The Solitary Billionaire: J. Paul Getty

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specially chosen programmes from the BBC Archive.

For this Collection,

Sir Michael Parkinson

has selected BBC interviews

with influential figures

of the 20th century.

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J PAUL GETTY: Money is secondary.

Nobody makes money unless they run a mint.

One of the companies that I'm heavily interested in

owes over 300 million.

There are crackpots in England.

I like the company of women.

Most millionaires that I've known are very hard-working men.

I like to think I'm average.

ALAN WHICKER: The richest man in the world rules an empire...

alone.

To most of us, big money means

the £75,000 prize on the Treble Chance.

To be as rich as this man,

you'd need to win the pools every Saturday for 800 years.

He could afford to give a pound note

to every man, woman and child in the world

and that includes the Chinese.

He could pay this year's income tax for everyone in Britain.

He could spend £275,000 every day until he's 100

and still have a bit put by.

His personal fortune has been estimated at £400 million,

his assets at more than £3,000 million.

Last year, his income from just three of his companies

was around £34,000 a day.

He earns more each day than the average man earns in a lifetime.

He's several times richer than the gold reserves of a sterling area.

His real wealth is incalculable.

J Paul Getty is unique.

He's the only American dollar billionaire.

A billion dollars is more than £357 million.

Only the legendary rulers of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia

can compare financially with this private citizen

who becomes more of an exception every day.

For he is an absolute monarch. No man tells him what to do.

No group of directors,

no shareholders influence his lonely decisions.

Getty is a one-man international power -

70 companies, 19,000 employees,

his private empire of refineries and tankers and immense oil reserves

submerged in a complex corporate tangle

and held firmly under his own strong thumb.

For no-one puts the pressure on

the largest independent oil-producer in the world.

Around the globe, the Getty oil wells gush.

80,000 barrels a day from the neutral zone of Arabia.

More from Iran and Canada.

In the United States, wherever oil is produced, there he is,

along the Pacific coast and in the Rocky Mountains,

North Dakota and Wyoming,

New Mexico and Texas and Mississippi.

One company alone owns 6,000 oil wells.

His liquid wealth, carried around the world by the Getty fleet -

by 29 giant tankers just built in France and Japan

and plying between the oil fields

and refineries near Naples in Italy,

at Mizushima and Kawasaki in Japan,

at Wilmington, Delaware, in California and Kansas,

Texas and Colorado.

Across the American continent,

10,000 service stations sell the petrol they produce.

Mr Getty controls office blocks and hotels in New York...

at Acapulco, Mexico...

Tulsa, Oklahoma... Los Angeles.

Then there's an aircraft corporation and his insurance,

life assurance and finance companies.

This, then, is the realm of J Paul Getty.

A complex kingdom,

ruled not from some sky-scraping concrete tower in Manhattan,

an exotic potentate's palace in Arabia

or a bustling building in Beirut,

but from here...

..from a rambling 16th-century country house in 700 acres of Surrey,

linked to the outside world

by just two telephone lines through the Guilford exchange.

The whole improbable empire of Mr Getty

is controlled from this country seat of power

where he moved in the summer of 1960

after living in modest hotel suites in Paris and London,

and though he talks of returning to California,

here, it seems, he'll stay.

For though the Getty empire may be far-flung,

its founder is not much of a traveller.

He won't fly since he was caught in a Tornado 20 years ago,

and he's fearful of the sea,

which makes getting back to the United States something of a problem

and helps to explain why his nightly telephone bill can be £140.

The rich, it's been said, are different from the rest of us.

They have more money.

But, of course, there's much more to it.

Everything about multi-millionaires

is so contrary to our ordinary experience

that they're remote and mysterious as beings from another planet.

They don't seem to belong to our human race.

Few of us would be what we are today if we could afford to be different

and everyone's reaction, your reaction,

to great wealth is self-revealing.

For some, the mere existence of the very rich is an offence.

For others, the only thing wrong with them

is that their unlimited pleasures can't be shared.

But in reality of course,

even multi-millionaires soon reach the limits

to the purely personal gratification great wealth can buy.

They can only eat so much food, however exotic,

only live in one house at a time, however splendid,

only sleep in one bed, use one bath, wear one suit.

To this modest man, such enforced restraint comes naturally.

