[4] A book published in 1996 ranked him as the 67th wealthiest American who ever lived (based on his wealth as a percentage of the concurrent gross national product).

[7] In 1903, when Jean was 10 years old, his father traveled to Bartlesville, Oklahoma and bought the mineral rights for 1,100 acres of land.

[8]: 20 As newly minted millionaires, the family moved to Los Angeles, but J. Paul Getty later returned to Oklahoma.

[10] 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.

In the autumn of 1914, George Getty gave his son $10,000 (equivalent to $300,000 in 2023) to invest in expanding the family's oil field holdings in Oklahoma.

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.

The trust enabled Getty to have easy access to ready capital, which he was funneling into the purchase of Tidewater Petroleum stock.

[12] Since 1953, Getty's gamble produced 16 million barrels a year, which contributed greatly to the fortune responsible for making him one of the richest people in the world.

[8]: 72  A fan of 18th-century France, Getty began buying furniture from the period at reduced prices because of the depressed art market.

"[8]: 84  Nonetheless, at the time of his death he owned more than 600 works valued at more than $4 million, including paintings by Rubens, Titian, Gainsborough, Renoir, Tintoretto, Degas, and Monet.

[16] In 1917, when he was 25, Elsie Eckstrom filed a paternity suit against Getty in Los Angeles, claiming he was the father of her daughter, Paula.

[24] John Paul Getty Jr. asked his father for the money, but was refused, arguing that his 13 other grandchildren could also become kidnapping targets if he paid.

Getty's grandson was found alive on December 15, 1973, in a Lauria filling station, in the province of Potenza, shortly after the ransom was paid.

After a stroke brought on by a cocktail of drugs and alcohol in 1981, he was rendered speechless, nearly blind, and partially paralyzed for the rest of his life.

I contend that acceding to the demands of criminals and terrorists merely guarantees the continuing increase and spread of lawlessness, violence and such outrages as terror-bombings, "skyjackings" and the slaughter of hostages that plague our present-day world.

"[28] Nine of the kidnappers were apprehended, including Girolamo Piromalli and Saverio Mammoliti, high-ranking members of the 'Ndrangheta, a Mafia organization in Calabria.

[27][30] Many anecdotal stories exist of Getty's thriftiness and parsimony, which struck observers as comical, even perverse, because of his extreme wealth.

A darker incident was his fifth wife's claim that Getty had scolded her for spending too much on their terminally ill son's medical treatment, though he was worth tens of millions of dollars at the time.

[31] He was well known for bargaining on almost everything to obtain the lowest possible price, including suites at luxury hotels and virtually all purchases of artwork and real estate.

[8]: 113 Author John Pearson attributed part of Getty's extreme penny-pinching to the Methodist sensibility of his upbringing, which emphasized modest living and personal economy.

[1] Getty famously had a pay phone installed at Sutton Place, helping to seal his reputation as a miser.

[8]: 119  A valuable silver ewer by the 18th century silversmith Paul de Lamerie was stolen, but returned anonymously when the London newspapers began covering the theft.

He remained an inveterate hard worker, boasting at age 74 that he often worked 16 to 18 hours per day overseeing his operations across the world.

[8]: 199 Getty met the English interior designer Penelope Kitson in the 1950s and entrusted her with decorating his homes and the public rooms of the oil tankers he was launching.

[16] Mistresses who resided at Sutton Place included Mary Teissier, a distant cousin of the last Tsar of Russia; Lady Ursula d'Abo, who had close connections to the British Royal Family; and Nicaraguan-born Rosabella Burch.

[16] The New York Times wrote of Getty's domestic arrangement saying that he "ended his life with a collection of desperately hopeful women, all living together in his Tudor mansion in England, none of them aware that his favorite pastime was rewriting his will, changing his insultingly small bequests: $209 a month to one, $1,167 to another.

The kidnapping is dramatized in the first season of the American anthology drama series Trust, in which Donald Sutherland portrays Getty.