J. Paul Getty

He married five times in his life. The first was with Jeanette Demont in 1923. The following year, they were blessed with a baby boy. Only three years after their marriage, the couple separated legally.

In 1926, he married Allene Ashby. The marriage did not last long and the two parted ways in 1928. The same year, he married Adolphine Helmle with whom he had a son. The marriage hit the rocks in 1932.

Ann Rork was the fourth wife with whom he went into the wedlock in 1932. They were blessed with two sons. However, much like his previous nuptials, this too did not last long and ended in 1936.

Jean Paul Getty was born to Sarah Catherine McPherson Risher and George Getty in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father, formerly a lawyer, entered the oil industry in 1903.

In 1905, the family pulled up stakes in the oil business, relocating to Los Angeles, California. Young Getty attended private school before entering the Polytechnic High School. He graduated from the same in 1909.

He then gained admission at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and University of California at Berkeley. In 1912, he transferred to the Oxford University in England to study political science and economics. He graduated from the same in 1914.

While at college, he spent the summers working at his father’s oil fields in Oklahoma as unskilled labourer. During his time therein, he learnt the trick of the trade.

In 1914, he moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to start up as an oil producer. For the same, he took financial assistance from his father in the form of loan. He, however, operated independently from his father’s Minnehoma Oil Company.

With the financial aid from his father, he started buying and selling oil leases. He bought an oil lease in Tulsa for $500. Though his competitors thought his move to be an unwise decision, the business earned him his first huge share of profit.

By 1916, he made his first million, earning the same from the Nancy Taylor No. 1 Oil Well Site near Haskell, Oklahoma. Despite finding huge success in oil business, he retired from being an oil producer the following year to become a Los Angeles playboy.

The detour in his career did not last long as he resumed the oil business in 1919. However, by then, he had lost all the respect and admiration that his father felt for him.

He spent the better part of the 1920s working in close collaboration with his father. The duo engaged in drilling oil wells and buying and selling oil leases. He personally looked after the work in California.

This billionaire and owner of an Oil Corporations was an absolute miser and frugal spender. He resisted spending money and in fact bargained for the ransom when his grandson was kidnapped.