This is his counting house, with just two young secretaries to help him.

There's no Telex, no ticker tape, no high pressure.

SECRETARY: Was that international?

Oh, yes, just a minute, I'll see if Mr Getty's available.

Will you hold on?

WHICKER: 'In a pleasant, unassuming study, with an ordinary desk

'in an ordinary clutter, Mr Getty proceeds calmly and purposefully

'towards his second billion.'

I think we might as well wait a while.

I don't think we have enough data yet to, er...

..do anything definite now.

I think it'll be about next month

before we have the data.

Yes.

Yes, it's being processed in Texas.

All right.

Thank you. Goodbye.

WHICKER: Mr Getty always knows exactly what his empire is about,

and he's probably the only man who does,

for his fortune remains as baffling and enigmatic as his private life.

Like an iceberg, the vital mass is submerged from sight.

But on the surface

there's the Getty Oil Company with nine consolidated companies,

profits last year conservatively estimated after taxes at £5,700,000.

Mr Getty owns 80% of this company and elects all the directors.

So, £4,600,000 to Mr Getty.

Tidewater Oil Company,

with 30 corporate subsidiaries across 82 countries.

Profits after taxes - £10,700,000.

'46%, or another £5,000,000, to Mr Getty.

Skelly Oil, with 20 subsidiaries,

profits after taxes - £9,000,000

and 30%, or £2,700,000, to Mr Getty.

So, with incidental salaries, he's earning,

for a regulation working day,

about £4,000 an hour.

His income, or as his accountants prefer to say,

his increase in wealth, was around £12.5 million.

His income for a month would pay the salaries of the Prime Minister,

the Cabinet and all the 627 MPs at Westminster for a year.

But alongside his countless assets,

this income is relatively modest

for his money remains within the business.

"It's in the books," he says, "not in the bank."

And as he doesn't draw it out, he doesn't pay tax on it.

It's safe from the Inland Revenue,

from predatory international taxmen

who've made it all but impossible for anyone, ever again,

to accumulate the incredible wealth of a Getty,

of a billionaire who's still unsure

why he succeeded when others have failed.

I've sometimes though about that

and I really don't know of any quality I have

that many others don't have.

I'm not... I'm hard-working, I like to think,

but I know others just as hard-working.

I'm intelligent, I like to think.

I know others just as intelligent or more intelligent.

I'm imaginative, I like to think.

I have many friends and acquaintances that are just as imaginative,

or more imaginative.

I always wish that I had a better personality.

That, er...

..I could entertain people better,

was a better conversationalist, um...

..always worried I might be a little on the dull side as a companion,

and, um...

..always felt that, um,

although I've nearly always tried to do my best...

..when I've reviewed my efforts, I've nearly always seen

that I could have done better and should have done better.

So how is it, then, that you've come out so very much on top?

The difference between the successful businessman

and one possibly not so successful is that, um...

..maybe 37 different qualities

are required for great success...

..and, um, if a man has 35 of those qualities

he makes a more modest success.

But just what those two missing qualities might be, I don't know.

Did you set out to become the richest man in the world?

No, I never had any interest in acquiring...

- How did it happen, then? - Um...

Well, I suppose it happened

because my father had built up a very substantial business,

flourishing business,

I was the only child and, um...

..I had to carry on the business.

Yet, if your bank balance is any scorecard,

you're a thousand times more successful.

Well, I started at a pretty high altitude, you might say,

and he started at sea level, so that's...

You obviously must be a calculating man,

but to have such success in business,

do you not also need to be something of a gambler?

Well, I suppose it depends on how you define gambler.

Um, gambling is risk-taking.

It might be said that the owner of a casino gambles, he takes risk,

but he has the odds in his favour.

In other words, it's intelligent gambling.

To gamble against the casino, I would call unintelligent gambling

and I've never tried to devote my time to unintelligent risk-taking.

I think it's difficult enough to take risks intelligently and, um...

..when you know the odds are against you,

I don't see the point of it.

So if you wanted to gamble...?

I'd buy a casino.

You've written a series of articles, Mr Getty, about success in business

and they've appeared in what the Americans call a girly magazine

full of nudes and a sort of sophistication.

What made you choose this curious shop window?

Well, because everybody seems to read it and, um...

