J Paul Getty

He was an American oil magnate whose fortune built the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty family is known for his philanthropic efforts, but J. Paul Getty was also the kind of miser who installed a pay phone in his mansion. Getty founded Getty Oil Co. and was often cited as one of the world's richest men. He learned to speak Arabic in order to better negotiate business deals in the Middle East. The Gettys donated their Hancock Park mansion for use as the home of Los Angeles' mayor and also donated heavily to the arts. Getty, who died in 1976, headed a family that seemed plagued by illnesses, addictions and other disasters. J. Paul Getty's fifth son -- his only child with his fifth wife -- died of a brain tumor in 1958 at age 12. Another son died of a suspected suicide in 1973. Mr. Getty was an art collector of note who wrote about his hobby in a book, "The Joys of Collecting" (1965), and who explained some of his expertise in another book, "Europe in the Eighteenth Century" (1949). His collection, of more than 600 items, was housed partly in Sutton Place and partly in a gallery of his ranch home at Malibu. Mr. Getty started his collection in the nineteen- thirties. He purchased the house and 60-acre ranch near Los Angeles in 1943, and later he added the gallery wing. At that time he placed the estate under a trust fund as the J. Paul Getty Museum, which was opened to the public in 1954. Born in Minneapolis Dec. 15, 1892, Jean Paul Getty was the son of George Franklin Getty, a lawyer who went into the oil business in Oklahoma in 1903 and two years later moved to California. There Paul was reared. He attended Harvard Military Academy and Polytechnic High School, both in Los Angles, graduating in 1909. In the next two years he studied at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles and the University of California at Berkeley. Then he went to Oxford for two years where, in 1914, he took his diploma in politics and economics. Mr. Getty was survived by three sons, J. Ronald Getty, J. Paul Getty Jr., and Gordon Peter Getty, 16 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.