With a vast fortune built on oil wealth it may have appeared that the Getty family had it all. But their history is also one of unbelievable penny-pinching, affairs, acrimonious divorces, kidnapping, and tragic deaths. 

Read on to discover the incredible story of the family with "all the money in the world".

All dollar amounts in US dollars

Jean Paul Getty, more commonly known as J. Paul, was born on 15 December 1892 in Minneapolis. The only child of affluent lawyer George Getty (pictured) and his wife Sarah, J. Paul had a privileged upbringing thanks to his father, who made a tidy income practising insurance and corporate law in the booming Midwestern city.

In 1903, George Getty had the foresight to get into the burgeoning oil industry and headed to Oklahoma, where he founded the Minnehoma Oil Company. In the space of two years, the Getty patriarch had made enough money to move his family to a splendid mansion in Los Angeles.

A gifted high school student, J. Paul went on to study at California's finest colleges and even had a stint at the UK's prestigious Oxford University.

Upon graduating in 1914, the future billionaire had developed a solid knowledge of economics and petroleum geology, and fluency in several foreign languages.

In September 1914, George Getty, who had become a multi-millionaire by this point, loaned his son some money to buy up oil leases at rock-bottom prices in Oklahoma's "red-bed" area. Super-driven, J. Paul was intent on making his very own fortune and went on to sell the leases at a massively marked-up premium.

By June 1916, J. Paul had made his first $1 million, an impressive $29 million (£23m) in today's money. Flush with cash, the 23-year-old oil tycoon moved back to Los Angeles, where he lived the life of a playboy lothario for several years, much to his father's consternation.

J. Paul returned to Oklahoma in 1919 and picked up where he left off, acquiring and holding on to the most productive oil wells, and selling on the duds. During the 1920s, the magnate with the Midas touch honed his money-making talents, adding a further $3 million to his fortune, the equivalent of around $54 million (£43m) in 2024 money.

In 1923, J. Paul, who had a penchant for much younger women, married 18-year-old Jeannette Dumont, who gave birth to his first son George (pictured) a year later.

The marriage didn't last and in 1926, J. Paul wed Allene Ashby. They divorced in 1928 and the tycoon married his third wife, Adolphine Helmle, that same year. Their son, Jean, was born in 1929.

J. Paul spent little time with his family, which may partly explain the two divorces. One of the workaholic's ex-wives has said his first love was business – the oil mogul would routinely work 18-hour days and even toil away at weekends and on holiday.

George Getty was proud of his son's business brilliance and work ethic, but shocked and appalled by his former playboy lifestyle and litany of failed marriages – divorce was still very much frowned upon in the 1920s.  In fact, George Getty was convinced his womanising son would eventually ruin the family company.

When the Getty patriarch died in 1930, he left J. Paul just $500,000 ($9m/£7m today) of his $10 million estate ($188m/£149 today), with the lion's share going to J. Paul's mother Sarah. 

Not that he needed an enormous inheritance anyway. The young tycoon had a knack for making money, even during the darkest days of the Great Depression. Going against expert advice, J. Paul bought up oil stocks for next to nothing, which ended up paying off big time.

He snapped up the Pacific Western Oil Corporation and got the ball rolling on his acquisition of the Mission Corporation, the parent company of Skelly Oil and Tidewater Oil, which would go on to form Getty Oil. 

J. Paul and Adolphine divorced in 1932, and the oil baron married silent movie actress Ann Rork (pictured) that same year. They had two children: John Paul Jr., the father of kidnap victim John Paul Getty III, and Gordon Peter.

But the union wasn't meant to be and the couple split in 1936.

J. Paul married his fifth wife, nightclub singer Louise Dudley "Teddy" Lynch in 1939. The couple (pictured together) had a son, Timothy, who died in 1956 from a brain tumour aged just 12.

Louise Getty later recounted that J. Paul had scolded her for spending too much money on the boy's cancer treatment. Timothy's death was the first of several tragedies to hit the Getty family. 

During World War II, J. Paul assisted the Allied war effort by overseeing the production of aircraft parts via his Spartan Aircraft company, a subsidiary of Skelly Oil, and even put himself forward for naval service.

After World War II, J. Paul moved to Europe, where he more or less remained. The tycoon had a fear of flying and travelling in general and opted for Europe as it was halfway between the oil fields of the US and those of the Middle East.

During the late 1940s and 1950s, J. Paul lived out of hotel rooms, principally in the George V in Paris and the Ritz in London.

In 1949, J. Paul made the shrewdest move of his career by buying a 60-year lease on a barren tract of land between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. J. Paul paid King Saud of Saudi Arabia a bargain $9.5 million, around $125 million (£99m) in today's money, for the land and agreed to stump up an additional $1 million ($13m/£10m) a year for the duration of the lease.

The deal paid off in 1953 when huge reserves of oil were discovered and his Middle East interests soon began pumping out 16 million barrels of the black stuff a year.

That same year, J. Paul finally assumed control of the Mission Corporation and its companies, which included Skelly Oil and Tidewater Oil. By this point, the magnate had also persuaded his mother to let him run the family oil firm.