..it's especially read by young businessmen

and I wanted to get the message over to them

rather than to people in my own age bracket.

What was the message?

Well, about the importance of having an independent view on things,

not being influenced by what everybody else says.

If I'd been influenced by what everybody else said in the '30s,

I'd never have bought any shares in the '30s.

The shares I had, I would have sold.

Shares were 6 in 1935...

..and today they're about, oh...

um...300.

And today, Mr Getty, what are you doing today?

Well, I'm still buying.

Are there any other billionaires on the horizon coming towards the top

or do you think that the heroic age of the billionaire is almost over,

- that you're the last of the line? - Oh, I don't...I don't...

I don't suppose so,

I think that others in the future

will probably do much more than I've ever done.

WHICKER: Up to now, of course,

no-one's done more than Mr Getty's done

and only the ruler of Kuwait and the king of Saudi Arabia,

who've also come up in the world through the oil business,

have done as well.

When the three richest men met in the desert,

the sheiks learned with surprised that, in more ways than one,

Mr Getty from Minneapolis could speak their language.

He'd learned Arabic from gramophone records.

Mr Getty is a thorough man, though not,

as sometimes appears, infallible.

Here he was returning to the scene of

the biggest mistake of his business life.

In 1931, when the East Texas field came in,

and Texas oil went down to ten cents a barrel,

he pulled out of the Middle East.

Had he stayed on, today he'd have been even richer.

30 years later and rich enough,

he meets the two sheiks who were born upon

and never left this oil-rich desert.

Mr Getty, who bought his way back beside them,

was born in Minnesota just over 70 years ago.

'His ancestors on his father's side were Irish, from Londonderry.

His mother was half Scots, half Dutch.

Like the sheiks, he was never poor. Those well-publicised barefooted boys

who tread the road from selling newspapers

to owning millions are rapidly becoming an extinct species,

like the buffalo.

Young Paul was just another American boy.

CHILD: "February 17th 1904 - fine day.

"In the evening Papa gave me a whipping

"for saying he was a doggone fool

"and that the chambermaid had better go soak her head in Jip's mouth.

"March 15th - Harry came up and we rolled for marbles,

"and now I have 275!

"In the evening I read a book called In Times Of Peril by GA Henty."

WHICKER: His father had started from poverty

but in 1903 bought the lease

to 11,000 acres of Oklahoma Indian territory for £200 and struck oil.

When he died at the age of 74,

he was worth £5 million.

A Methodist and a more religious man than his only son, he left Paul

less than £200,000 mainly because he was displeased

that he'd already been married and divorced.

However, receiving only one thirtieth of his father's fortune

didn't matter much by then

for young Getty had made his first million dollars

13 years earlier, at the age of 24.

In those days, the man who was to become richer than anyone else

had other thoughts than business.

He turned, with concentration, to marriage.

But with wife number one,

wife number two,

wife number three,

wife number four,

wife number five,

it never quite seemed to work out,

though, whenever he was single, Paul Getty remained a very social man.

Today there are four sons in his business and seven grandchildren.

One day they'll inherit a private empire

such as the world has never known

and all the responsibilities of a man, who, now and then,

must wish he still had only the gentle money worries

of once upon a time.

CHILD: "Monday June 20th 1904.

"In the afternoon, I went down to Papa's office.

"I earned a dollar!

"I'm going to put my money in the bank as soon as I get 12.

"June 23rd.

"In the afternoon, I went to the Metropolitan Theatre.

"The play was The Billionaire.

"In the evening, I read and counted my marbles.

"I now have 600.

"November 26th.

"In the afternoon, Papa gave me 50 cents.

"I put a dollar and 10 cents in the bank.

"I now have five dollars and 58 cents.

"Wow!"

WHICKER: Getty's faithful to his heroes.

As a child, he fell upon the Victorian author

of adventure stories for boys, GA Henty,

and an unlikely and endearing aspect -

these books remain the rosebud of citizen Getty.

They're always upon his bedside table and near his desk.

Stout Victorian volumes with such stirring titles as Winning His Spurs,

Bravest Of Brave,

and often, the solitary billionaire retreats

into the simple, clean-cut world of Henty.

