J. Paul Getty Net Worth & Biography

This biography article is centered on the life and success of J. Paul Getty, an American businessman who is popularly remembered as the first billionaire and independent oil producer in the world. Son of an oil businessman, George Getty, young Paul took to business and learned the tricks of the trade at an early age while working as an inexperienced laborer at his father’s company. No sooner, he started his own business and within two years, he registered his name as one of his country’s millionaires. However, he went into a period of exile for two years to live life as a playboy in Los Angeles and eventually returned to the oil business in 1919. He worked hard from then, building his father’s company to become a thriving self-sufficient oil company, specializing in oil drilling and marketing. It was his risk-taking capabilities and shrewd sense of business that helped him grow the company to broader horizons and multiply the fortune of his personal wealth. His top-notch business intelligence led to 200 acquisitions of different oil companies into Getty Oil Corporation. In 1957, he was named the richest American alive by Fortune magazine. Nine years later, he was inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records when he became the world’s richest private citizen with an estimated $1.2 billion net worth. Despite huge profits and momentously accumulated wealth, J. P. was a miser and did not indulge in any philanthropic activities. But nothing has taken away his reputation as one of the wealthiest Americans that has ever lived.

Early Life: Childhood, Family, Education

He was born Jean Paul Getty in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, to Sarah Catherine McPherson Risher and George. His father was a former lawyer who entered the oil industry in 1903.

In 1905, the family acquired stakes in the oil business and relocated to Los Angeles, California, where Paul started attending a private school. He later entered the Polytechnic High School from which he graduated from the same in 1909. He then enrolled at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and also the University of California at Berkeley. In 1912, he transferred to Oxford University in England and graduated from the institution two years later with a degree in political science and economics.

While at college, Paul spent the summers working at oil fields in Oklahoma which his father owned. It was during that time that he learned the important aspects of the business.

Professional Life: Entrepreneurial Career

In 1914, Jean Paul Getty moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to start his own career as an oil producer. He took financial assistance in the form of a loan from his father for this venture. He, however, operated independently from the Minnehoma Oil Company owned by his father.

With the financial aid he received from his father, Paul started purchasing and selling oil leases. He bought an oil lease for $500 in Tulsa. Though his business rivals thought his move to be a reckless decision, the business fetched him his first huge share of profit.

By 1916, he earned his first million. But his mind was elsewhere despite finding huge success in the oil business. He retired from being an oil businessman to become a Los Angeles playboy. Three years later, he re-entered the oil business to resume from where he stopped but by then he had lost the respect and admiration his father and other associates felt for him.

Paul spent the better part of the 1920s working closely with his father, collaborating with him in drilling oil wells and trading oil leases. Through years of working very hard, he was able to build himself a fortune worth three million dollars. He also acquired a third interest in the then-thriving Getty Oil Company. After his father died in 1930, Paul inherited a meager $500,000 of the $10 million his father left at his death.

When he assumed the position of the president in the Getty Oil company, he worked industriously and invested his resources intelligently. He restructured the company and positioned it in a way that it operated an autonomous business of drilling, refining, shipping, and selling oil. He then moved to make major reasonable acquisitions, including the Pacific West Oil Corporation and the Mission Corporation.

In 1949, he acquired a barren land near the border of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and in 1953, the land started producing approximately 16 million barrels a year, greatly boosting the fortune of the company. He acquired Skelly Oil and Tidewater Oil by the end of the 1950s decade, and in 1967, the companies merged to work as a single unit under Getty Oil Company. Following this, the profit of the company was increased and Paul’s personal wealth rose from millions to billions. To aid his expansion in the Middle East, Paul learned the Arabic language, and his expanding business helped him earn a controlling stake in more than 200 businesses including Getty Oil Corporation.

In addition to the oil business, Paul Getty ventured into the hotel business and also made successful real estate investments in the hotel industry. He owned the Pierre Hotel in New York City and purchased the Sutton Place in 1959 to become the center of Getty Oil and his related companies.

Personal Life: Relationships, Wife, Kids, Private Interests

Getty married five times in his life. In the first instance, he married Jeanette Demont in 1923 and they had a baby boy the following year. However, three years after they tied the knot they decided to legally separate.

In 1926, he married Allene Ashby, and this marriage did not last long as the two parted ways after two years.

In the same year that his second marriage ended, he married Adolphine Helmle and had a son with her. The marriage looked like it was heading to a wonderful until it hit the rocks in 1932.

His fourth wife was Ann Rork, and he went into wedlock with her in 1932. They were blessed with two sons. But much like his previous marriages, this too did not last and ended after four years.

For his last marriage, Paul wedded Louise Dudley Teddy Lynch in 1939 and divorced her in 1958. They had a son who sadly passed away the same year the two legally separated.

Paul Getty spent the later part of his life residing in the British Isles. He died on June 6, 1976 due to heart failure.

Apart from his business endeavors, this industrialist was an avid art collector. He erected the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1953. The trust runs the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. This museum is home to some of the exquisite art collections in the world, reportedly worth $2.7 billion

Paul Getty Net Worth: Salary, Income Sources, Assets

The American business magnate, Jean Paul Getty, had a recorded net worth of $2 billion at the time he breathed his last in 1976. It has been said that he made his wealth from the Getty Oil Company which he founded.

Despite that he was born into his father’s (George Getty) petroleum empire, Paul Getty made a name for himself as the first person in the world to have made over $1 billion as an independent oil producer. In 1957, he was named the richest American alive, and by 1966 he was named the wealthiest private citizen on the planet with a personal fortune of $1.2 billion. Though he has been dead for more than 40 years now, this man’s legacy lives on as one of the most prominent individuals in the oil and real industries.