The tycoon was living in England and apart from his fifth wife Teddy at the time of their son's death in 1958 and didn't even attend the funeral. Exasperated by her husband's meanness, Teddy filed for divorce in 1958.

J. Paul never remarried again but was never short of lady friends to keep him company, including Hollywood stars such as Zsa Zsa Gabor (pictured).

In 1957, Fortune magazine profiled the richest Americans and J. Paul topped the list with an estimated net worth of $1 billion, the equivalent of over $11 billion (£9bn) in today's money.

By this time, the oil baron had earned bona fide celebrity status, but he was a paradoxical character and his attitude to fame was the same. On the one hand, he courted publicity and basked in the adulation. On the other, he scorned his celebrity status and bemoaned its downsides...

The tycoon moaned incessantly about the hardships of being a billionaire, from the begging letters to the fact he never knew if friends were genuine or simply after his money.

An ex-employee once said J. Paul always looked like he was attending his own funeral, such was the magnate's misery.

In 1959, J. Paul bought Sutton Place, a 16th-century Tudor country house in southern England, for the bargain price of $840,000. That's the equivalent of $9 million (£7m) in today's money. The tight-fisted oilman famously installed a coin-operated telephone in the mansion to prevent his guests from racking up the bills.

As well as his country house in England, J. Paul owned a number of stunning properties, including a villa in Malibu, California, a 15th-century palace near Rome, and a mansion in Kuwait.

J. Paul enjoyed boasting about his stinginess. He often wore crumpled suits and worn-out sweaters to appear poor, and washed his own socks and underwear. When he treated his fifth wife to acting lessons, he insisted she pay back every cent should she land a paid role, and he once reportedly forced a group of friends to wait to get into the Crufts dog show to qualify for cheaper tickets.

All this despite the fact he was worth up to $3 billion (around $27bn/£21bn in today's money) and was in full control of around 200 firms by the late 1960s.

However, the extended family's lives were troubled. J. Paul had to contend with his son John Paul Jr.'s alcohol and drug addiction, the fatal overdose of John Paul Jr.'s second wife Talitha (pictured) in 1971, and his eldest son George's untimely death in 1973.

In June 1973, the oil baron's grandson, John Paul Getty III, was kidnapped in Rome by Ndrangheta gangsters, who demanded a ransom payment of $17 million, the equivalent of $120 million (£95m) in today's money, for his safe release.

J. Paul's infamous miserliness kicked in and he refused to pay on the basis that "I have 14 other grandchildren and if I pay one penny now, then I'll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren."

The ransom payment was the equivalent of just one day's output from J. Paul's oil fields.

Running out of patience, the kidnappers cut off the boy's ear and sent it, along with a lock of his hair, to an Italian newspaper in November 1973.

J. Paul finally agreed to pay part of a reduced ransom of $2.9 million, $21 million (£17m) in today's money, and lent his son John Paul Getty Jr. the rest of the cash to be paid back with interest.

John Paul Getty III was released in December 1973, but he was never the same again, suffering severe psychological trauma for the rest of his life.

An accidental drug overdose in 1981 left him profoundly disabled, and the heir died in 2011 at the age of 54 following years of ill health.

J. Paul may have been the meanest billionaire of all time, but when it came to acquiring fine art, the industrialist was anything but penny-pinching.

Beginning in the 1930s, J. Paul amassed an enviable collection featuring works by Rembrandt, Tintoretto, Monet and more, most of which are now housed in the Getty Museum in California.

J. Paul died at his Surrey mansion in 1976 at the ripe old age of 83, leaving a fortune of $4 billion, which is $22 billion (£18bn) in today's money. Most of this was channelled into the J. Paul Getty Trust, which is now the world's wealthiest art institution.

On 20 November 2020, J. Paul Getty's grandson, John Gilbert Getty, was found dead in a hotel room in Texas aged 52. The news came just two months after his mother Ann died of a heart attack aged 79.

Musician John Gilbert Getty was the second son of businessman and composer Gordon Getty (pictured), whose eldest child, Andrew, died at the age of 47 from an intestinal ulcer, although he was also found to have toxic levels of methamphetamine in his body at the time.

Now Gordon Getty's remaining living children are Peter and Billy and their three half-sisters who he fathered during an affair. Sadly, tragedy seems to continue to haunt this most famous of families.

While the Gettys dropped off Forbes' list of America's richest families almost a decade ago, today's descendants are far from poor. Gordon Getty is the richest living family member today. He sold Getty Oil to Texaco for $10.1 billion in 1984 ($31bn/£25bn today), and is currently worth $2.1 billion (£1.7bn), according to Forbes. 

J. Paul Getty's grandson Mark Getty, the co-founder of the picture library Getty Images, has an estimated net worth today of $500 million (£392m). He's set to boost his bank balance further after recently selling his stake in the company, which was valued at $4 billion (3.2bn)

Meanwhile, actor and musician Balthazar Getty (pictured) is said to have a fortune of some $200 million (£158m). 

Now discover the world's richest person in every decade

Updated by Alice Cattley