MAN: "The masses of Britons poured down to the attack,

"then their trumpets sounded and they again advanced,

"the cavalry in the rear moving forward to join those in the advance,

"but before they accomplished this, the Britons were upon them.

"Showers of darts were poured in, and the horsemen,

"unable to stand the onslaught,

"rode into the spaces between the companies of the infantry..."

WHICKER: Not all of Paul Getty's heroes

come from boys' adventure stories.

The richest man in the world admires Julius Caesar and Mussolini,

Winston Churchill and President Kennedy,

but who is there that he could envy?

I've envied many people.

I envy, um,

people that are, um...

..younger and stronger and, um...

- ..more cheerful than I am. - More cheerful?

People that have better character than I have.

What about the ordinary man in the street?

Do you envy the man whose money problems

are not too much money but not enough money?

I think a lot can be said for him.

I think that he has many advantages.

Large financial responsibilities are not any key to cheerfulness.

There's great virtue in being a small businessman.

There is?

There can be great happiness in it, too. Yes...

I mean, successful small businessmen.

But small by your standards, Mr Getty?

Well, no, I'd say what's generally known as small.

I mean a man who has a small business, but is comfortable there.

He's got, um, business worth £100,000, or something like that.

He has the best clothes that he can wear, he eats the best food,

he travels when he wants to travel, lives in a comfortable home,

he has a comfortable car, he goes to the theatre

whenever he wants to go to the theatre.

And, um, he's not a, um...

He has the blessed boon of anonymity.

I suppose some people might see you as lucky, Mr Getty,

some as a cold, calculating machine.

Others, perhaps, as a daring and unique business genius

with a Midas touch. How do you see yourself?

Well, I see myself...

..as a...you might say as a tennis player.

Just trying to volley the ball back.

But who's serving, Mr Getty?

Well, um, if I didn't...

My business mail...

I get probably 50 letters a day, um...

I'm supposed to make the final decision or express an opinion.

I try to...

I try to keep current with my business mail.

I also get...maybe a thousand letters a week.

Some weeks... three or four thousand letters

from...strangers, you might say, from the general public.

Some cranks.

Crackpots.

Some very worthy people, too.

But, um, obviously, if I read 24 hours a day,

I wouldn't be able to go through more than a small fraction of them.

But my business mail does require an answer

and, as I say, I just try to...

..return the ball, so to speak.

I remember seeing...

..the desk of President Truman.

And he had a little sign on the desk that said, "The buck stops here."

He couldn't pass the buck!

And, um...

..when you're president of a company,

you can't very well pass the buck.

But you have more money than you or your sons

or your grandsons could ever conceivably need.

Is there any necessity to keep on sending the ball back?

No, but I've never felt particularly inclined to sell out.

But if you sold out for £3,000 million or £3,500 million,

it doesn't seem to make much difference, really,

when you're in this kind of astronomic figure.

Well...

..as we said before, business is business.

I mean, it's either good business or it's bad business.

Just because it's a high figure

doesn't necessarily make it a good sale, does it?

But if you're going to wait until the time of an advantageous sale,

you may to wait 50 years or so.

But if you sell, what are you going to put it in?

Well, you'd lie back and beachcomb, Mr Getty.

Yes, but, um, you, um...

you'd probably have worries then, you know,

about your capital

and you wouldn't have the control over it.

And, um...

I don't know.

I think that you might jump from the frying pan into the fire.

I get the feeling, Mr Getty, that you get far more pleasure out of

actively controlling this empire of yours

than you ever would lying back on the beach.

Well, I suppose so,

although I have always thought that I was quite talented as an idler.

If I had the opportunity to idle, I could do it pretty well.

In theory, of course, a man's reward

is in ratio to his contribution to society

to the value of the work he does.

Yes, it's the services that he renders to society...

..and not what some people might say the true value of the services

but what the public says is the value of the services.

You see, if your income, as has been calculated,

is some £35 million a year,

that's £700,000 a week, or about £100,000 a day.

What are you doing, Mr Getty, to deserve all that?

Well, I suppose that...

..the services that I've rendered have been mostly in finding oil.

Finding oil is not a very easy thing to do.

Some people find oil, other people don't.

If you do have this absurd income, how can you spend it?

How can you use it? How can you get through it?

Well, in one sense of the word, I don't have it,

it's my companies that have it.

