James Reginato - Growing Up Getty: The Story of Americas Most Unconventional Dynasty

James Reginato

Growing Up Getty

The Story of Americas Most Unconventional Dynasty

Gallery Books

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2022 by James Reginato

Excerpts from The Getty from California Republic from THE WHITE ALBUM by Joan Didion. Copyright 1979 by Joan Didion. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All Rights Reserved.

Getty Diaries J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2010.IA.16)

Getty Family Papers J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (1987.IA.09-01)

Helen Ann Rork quotes: Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (1986.IA.48-06)

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition July 2022

GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or .

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

Interior design by Michelle Marchese

Jacket design by Faceout Studio

Jacket photographs by Getty Images

Author photograph Gasper Tringale

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Reginato, James, author.

Title: Growing up Getty: the story of Americas most unconventional dynasty / James Reginato.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021058317 (print) | LCCN 2021058318 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982120986 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982121006 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Getty family. | Children of the richUnited StatesBiography. | MillionairesUnited StatesBiography. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Rich & Famous | BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / LGBTQ+

Classification: LCC HC102.5.A2 R44 2022 (print) | LCC HC102.5.A2 (ebook) | DDC 305.5/234092 [B]dc23/eng/20211213

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021058317

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021058318

ISBN 978-1-9821-2098-6

ISBN 978-1-9821-2100-6 (ebook)

THE GETTY FAMILY PART ONE

THE GETTY FAMILY PART TWO

THE GETTY FAMILY PART THREE

Dynasties are notoriously difficult to maintain. By a common benchmark, a family cant really be considered a dynasty until it has endured for four generations with its fortune and social rank still standing. When a family does cross that threshold, to keep them all on track at least one of the heirs generally needs to produce something original.

With its fourth generation ascendant, the Gettys tick all the boxes, though they are an unconventional dynasty. This is only fitting considering their independent-minded patriarch, J. Paul Getty. Descended from Scots-Irish stock, he was born in 1892 in Minneapolis; as a teenager, he moved with his family to Los Angeles. In 1916, he struck out as a wildcatter in Oklahoma, where he hit black gold. He built his petroleum empire stealthily, while working out of suitcases in a succession of hotel suites he occupied as he roamed around Europe for decades. Something of a one-man band, he bested many of the so-called Seven Sisters, the corporate oil oligopolies, including Standard Oil. Rich as he became, he was never an Establishment guy. To the world at large he was relatively obscure until 1957, when Fortune magazine named him, at age sixty-four, the Richest American. With his estimated net worth in the range of $1 billion, he eclipsed Rockefellers, Mellons, Astors, and Du Pontsmembers of dynasties that had been established several generations earlier.

Becoming an overnight financial freak, as he later observed, he was catnip for the press, which lapped up his foibles, especially his frugality. In the beginning, the stories were comical. Everyone enjoyed the one about the Worlds Richest Manas Getty was soon enough surmised to beinstalling a pay phone for the convenience of guests at his residence, Sutton Place, the sixteenth-century mansion twenty-three miles outside of London that he bought in 1959. (After sailing from New York to London in June 1951, for what was supposed to be a few months, he never set foot again in America.)

But after the drug-related death of his firstborn child, George Franklin Getty II, in May 1973, andjust five weeks laterthe kidnapping of his eldest grandson, J. Paul Getty III, the saga of the Gettys took on a decidedly darker tone.

The Tragic Dynasty. A Cautionary Tale. The Getty Curse. Newspapers and magazines printed such headlines again and again, turning the Gettys into a poster family for dysfunction. They lived up to this billing in the 1970s and 1980s: JPGs third son, J. Paul Jr., battled drug addiction and depression for many years, as did some of Paul Jr.s children, including Aileen, and Paul III, who suffered a stroke in 1981 that left him a paraplegic until his death in 2011.

Then there were the familys legal battles, most of which revolved around the source of their immense wealth, the Sarah C. Getty Trust. Begun in 1934 at the behest of J. Paul Gettys mother, for whom it is named, it was initiated with capital of $3.5 million to provide primarily for her grandchildren. Throughout his life, Getty plowed his profits back into it and, in turn, borrowed from it to grow his business empire. In the 1960s, Gettys fourth son, Gordon, challenged his father in court over the trust, resulting in a seven-year-long suit that the younger Getty lost. Following the patriarchs death in 1976 at age eighty-three, the clan was dragged into the public eye again, this time thanks to the astounding bequest he madevalued then at $750 millionto his recently opened namesake museum in Malibu. A few years later, lawsuits erupted between family members over the sale of Getty Oil. After Texaco bought it for $10.1 billionthe biggest corporate acquisition in historythe relatives litigated for another eighteen months over management of the trust, the coffers of which at that point swelled to $4 billion.