Back in 1971 when I was living in Rome, one of my good pals was Tom Wohlmut. Tom’s father was a top executive at getting oil, effectively running Getty Italiana. Technically, John Paul Getty Jr., J. Paul Getty’s dilettante son was the President, but Getty senior leaned on Wohlmut as one of his trusted lieutenants. This is also the same period covered by the tragic events of 1971 when his second wife Talitha was found dead in their Rome apartment that July, and two years later his son Paul III would be famously kidnapped and held for ransom. The 16 year old was snatched off a street in Rome’s Piazza Farnese in July 1973 by a gang linked to Italian organized crime. He’d been living a bohemian life in Rome at the time. The kidnappers demanded $17 million. J. Paul Getty Sr., then reputed to be the richest man in the world, refused to pay, famously telling reporters he had 14 other grandchildren and that paying one ransom would put all of them at risk of kidnapping. Complicating things, young Paul had joked about staging his own kidnapping to get money out of his famously tight-fisted grandfather, so initially the family didn’t take the demand seriously. After months of stalemate, the kidnappers escalated. In November 1973, they cut off Paul’s right ear and mailed it to a newspaper, along with a lock of hair, threatening further mutilation if the ransom wasn’t paid. Getty Sr., urged by his son, eventually agreed to pay, but only $2.2 million (reportedly the maximum amount that was tax-deductible), and loaned the rest to his son (Paul’s father) at 4% interest. Paul was released in December 1973, found alive but traumatized on a roadside in southern Italy. J. Paul Getty’s key intermediary was Fletcher Chace — a tall, pipe-smoking former CIA operative and Getty’s aide, who acted as his fixer and go-between with the family during the kidnapping negotiations, but Wohlmut I’m sure also played a key intermediary role. Getty flew Chace in from Kuwait to handle the ransom arrangements alongside the Italian negotiator Jacovoni, since Getty himself refused to deal with the situation directly.
That constitutes my personal connection to Getty so when we were planning our LA Grand Tour going to see the of theGetty Center was a must. The Getty Center in Los Angeles opened to the public in December 1997. It took about 13 years to build, with construction beginning in the mid-1980s, and was designed by architect Richard Meier a Cornellian). J. Paul Getty never saw or was part of conceiving the Center, set up on a hill next to the 405 and above Brentwood. Some think he lived at the other Getty museum at the Getty Villa down on the beach, but he actually never lived at the Getty Villa. He built it in the 1970s (completed 1974) as a museum to house his art collection, modeled after the ancient Roman Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum. He was living in England at the time and reportedly never visited the Villa after it was completed, choosing to oversee the design and construction from a distance.
The Getty Center sits atop a hill in the Santa Monica Mountains overlooking Los Angeles and, on clear days, the Pacific Ocean. Designed by architect Richard Meier, it’s clad almost entirely in travertine stone (over a million square feet, quarried in Bakelli, Italy) paired with white enameled metal panels, giving it a bright, almost sculptural quality.
We had 10am, opening time, tickets and were there early, as usual. The tour starts with the tram ride up the hill. Visitors leave their cars to ride a computer-driven tram up to the campus, and that becomes part of the arrival experience. The Museum houses European paintings, drawings, sculpture, decorative arts, and photographs, including works by Van Gogh (Irises), Rembrandt, and Cézanne. The Central Garden is special and designed by artist Robert Irwin, with a winding, deliberately non-architectural counterpoint to Meier’s geometric buildings. There are features like azaleas in a stream, tight succulent arrays and a maze of bougainvillea reminiscent of the towers at the Singapore Gardens. The campus also houses scholarly and conservation arms of the Getty Trust, not just the public museum. The views are 360 degrees and endless with floor-to-ceiling windows and outdoor terraces throughout that take advantage of the hilltop site. It one of the most expensive museum projects ever built. It’s funded by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the same trust established with his fortune, and admission is-ist free (though parking has a modest fee). What a great symbol of American wealth put to good public use.
It is hard to visit LA (or any major city in America for that matter) without noticing the last number of Asian tourists. A visit to the Getty is no exception. As we were heading to the restaurant for lunch. An Asian couple tried to use the elevator and mistakenly pulled the fire alarm instead of pushing the elevator retrieval button. It’s set off all manner of commotion with sirens and guards all trying to set things straight. Meanwhile, our Asian friends quietly, the way, only to reappear a few minutes later, trying to get a table in the restaurant, despite not having any reservations. Apparently OpenTable is not a thing in China. The hostess was nice enough to offer them a table, but said that they had to take one of four that were in the sun. That took a while to resolve since communication is not easy. When they were finally seated and the waitress arrived to take their order, they could not read the menu and simply said that they wanted steak. The restaurant had no steak on offer, but that didn’t translate well. Finally, a couple just got up and walked out of the restaurant, looking calm, but somewhat for perplexed by the American lack of hospitality.
The freed up table was quickly filled by two young Angeleno couples comprised of two 30-something caucasian men and two 20-something Asian women. Were the first couple was very quiet for lack of fluency in English, these two couples were anything but quiet. It was hard to tell who is more prosperous of the four with the two VC Bros chatting up this acquisition in that acquisition Weill the two female counterparts discussed how much better their equity options plans were at their current companies rather than at Salesforce.com, where they had both been previously.
We are at the Santa Monica pier right now, while the kids are riding the Honky Tonk rides, I am sitting on my traditional old guy bench thinking about the ways of the world. J. Paul Getty was a ruthless oil mogul in his day, but at least in death, he has left something of value to the public good. I read today that the US ambassador to Italy is spending the month touring the coastline of Italy in his $450 million yacht telling the world that everyone admire successful people of wealth. I’m not sure if that’s correct or not, but I do know that what you do with your wealth and how you treat people… All people, determines what I choose to admire. I’m happy sitting here on public bench. I’m a public access pier, hoping I haven’t gotten chewing gum on my pant seat. The regular hoy Pollo here on the pier with me seem happy even if they don’t have a yacht the cost the GDP of a small country. It all makes me wonder having seen all the Asians at the Getty center how the vast pools of Chinese wealth will find their way into the world.