It's my interest in my companies that has it.

It isn't that somebody brings a keg of money

every morning at 9 o'clock...

HE CHUCKLES

..to the bank!

Deposits it in a vault there.

But you own 81% of your company...

- Yes. - ..so it's as good as having a keg.

Well, in effect, and if, as and when I ever sold out,

if it were possible to sell out...

..if the companies are ever liquidated,

then I might have some money,

but until that far-off day...

- You're struggling on. - ..I'm struggling on.

Well, I don't complain of hardship. I don't, um...

say that I'm worried, um...

about whether I have a taxi fare or not...

or whether I can afford to, um...

make a trip to...Paris and back.

Nevertheless...

And I have my personal business, too, which is relatively very small

compared to my company interest,

but, um...I have many times borrowed money from banks...

..in my personal business, in order to drill necessary oil wells,

and, um, I never had the feeling that I was, um, flush in cash.

WHICKER: Mr Getty's certainly flush in art.

His collection at Sutton Place

has just been valued at a million-and-a-half...pounds.

But though these paintings decorate his galleries,

enrich his sitting rooms,

embellish his bedroom, they don't belong to him.

They're owned by a company called Art Properties Inc,

a United States corporation,

the stock of which, it turns out, is owned 100% by Mr Getty.

The larger part of his art collection's at another home

at Santa Monica, California.

That collection's a foundation and open to the public.

Here at Sutton Place for his private enjoyment,

such riches as Veronese's Lady In Red,

Gainsborough's Countess Of Chesterfield,

Gentileschi's Rest On The Flight.

Treasures enough, you'd think, to entrance and enthuse

their proud and happy majority stockholder.

On top of such artistic delight,

there's another satisfaction involved.

Diana And Her Nymphs, this magnificent Rubens, which cost him

£130,000 two years ago, has, like most of his careful investments,

satisfactorily appreciated.

It's just been valued at three times what he paid.

St Bartholomew, the Rembrandt he bought last year,

almost accidentally, for £190,000, is today worth double.

He has the habit of making the right decisions.

He always wins.

The charm of the very rich, it's been said, is not their wealth,

but the slightly hangdog look they wear.

And there's no doubt that Paul Getty takes his life

and his pleasures with morose preoccupation and melancholy.

His passionate interest in his own business appears joyless.

But, for him, it has the enduring fascination that others find in love

or fellowship or in any of those activities

to which men have ever thought it worthwhile

to devote their lives and themselves.

But achievements outside this all-devouring business?

Would he find more satisfaction, say,

in having painted his Rubens than in being a billionaire?

I don't know that I would,

um...prefer to be a successful painter

rather than a successful businessman.

I think that, um...business is in its way just as important as painting.

I'd certainly rather be...a good painter than a bad businessman.

But if I had my choice of being a good painter or a good businessman,

I think I'd be just as well satisfied to be a good businessman.

You said that a man with a lot of money

tends to become rather sceptical of people.

Have you found yourself becoming

more and more suspicious of those around you?

Well, I try not to, um...

...be suspicious because I think that's a, um...

a bad road to travel. One can become so suspicious

that one's suspicious of everyone.

Your art dealers tell me

that you're the most suspicious man they've ever had to deal with.

I think you could go into a man's house and, um...criticise the man,

criticise his wife, criticise his children...

..and, um, he might still love you like a brother, but, er...

if he shows you a picture on the wall

and tells you that's a beautiful so-and-so,

and you say, "Well, I don't think it is. I think it's a fake,"

then you've lost his friendship for ever.

Of course, it's been suggested that your Rubens isn't a Rubens,

so you've lost one or two friends that way.

Well...

..um...I'm satisfied with it.

It's, um...been authenticated by some very good people.

Many people believe that all millionaires

live lives of unlimited pleasure and luxury.

So this is a belief that could well stimulate feelings of envy

and resentment, even of hatred.

How have these reactions affected you?

Oh, I think many people do have a wrong idea.

However, I think that, um... most millionaires that I've known

are very hard-working men, very hard-working indeed.

I think that, um...probably, um...

..of all the classes I know,

the millionaire businessman is the hardest working.

I would think they work longer hours than any class of workmen work.

