Said to be the inspiration behind the iconic J.R. Ewing character in hit 1980s TV show Dallas, the oil baron H.L. Hunt was reportedly the world's wealthiest person by the time of his death in 1974. He was also the patriarch of a dynasty that was on par with the Gettys and the Rockefellers.

A ruthless risk-taker with razor-sharp business acumen, Hunt was also an out-and-out eccentric and philandering bigamist with extreme right-wing political views. Read on for a look at the controversial tycoon's chequered life, and find out how he gambled and speculated his way to incredible wealth. All dollar amounts in US dollars.

The youngest of eight children, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt Jr. was born on 17 February 1889 near Ramsey, Illinois.

His father (pictured), who he was named after, had fought on the Confederate side during the American Civil War. He had moved north from Arkansas to escape the ravages of the Reconstruction era, ultimately setting up a farm in the Prairie State. 

Hunt Jr. was put to work on the family farm at an early age and only attained a fifth grade level of education, despite learning to read at the age of three and being something of a maths prodigy.

By the time he was 15, the budding entrepreneur had left home and worked variously as a farmhand, lumberjack, cowboy, and mule skinner in farms and ranches across America and Canada.

Blessed with a good head for figures and a photographic memory, Hunt had spent many an evening playing cards with his siblings. He put his finely honed skills to good use during his time on the road, garnering a fierce reputation as "Arkansas Slim", a poker player who could outwit even the most formidable of opponents. 

Despite his lack of formal education, Hunt used some of his poker winnings to enrol in Indiana's Valparaiso University in 1906 and, to his surprise, was duly accepted. However, following a severe bout of tonsillitis, he dropped out during the second term and never returned.

Later on in life, he viewed his lack of formal education as an advantage, considering school to be a "barrier" to making money.

Hunt's father died in 1911, leaving his 22-year-old son $5,000. That's around $149,000 (£114k) in today's money.

After burying his pa, Hunt took his inheritance and headed south, buying a cotton plantation near Lake Village, Arkansas. Keen to make his fortune, Hunt got into cotton trading in 1914. That same year, he married his first wife, Lyda Bunker. They welcomed their first child, a daughter named Margaret, in 1915, and their first son Haroldson "Hassie" Hunt III was born in 1917.

As well as trading cotton, Hunt (pictured here in 1916) bought up more land and dabbled in cotton futures, amassing a couple of hundred thousand dollars. But his overconfidence soon caught up with him, and he was more or less stony broke by 1920 after betting that cotton prices would fall, only for them to skyrocket before dropping back again.

The following year, Hunt overheard some business associates raving about an oil discovery in El Dorado, Arkansas, a dusty settlement about 90 miles to the west of Lake Village. Intrigued, he borrowed 50 bucks from a local bank, roping in three friends to co-sign the loan, and filled up his Dodge touring car to head to the burgeoning boomtown.

Hunt's killer poker skills stood him in good stead and he managed to save the family plantation and turn $100 into $10,200 by playing cards at the Grunewald Hotel in New Orleans one fateful night. (He was in the Big Easy with his daughter Margaret, who was there to have her tonsils taken out.)

Hunt used his winnings to trade oil leases, and by 1922 had eight wells under his belt.

Hunt's third child Caroline was born in 1923. By this point, Hunt's holdings had rapidly increased to 44 wells. In 1924, he sold a half interest in 40 of them to Standard Oil, pocketing $600,000, the equivalent of $9.9 million (£7.6m) today.

He invested in the Urania field in Louisiana and West Texas. But the oil business was notoriously risky, and Hunt found himself filthy rich one day and dirt poor the next. In 1925, Lyda, Hunt's fourth child, was born, but she sadly passed away just a few weeks later.

Perplexed by the oil industry's unpredictability, Hunt decided to have a break from the business in 1925 and made his way to Tampa, Florida to take advantage of the real estate boom that was underway in the Sunshine State.

It was there that he met and fell in love with 21-year-old Frania Tye, who worked in property. Despite the fact that he was already married to Lyda, the oilman turned realtor assumed the name Major Franklin Hunt and proposed marriage. Frania accepted.

Although the evidence is sketchy at best, the alleged bigamous union took place in Tampa in November 1925, with Hunt signing the marriage certificate under his assumed name.

