of sexual harassment. The film, based on John Pearson's book Painful Rich, received a rating of 77% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Following the film's release, Michael Mammoliti, the nephew of one of the kidnappers, spoke out against the film, saying it was inaccurate in portraying the teenager solely as a victim. He declared:

“This guy planned his kidnapping himself. He had far-reaching plans. All participants wanted to get easy money, but everything went wrong due to the fact that the grandfather did not want to pay.”

Especially for readers of my blog Muz4in.Net - translated by Dmitry Oskin based on an article from the site