Many of these millionaires seem to have obtained

relief from the uneasiness, the initial suspicion and distrust

that tends to characterise the rich man's relations with his fellow men

by philanthropy,

by the wholesale distribution of much of their fortunes.

But your benefactions, Mr Getty,

don't appear to be commensurate with the scale of your fortune.

Well, I think that, um...

..a man is doing a worthy work if he builds up his business,

he gives employment to, um, large groups of people.

And, um, renders service to the public...

..and the benefits there, I mean making a living for...

..thousands of people, protecting them against old age and sickness.

And doing it yourself rather than delegating somebody else to do it.

I mean, when you give money to a charity...

the charity may be doing the same thing that you're doing.

It may not be doing it any better or as well.

I see you've said, "I never give money to individuals.

"It is very unrewarding and unscientific."

Do you have any philanthropic policy at all?

Yes, that is one of the...

Well, I discussed, um...

..the problem of individual giving with many people.

I once discussed it with, um...

..Mr Rockefeller and, um...

Um...I understand that his policy is that he cannot help individuals.

In your daily round, Mr Getty, how much money do you carry on you?

Oh...very little, a few pounds.

Probably no more than you do or anyone else does.

Do you find that shops and hotels and restaurants

expect you to be a big spender?

No, I don't think so.

I don't think they do.

I hope they don't because they might be disappointed.

LAUGHS

There are a great many stories, Mr Getty, of your care with money.

For example, you've installed a pay telephone box here in Sutton Place

to prevent your guests abusing your hospitality

by making trunk and toll calls.

Well, I think right-thinking guests would, um...

consider that was a, um...

a...a benefit. It's, um...

..rather, um...

..daunting if you're visiting somewhere

and you have to put in a long-distance call and, um...

..charge your host with it.

It's said, Mr Getty, that you've waited outside a dog show

for the entry fee to come down by two or three shillings

and that you eat late in restaurants

to avoid paying the supplement for the orchestra.

Well, um, I might have done that occasionally

because, after all, that's what a great many people do.

What most people do, don't they?

And, um, I mean if it's within reason...

If you, er...

You'd probably do it yourself if you know that, um...

..a certain restaurant that, er, the cover charge is off at 10 o'clock

and, um...

it's a substantial cover charge and you're a large party

and it's five minutes to ten, would you want to go in and, er...

er, spend maybe, um, 10 or 15 in cover charges for the party...

..for the sake of four minutes?

That'd either be splashing money around, showing off...

..or else...just not being with it, as the saying is.

It's said, Mr Getty, that you're so with it

that you'll wait for a lift to avoid paying for a taxi.

No.

No, I, um...

I don't wait for a lift.

Er...if I had to wait two or three minutes I certainly would.

You have more money, as I said,

than you or your sons, or your grandsons,

or your great-grandsons could ever conceivably need.

Surely half an hour of your time

is worth more than, say, a five shilling taxi fare?

Surely you've no reason to accept

the slightest inconvenience at any time?

Even if it is another 10 or 15 on a restaurant bill.

- What is 10 or 15 to you? - Well, that's true,

It's less than a farthing to anyone else.

But don't you think that that's something to do with human nature?

Now, my idea of

a good place to spend money is right in my own business.

But you're not enjoying that, you're not getting pleasure out of it.

Yes, I do. I like to see a new refinery

I like to see a new chemical plant.

I like to see a new tanker.

I like to see a new office building.

Because it's, um, it's constructive.

In the first place, we hope it's a good investment.

It's going to give employment to a lot of people.

A tanker's going to employ people, probably for the next 25 years.

It's going to transport oil, oil products.

It's going to benefit humanity by that.

We hope it earns a small profit,

which ultimately will return the money invested

and a low rate of interest.

So it often seems that lesser multi-millionaires, less rich people,

are able to lead much grander, fuller lives than you.

Well, it's, er...

I went to St Moritz some years ago

and, um, about the second day there

it was suggested that I give a large party.

I said, "Why?"

"Well," he said, "you're a prominent man,

"and prominent men, it's more or less customary

"to give a big party in St Moritz."

And I was told that a certain... famous millionaire,

who happened to be there,

that he'd just recently given a party for 80 people.

So, before I committed myself, I went to see him.

And I said, "Did you give this party?"