The couple moved to Shreveport, Louisiana, and in 1926 Frania gave birth to their first child, Howard. Nelson, Hunt's second son with Lyda, was also born that year. Hunt and Frania would go on to have four children together.

Hunt soon tired of the real estate industry and returned to oil drilling in 1926. By the end of the decade, he had 100 wells located around Louisiana and other parts of the South, and had also welcomed his sixth child with Lyda, William Herbert.

The wily entrepreneur's biggest coup came in 1930 when he pulled off what has been described as the "greatest oil deal in history". He took control of the East Texas Oil Field which, measuring 43 miles long and around nine miles wide, was described by the writer Tom Buckley as "an underground oil lake". 

The bountiful deposit had been discovered by legendary wildcatter Columbus Marion "Dad" Joiner. However, the veteran driller lacked the capital to exploit it and was unable to borrow against his land titles.

Seizing his opportunity, Hunt negotiated hard with Joiner over cheese and crackers at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas and walked away with the title to the field. Joiner is pictured here, sixth from the left, while Hunt is shown third from the right.

Joiner was paid $30,000 in cash and $45,000 in short-term notes, and promised a $1.25 million cut from future production. Hunt also parted with $20,000 and a $50,000 guarantee to secure the discovery well, which had been nicknamed "Daisy Bradford No 3", and agreed to protect Joiner from any lawsuits pertaining to the holding.

By the time Lamar, Hunt's seventh and final child with Lyda was born in 1932, Hunt had dug 900 producing wells.

While the Great Depression was keeping oil prices low, things changed in 1935 after the US government passed the Connally Hot Oil Act, which limited production and boosted the market price of the commodity. In turn, Hunt's fortune mushroomed in the latter half of the decade.

But it wasn't all smooth sailing. In 1934, shortly before the birth of their fourth child, Frania discovered her husband's true identity. She also discovered he had another wife, and was promptly packed off to New York with her children.

In 1935, Hunt set up trusts for his six surviving children by Lyda. Three years later, he snapped up a lavish colonial mansion on Dallas's White Rock Lake, which was modelled after George Washington's home at Mount Vernon.

At the start of the 1940s, Hunt had become the biggest independent oil operator in the world and owned more reserves than all the World War II Axis nations combined.

In 1942, Hunt's eldest son Hassie was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was subjected to brutal electric shock treatments and eventually had a prefrontal lobotomy, which stole his lively personality and made him dependent on carers until his death in 2005.

Also in 1942, Frania threatened to sue Hunt for entering into the bigamous marriage. He eventually settled, paying Frania a substantial sum of money and providing trusts for each of their four children in exchange for her signing a statement denying that they were ever married.

Around this time, Frania married John Lee, a former employee of Hunt, and the children took his name. 

In the meantime, Hunt had shacked up with his secretary Ruth Ray, and the couple went on to have four children together, the first of whom was born in 1943.

Ruth and the kids would become known as Hunt's "second family", while Frania and her children were simply dubbed "the Lees". Hunt would go on to marry Ruth following Lyda's death in 1955; they're pictured here on their wedding day in 1957.

In 1948, Life magazine declared Hunt to be the richest man in America, with his fortune said to be worth $600 million, which is around $7 billion (£5.4bn) in today's money.

By this point, the oil tycoon was presiding over a vast empire that generated profits of a million dollars every week, including a trio of oil businesses, a huge refinery, and a chain of 300 gas stations. He also owned a food company that oversaw the production, distribution, and marketing of edible items.

During the early 1950s, Hunt branched out into the media. Starting out as a radio show, his Facts Forum brand soon expanded across other media platforms. It was presented as objective and balanced, but was in fact ultra-conservative.

In 1958, Hunt created another entity, the Life Lines Foundation, which published a newspaper called Lifelines. The paper dropped out of circulation in 1975, a year after Hunt's death. The Life Lines Foundation also had a radio arm, with broadcasts of its Lifeline program reaching several hundred radio stations. These organisations disseminated Hunt's right-wing, anticommunist beliefs. 

Dismissive of the poor, Hunt stood vehemently against all forms of charity and philanthropy, adopting the view that handouts demotivated the less fortunate and robbed them of their self-respect. He is even quoted as confessing at one point that he was "more interested in the acquisition of wealth than its disbursement".

As well as being miserly towards those in need, Hunt also spent very little on himself.

