The Getty Museums in Los Angeles are two of my favorite places to visit. Oh, I love the view out to the ocean on a clear day from the mountain top. I like finding the fossils in the marble cut thin to make the surface of the buildings. You might find me at the end of the afternoon, sitting with a coffee, watching a dramatic Southern California sunset all greys, purples, and oranges, thinking about the preservation aspect of the collection, most unseen, which eventually allows the general public to see sculpture and paintings that are hundreds or thousands of years old. One of the great things about these Museums is that admission is free to the public. You can even bring your own lunch and check it with your coat at no charge, then go outside and sit to eat later in the day. So there really is no reason not to go! (And you just might meet another art loving person while there.) Sadly, due to water shortages the wonderful fountains no longer run and are filled with stones, but that's in the eco-spirit of the informed in Southern California, more so than budgeting - or so I'm told.
So I'm there and I'm thinking, what sort of man was J. Paul Getty? Was he really as cheap as he is notorious for? He married several times times, and had children, sons who worked for the company in some capacity usually. and he was a workaholic who rarely spent any time with the women he had seduced, married, abandoned. What about Mistresses? Was he incapable of faithfulness? A collector of fine women as well as fine art?
And so it was of great interest to me that a film has been made focusing on the event of the kidnapping of one of Getty's grandsons whose ear was cut off and who Getty refused to pay. The film, "All The Money In The World," is now controversial too because actor Kevin Spacey was replaced due to a sex scandal with actor Christopher Plummer, who I hear was the original choice and doing a great job of acting as. Getty refused to pay so the kidnappers cut off the teenager's ear.
And so, this being MISTRESS MANIFESTO, I turned my attention to the private life of this billionaire, who lived in England for years till the end of his life and never made it back to his Malibu property, called "the ranch," until he was buried there. I depended on author Russel Miller's book "the House of Getty" as well as news articles on the Internet.
I learned from this book that while the press dwelled upon episodes of Getty's cheapness as one of his idiosycracies, in fact the man wasn't always. He could be generous by any average person's standards and then not and he had wanted to be a diplomat, but found he loved the oil business. Perhaps grandson's ears cannot be paid for with corporate holdings or profits but balls of string, by-the-rule-tipping, and avoiding expensive cab fares add up. And so while it's understood that due to his wealth a great number of women were interested (and you might assume, put up with him) author Miller makes a case for Getty being in fact a man who was his best self as a personality and more social than you may imagine when you see pictures of his scowling face, with women.
Starting young sexually, Getty may have tried to do the expected early on by marrying, but by the time he was in mid-life, he had many overlapping relationships, and ended with a harem.
And so you might want to check out the museums and ask yourself just how cheap Getty was because the museums that bear his name and were funded by his estate remain the ONLY always free museum in the city.
Here is some background on J. Paul Getty, who I will call "Paul" as everyone did, and his family before we begin this month's expose into Getty Mistresses.
He came from one of the families that immigrated to the United States in the late 1700's, and one Getty bought the area called Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where the most famous battle of the Civil War took place, purchasing it from William Penn. J. Paul was the only son born in 1891 to Sarah and George Franklin Getty, who had acquired a fortune by Indian Territory standards ($250,000) by 1901. (His mother is an important part of the Getty saga.) At that time, knowing nothing of the oil business, George Getty gambled on a lot in the Osage Nation that struck a geyser of oil. Long residents in the Minneapolis area, Sarah had relatives in California and no real reason to stay. By 1906 they were renting in Los Angeles and Paul was going to Harvard Military Academy where he read Latin and Greek, and may have begun his interest in Roman and Greek antiquities. In 1907 they bought a house near Wilshire Boulevard and Paul still living at home, at 17 started USC. For some time he'd been claiming to his friends to have a "love life" that involved sneaking out and using his parent's car.
There may have been something to his early sexual confidence as by 14 years old he was considered to be girl crazy. He had an affair at about 17 with Edith McNair, ten years older than himself. She was a sophisticated and rich local single woman. USC bored him and he thought fraternities and sororities were snobbish. In 1910-1911 he worked his father's oil fields, you could say starting at the bottom, since it wasn't beyond him to work physically or operate machinery. After he transferred to UC Berkeley and began to travel, he bought his first collection items, Chinese bronzes and carved ivory. But when he transferred to Oxford, in England, he found himself finally at a college he liked. He was considered reserved (for an American) but had enough personality to be invited to the weekend house parties of his set, and enjoyed going out to theatre. (Getty would live in England in the last part of his life as well.)
At his 21st birthday, he traveled to Alexandria, Egypt to see the pyramids. His father's company was worth millions but he really wanted the life of a diplomat. But in 1914, when he was 22, Paul agreed to spend one year in the business and discovered that he loved it. He also loved money and women.
But (you'll love this!) he continued to live with his parents until his first marriage, when he was thirty one (31) years old!
Now when you see the unsmiling photos of Paul Getty, you may think this was a man who was too shy and awkward to be seductive. Money certainly helped, but his friends also knew a man who was charming, polite not pushy, and had a sense of humor and loved to make a woman laugh.
Next I'll cover Getty's early marriages, his pattern of workaholism, and his first known Mistress... and then cover the next one and the next and the next...
Missy
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