And he said, "Yes." I said, "How many people did you have there?"

He said, "80."

I said, um, "How many of them were friends of yours?"

And you know, he said, "About five."

So I said, "You had 75 people there you'd never seen before."

And he said, "Yes, that's right."

LAUGHS

So I didn't, um... I didn't see the point

in giving a party for a lot of people that I didn't know.

WHICKER: 'However, he has been known to entertain strangers.

'Once a year, these orphans visit "Uncle Paul" at Sutton Place,

'when he has more fun than he did at his house-warming.

'though then, the expense of entertaining 1,500 guests

'was shared by the father of a debutante.

'For such occasional sidelines,

'and for the mainstream of his life, for the good of a business empire

'which weighs heavily upon him, Paul Getty exercises

'his phenomenal concentration every day,

'under the eyes of Renoir's demure young women.

'For keeping fit is another serious business.

'And not many 70-year-olds have such a way with barbells.

'His two ageing Cadillacs are little used.

'He measures his walks with a pedometer

'and the temperature of his daily dips -

'Mr Getty is a great tapper of barometers.

'There are two pools at Sutton Place, but not even in the country,

'where life should be straightforward not even this old Tudor mansion,

'can escape the corporate tangle in which Mr Getty envelops himself.

'For he doesn't even own his own home.

'Instead, it's owned by the Sutton Place Property Company Ltd,

'a British company which itself is owned by an American company,

'the Pacific Western Oil Corporation, which in turn

'is owned by the Getty Oil Company,

'80% of which is owned, yes indeed, by Mr Getty.

'A billionaire who could live luxuriously anywhere in the world,

'he has disappointingly unsentimental reasons

'for deciding to live here, among us.'

GETTY: 'Britain is very convenient for me

'in connection with my business in the Middle East.

'It isn't actually in the Middle East and yet it's close to it.

'It's much more convenient than California is.

'Though I must confess that, um, I didn't come here for the climate.'

WHICKER: 'So this practical American, who was at Oxford half a century ago,

'slips comfortably into the secure tranquillity of English country life,

'as squire of Sutton Place, one of the finest examples

'of an unfortified Elizabethan manor house.

'Or that's what it was.

'Mr Getty has had a few changes made.'

CLATTERING

LOCKS CLICK, SHUTTERS RATTLE

DOGS BARK

BELLS RING

WHICKER: If you feel more secure here then, Mr Getty, why all these, er...

Why all these security precautions here at Sutton Place?

The police dogs and the bars and the bodyguards?

What is it that you're frightened of?

Oh, I wouldn't say that I'm frightened of anything in particular.

Just, um...

..I suppose a necessary precaution.

Against what?

Well, there's no money in the house, a few works of art,

but I don't think they'd be very saleable.

Why then is it a necessary precaution?

Well, there might be crackpots. There are crackpots in England.

And what sort of thing could they do?

Well, they could, er... What do you suppose a crackpot would do?

He might come in, dynamite the place.

Have you had any evidence of anything?

No. No.

I mean, you don't need...

you don't need police dogs to keep away begging letters.

No.

No, not crackpot letters.

But I have the police dogs mainly because I like them.

Apart from these fears, um, of crackpots,

do you have any other private fears?

I'm thinking of...fire, or...

ghosts or...

Oh, no, I'm not afraid of ghosts.

I think we all fear disease, old age,

being helpless.

Millionaires do seem to be heavily handicapped

in their search for domestic happiness.

Do you have much aptitude or instinct for family life?

I like to think I'm average.

You're not average, in as much as

you've been married five times, Mr Getty.

Well, maybe business had something to do with that

because, um...

..I think it's hard for a woman

to feel that she's competing with a business.

I was rather a conscientious businessman...

..and, er...

..the old saying "business before pleasure",

maybe there was too much of it in my marriages.

Certainly your spectacular success as a businessman has only be equalled

by what seems to be your abysmal failure as a husband.

That's right, I'm...

..world's worst marriage.

I see you've written,

"I hate being a failure.

"I hate and regret the failures of my marriages.

"I would gladly trade my millions

"for just one lasting marital success."

Is this still true today?

Well, I think so, but I don't want to get

hundreds of letters from women who want to marry me...

..sight unseen!

