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What it argues
The House of Getty is Russell Miller's investigative biography of J. Paul Getty and the dynasty he created. Miller traces the Getty story from J. Paul's early oil ventures in the 1910s through his death in 1976 as arguably the richest private individual in the world, and then follows the family into the subsequent generation — the kidnapping of J. Paul Getty III, the legal battles over the estate, and the ways in which extreme wealth distorted every relationship and institution it touched.
J. Paul Getty himself is the book's central fascination. He was spectacularly rich and spectacularly miserly — a man who installed a pay phone at his English estate, Sutton Place, to prevent guests from running up his phone bill, while simultaneously bidding against the Italian government for Raphael paintings. He married and divorced five times, fathered children with an indifference to their welfare that bordered on cruelty, and spent his later decades as a recluse in England who conducted most of his business by telex. Miller draws on interviews, correspondence, and company documents to build a portrait that is more dimensional than the cartoon miser of popular imagination, but not much more sympathetic.
What it gets right
- 1.
J. Paul Getty accumulated extraordinary wealth through a combination of shrewd oil acquisition, extreme frugality, and a willingness to operate without partners who could constrain him.
- 2.
Miserliness at the scale Getty practiced it was not thrift but a form of control — every transaction was a power relationship, and paying was experienced as surrender.
- 3.
The kidnapping of J. Paul Getty III in 1973 revealed the extent to which the family's patriarch could not separate financial calculation from human obligation, even toward his own grandchildren.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Russell Miller is a British journalist and author who has written biographies of Hugh Hefner, L. Ron Hubbard, and other prominent twentieth-century figures. The House of Getty was published in 1985 and was based on extensive research into Getty family papers, company records, and interviews with associates. Miller's other works include Bunny: The Real Story of Playboy and Bare-Faced Messiah, a biography of L. Ron Hubbard that was briefly suppressed by Scientology. He has been a contributing editor to several British newspapers and magazines.
