American Dynasties: Legacy of Great Wealth, Great Drama

Feb. 9, 2011 — -- John Paul Getty III, scion of one of the world's richest oil families who died at 54 this past weekend, lived on a landscape cratered by tragedy and dysfunctional relationships … familiar terrain for the Gettys and for several of this country's best known dynasties.

Kidnapped in Rome at age 16, his captors tied him to a stake for five months and cut off his ear because his distrustful and miserly grandfather would not initially pay the ransom. J. Paul Getty, considered then to be the richest man in the world said, "I have 14 grandchildren and if I pay one penny ransom, I'll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren."

After the senior Getty grudgingly paid part of the ransom, Paul was released. He soon married a woman eight years his senior and five months pregnant with his son. Then a downward spiral into drug and alcohol dependency led to a catastrophic stroke in 1981 that left him nearly blind, unable to speak and confined to a wheelchair.

Yet dramatic as these events were, they were only a few headlines of the family's misfortunes. Patriarch J. Paul Getty stumbled through five marriages. Biographer Robert Lenzner, author of "The Great Getty: The Life and Loves of J. Paul Getty --- Richest Man in the World," told ABC News that "Getty was illiterate with respect to being a father or a husband."

If so, was that trait passed on, along with sad consequences, to following generations?

John Paul Getty II, for instance, also battled drug addiction and deserted his wife and family for another woman when young Paul was only eight. Marred by the divorce, Paul was reportedly expelled from seven schools as he grew into a rebellious teen dubbed "the Golden Hippie" by the press. He had slipped into a dissolute life in the Roman demimonde even before he was snatched in 1973.

Paul's son, Balthazar, born in 1975, is now an actor on the ABC show "Brothers and Sisters." But Balthazar gained more notoriety for his 2008 affair with actress Sienna Miller that featured widely publicized steamy photos of the two cavorting nearly nude on a beach in Italy.

Gordon Getty, fourth son of J. Paul Getty, has acknowledged that he maintained a romantic relationship and three illegitimate children in Los Angeles even as he was married and raising a family in San Francisco.