In a society magazine the other day, you wrote

that one of the things that made you happy was being with women,

while one of the things that made you unhappy was women leaving you.

- Yes. - It seems...

Yes, I like the company of women.

But, um...

I think when a woman wants to leave a man, she generally leaves him.

It does seem that you've always been fairly ruthless

in your personal relationships.

You've left your wives at the time of the birth of your children

to go back to your business. Have you always put business first?

Well, not any kind of business,

but important business, I suppose I have...

I'm trying to think what could be important

because we're on such a different scale,

we have a different scale of values here.

What would be important enough to take you away?

Well, when informed decisions have to be quickly made

and, er, you have to study the...

..the situation before making a decision.

Would you say that you're a sentimental man, Mr Getty?

I think so, yes.

One of your wives has said that

you're much afraid of showing your feelings.

She says you've never been able to open up with men,

or indeed have an intimate man friend.

Oh, I think I've had a...a few, um...

..a few good friends....

..among men.

One of the...closest friends I had, one of the best friends I had,

unfortunately, um...

..died this morning.

I think I had a long and...

..close friendship with him.

She says, "Paul is the most lonely man I know.

"He wants to meet the other person, but he can't."

I wouldn't say that I've ever felt particularly lonely.

I've been too busy to feel lonely.

Like the squirrel in the cage, you, um,

you race to stay where you are.

In this race, what have you had to sacrifice

to become such an immense financial success?

Well, I suppose a lot of, er... of, er, leisure.

Anything else?

Oh, a lot of things I wanted to do,

a lot of trips I would like to have made and, um...

theatres I would like to have seen and, um...

..walks I would like to have taken.

Presumably you believe the old bromide

- that money doesn't buy happiness. - Yes.

What else do you find it can't buy?

Well, I don't think it can buy health.

I don't think, um...

it, um...

..can buy, er...

..er, a good time.

I think some of the best times I ever had...

..didn't cost me any money.

- Er... - What sort of times were they?

Oh, down at the beach.

On the surfboard.

Waiting for a big breaker to come in and ride it in to shore.

I'm not spending any money there.

The breakers are free.

The sunshine is free.

How do you think your relationship with other people would change

if, by some catastrophe, you lost all your money?

Oh, I hope I'd, um, have, er...

..three or four friends left.

You seem to be a melancholy man, Mr Getty,

a man who doesn't make friends easily.

Your normal expression is not perhaps a very happy one.

In fact, you often look so miserable,

people must believe your money has not brought you much happiness.

Well, I suppose that's, um...

..that's the effect, I suppose, of responsibility.

I think that, um...

..ever since my father died and left me the responsibility of the business

that, er, I haven't had quite the, um, er...

buoyant, er...

..er...feeling that I had before.

How would you have liked to be remembered, Mr Getty?

Well, I think I'd like to be remembered as, um...

..one who...er...

..succeeded in...

..retaining the business that I inherited...inherited,

and, um, expanding it to, um...

a reasonable proportion. I think if my father came back today

and asked me how the business was going,

I'd say, "Well, it's going fairly well."

I think it is going fairly well, Mr Getty, yes.

How do you think that you will be remembered?

Probably, um...

..as a businessman.

- Just a businessman? - I think so. Might be, um...

a footnote in history someplace.

So where do you go from here?

What is left for the richest man in the world to do?

Well...

..just keep on with the business.

But you must know, Mr Getty, that you can't take it with you.

No.

It's probably a good thing.

It might be quite a burden.

DOGS BARK

WHICKER: 'From the burden of wealth, there's no release.

'With his rare, wintry smile,

'the richest man in the world is, perhaps fortunately for us all,

'modest and unassuming.

'His opinions and reactions may not always commend him to many people,

'for the world, when so coldly contemplated,

'seems rather a bleak place.

'But they're not dangerous opinions. They harm no-one, and in their way,

'they help many. For surely it's better for the non-rich

'that the solitary billionaire

'should care more for tankers than for luxury yachts,

'find his pleasures in refineries, not racecourses.

'His money, as you've seen, is most carefully spent.

'In his remote world of employees and strangers,

'he looks after the millions, the billions look after themselves.

'So, there goes the richest man in the world.

'Would you change places with him?'

WISTFUL PIANO PLAYS

DOG WHINES