Talitha Getty

Talitha Dina Getty (née Pol; 18 October 1940 – 11 July 1971)[1] was a Dutch actress, socialite, and model who was regarded as a style icon of the late 1960s.

She was thus the step-granddaughter of both Augustus John and his muse and second wife, Dorothy "Dorelia" McNeil (1881–1969), who was a fashion icon in the early years of the 20th century.

Her father was interned in a separate camp, and her parents went their own ways after the war, Pol moving to Britain with her mother, who died in 1948 in The Hague.

Writer and journalist Jonathan Meades, who was at RADA several years later, recalled that, after first coming to London in 1964, he saw Pol with her stepmother at Seal House, Holland Park (home of Poppet John's sister, Vivien).

[7] The Gettys became part of Swinging London's fashionable scene, becoming friends with, among others, singers Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones and his girlfriend Marianne Faithfull.

[17] By 1969, the dissolute lifestyle the Gettys were leading in Italy and Morocco had begun to wear on Talitha, who wished to pursue treatment for heroin and alcohol addiction and return to Britain.

[20] As an actress, Pol appeared in several films, including Village of Daughters (1962) (as a daughter, Gioia Spartaco); an Edgar Wallace mystery, We Shall See (1964) (as Jirina); The System (1964) (aka "The Girl-Getters" as Helga, a German tourist and the first girl to be hit on by the young men); Return from the Ashes (1965) (as Claudine, alongside Maximilian Schell, Ingrid Thulin and Samantha Eggar); and Barbarella (1968), a sexually charged science-fiction fantasy starring Jane Fonda, in which she had the minor uncredited role of a girl smoking a hookah pipe.

In the spring of 1971, Talitha Getty asked her husband for a divorce after years of living separately, but Paul Jr. was adamant that he still loved her and pleaded with her to come to Rome for a reconciliation.

[23] Talitha Getty died within the same 12-month period as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Edie Sedgwick and, as noted, Jim Morrison, other cultural icons of the 1960s.

The death of Talitha Pol serves as a trigger for major investigations into drug trafficking and art theft surrounding the nightclub.

Pol (right) with John Paul Getty Jr. immediately after their wedding at the City Hall in Rome, 10 December 1966.