Despite his vast wealth, the frugal oil tycoon drove a clapped-out car that he would park blocks away from his spartan office in order to save 50 cents on parking fees. He also wore cheap shabby suits, cut his own hair, and took his lunch to work every day in a paper bag.

Hunt was named the world's richest person in 1952, surpassing the Nizam of Hyderabad (pictured). By 1957, Fortune estimated that Hunt's fortune sat somewhere between $400 million and $700 million ($4bn/£3bn and $7bn/£5.3bn in today's money).

Towards the end of the decade, the billionaire been overtaken by John Paul Getty, who modestly remarked that "in terms of extraordinary, independent wealth, there is only one man – H.L. Hunt".

In 1960, Hunt published Alpaca, a utopian novel that set out his vision of a perfect society. In the book, Hunt describes an undemocratic society, which sees the elite receive more opportunity to vote than ordinary citizens, political discourse banned from TV, and exceedingly low taxes.

Throughout the 1960s, Hunt backed Republican senator Barry Goldwater's failed presidential bid, despite being a registered Democrat. He supported the "Grand Old Party" until his dying day.

He also became increasingly eccentric in his dotage. Convinced he could live to at least 150 years of age, Hunt embraced an exercise regime and an excessively healthy diet quite like no other...

As well avoiding refined sugar and white bread, Hunt chowed down on a raw-food diet of vegetables, fruit, and nuts, opting to eat his meals on a table covered with sheets of old newspaper.

He also took up yoga and invented a bizarre crawling exercise, which he extolled the virtues of at every opportunity. The workout involved the billionaire literally crawling on all-fours around his home or office.

Hunt also became obsessed with the aloe vera plant after reading about it in the Bible, and was instrumental in popularising its use across America as a skincare ingredient.

In 1968, he formed a cosmetics company called HLH Aloe Vera, launching a line of products that contained aloe vera gel harvested from plants grown on his own plantations in Florida. He is known to have promoted his wares at both the Texas and Louisiana State Fairs.

Hunt worked six days a week, sometimes even seven, and never retired. Despite his vigour, salubrious diet, and exercise regime, the mega-rich oil magnate succumbed to old age and died on 29 November 1974 at the age of 85.

Hunt's youngest son, Ray Lee Hunt, assumed control of Hunt Oil Co., his father's main oil business. Today, Ray is the chairman of Hunt Consolidated, which covers the family's various businesses across oil, gas, property, and more.

Nelson Bunker Hunt (pictured right), Hunt's second son from his marriage to Lyda, played a major role in discovering and developing oil fields in Libya during the 1950s and 1960s. However, his holdings were later nationalised by dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 1973.

Together with his brothers, William Herbert (left) and Lamar (second left), he was passionate about sports, and was a thoroughbred horse breeder. Lamar was a major backer of various sports and is famous as the person who came up with the term 'Super Bowl' for the end of season American football final.

At one point in time, Nelson was considered to be the world's richest person. Following the confiscation of his Libya holdings, he sought out a safe investment, and settled on silver. Together with William Herbert and, to a lesser extent, Lamar, the Hunt scion ended up owning around two-thirds of all privately held silver in the world.

In 1979, Nelson worked with Saudi buyers to up the price of the commodity. He was riding high until the price of the precious metal drastically collapsed on 27 March 1980, which would go down in history as "Silver Thursday". The date saw restrictions placed on the market by the New York Commodity Exchange, in response to the Hunt brothers' stockpiling.

Nelson and William Herbert ended up losing billions. Both brothers would go on to file for bankruptcy, and had the dubious honour of being the names behind the largest personal bankruptcies in Texan history. They were also eventually fined $10 million each for manipulating the silver price, and were also banned from any future commodity trading. 

Despite the silver debacle, the Hunt family remains one of the wealthiest clans in America.

In 2020, Forbes put the Hunts' collective wealth at $15.5 billion (£11.8bn), ranking the family the 18th richest in the US.

Their portfolio ranges from the energy companies Hunt Oil and Petro-Hunt to real estate and sports teams, including NFL's Kansas City Chiefs. Former holdings include Hunt Petroleum and Rosewood Hotels & Resorts. The latter was founded by Hunt's second daughter Caroline in 1979, and was sold to Hong Kong's New World Hospitality in 2011 for $229.5 million (£175.3m).

Now discover the life and times of John D. Rockefeller, another oil baron who made it big