J. Paul Getty
American industrialist and art collector (1892-1976) · United States · Writers · Died at 83
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Something wrong?The oilman so tight-fisted he haggled over his own grandson's ransom. Getty turned petroleum into a fortune that made him the world's wealthiest private citizen by 1966 - then left most of it to art.
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, If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.
My father said, 'You must never try to make all the money that's in a deal.
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Born in Minneapolis in 1892, the son of a pioneer oilman, Getty founded Getty Oil Company in 1942 and rode the petroleum boom to staggering wealth: Fortune called him America's richest man in 1957, and by 1966 the Guinness Book pegged him at $1.2 billion. He married and divorced five times, fathered five children, and lived by a parsimony so severe that when his grandson was kidnapped in 1973, he negotiated with the captors over price. What he hoarded in life he released in death: more than $661 million went to the J. Paul Getty Museum he'd seeded with his art and antiquities collection. The trust he established in 1953 became the world's wealthiest art institution, funding the Getty Center, the Villa, and conservation work that outlasted the man who died in 1976 worth over $6 billion.
Writers from the United States 6
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