Migg’s Reviews > All the Money in the World > Status Update

p.325, To build a dynasty, one must first create a family. and J. Paul Getty, who had spent his adult life escaping from his wives and children, has really no idea of what a family entailed.
p.337. "it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God" 'Who then will be saved?' "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible"

Any talk about the Gettys has a habit of finally returning to the true begetter of their story, the unpredictable old man who simultaneously created most of the family's enormous fortune and most of their troubles -loner, financier of genius, and miser extraordinary, J. Paul Getty. The image of him that persists is of a man of supernatural skills, immense financial power, and a personal life of utter emptiness.

Ronald's life continued to be ruled by his exclusion from the ever-expanding Getty fortune, and it is only now that one can see the full extent of the damage this had caused him. By disinheriting him his father had made a sort of exile of him -from the family and from life itself- and he was spending an increasing amount of time with his wife Karin and his four children in their house in South Africa.

For Ann and for Weidenfeld, publishing became a game that two could play. He would fly Concorde to New York, where they would get together to discuss the publishing conundrums of the 1980s -could they encourage Joseph Heller to create a roper sequel to Catch-22, or J.D. Salinger to do likewise with Catcher in the Rye? Could Ann entice the susceptible Norman Mailer or the saturnine Philip Roth to their imprint- or

One can understand why, by the spring of 1976, when he knew he had inoperable prostate cancer and refused to see the women he could use no longer, he still wanted Penelope near him, reading those never-forgotten boys' adventure books by G.E. Henty.

From the moment Paul was kidnapped there had been two alternatives if he was going to return alive -either the police would catch the kidnappers, or the Gettys would have to pay a large sum of money as a ransom. After more than a month of trying, it was clear that the Carabinieri couldn't have solved the case had Paul been held by Donald Duck- which left the family to face the second option.

An american friend remembers them from the summer of 1962, 'There were parties almost every night. It seemed that none of us had any worries, and Paul and Gail papered the most carefree of all. Paul was elegant and slim and very bright, and Gail seemed particularly pretty with her short hair and great vitality. They made the perfect couple, and I remember thinking how enviable they were -and how lovely ...

In October 1957 Paul Getty finally emerged from the capitalist closet in which he had been living in relative obscurity fo so long. Fortune magazine, after several months' research among America's super rich, including Rockefeller's Morgans, Hunts, and Fords, publicly proclaimed Jean Paul Getty, an 'expatriate businessman living in Paris', the 'richest living american'.

She seems to have agreed, but then like the smart negotiator she was, she switched the argument. What she was really most concerned about, she said, was not herself but future generations of the Gettys. Paul might be right. Time would tell. But when Papa had left her all his money, he was really leaving it in trust for the grandchildren, and for all the unborn Gettys to come after.

CHAPTER THREE; The first million dollars. For a young man with a ruthless disposition, a little capital, and a resilient physique, the oil industry was the bargain basement of the twenty century. Ford would have produced their millionth motor car by the end of 1914, and war in Europe made the demand for oil increase dramatically. Then as the century progressed, America's thirst for oil would go on growing...