Page 28 - Forbes - USA (February 2018)

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FROM THE VAULT

GETTY’S MIGHTY GRIP:

JULY 15, 1957
BILLIONAIRE J. PAUL GETTY’S empire stretched from
California to Arabia, encompassing oil wells, refineries,
tankers and hotels. It totaled some $1.1 billion in assets,
almost $10 billion in current money. And Getty ruled
absolutely, with unbridled ambition. “He just can’t
stop as long as there’s a Shell or a Standard Oil
bigger than he is,” one Wall Streeter observed.
“He’s driven to keep growing.” Getty owned
trophies, including the Pierre Hotel in
Manhattan, but most of his wealth
came from oil, and in the late 1950s,
he was watching a bet on Middle East
reserves begin to pay off.
Emperor Paul lived a life of contradic-
tions. He eventually took up residence in a 73-
room English manor and amassed a museum-quality col-
lection of art (Rubens, Titian, Gainsborough and many more).
Yet he was famously parsimonious and “steadfastly shun[ned] public-
ity, some say for fear of being kidnapped,” we noted. As the Oscar-nomi-
nated 2017 movie All the Money in the World depicts, Paul wasn’t the Getty who
ended up getting abducted. His namesake grandson was instead—and true to form,
the tightfisted elder Getty initially refused to pay the ransom. Getty’s eccentricity, Forbes
concluded in 1957, was “symptomatic of a deep urge to create wealth—and keep it.”

NEWSWORTHY AND NOTABLE
A Beautiful Business
AMAZING AD
Wright On With atomic-era product names like Touch-
Curtiss-Wright, and-Glow, Love Pat and Futurama, Charles
which traces Revson’s Revlon dominated the makeup
its roots to the market—quadrupling sales in five years to
Wright Brothers, $86 million, some $750 million today—and
built fighter planes sponsored hit TV shows such as The $64,000
in World War II. Question and The $64,000 Challenge.
Now its sights
were set on outer
space. It remains
a major aviation
force today, with
$2.1 billion in
annual sales.

SIGN OF THE TIMES
Big Hopes,
Little Cars
Detroit had seen the
future, and it was smaller
automobiles; GM and Ford
FAST-FORWARD
were planning diminutive Brewing Ambitions
vehicles to copy the success of 1957: Gus Busch (above, center), the man
imports like Volkswagen. But who made Budweiser the everyman staple it
the Motor City blew it: Bulky is today, had already turned his family’s small L TO R: WILF DOYLE/ALAMY; HANS VON NOLDE/AP; AP
cars still filled America’s roads operation into the U.S.’ second-largest brewer.
when the oil crises of the 2018: Ten years after Brazilian investors bought
’70s hit. By 1979 a bankrupt Anheuser-Busch and ended the Busch family’s
Chrysler would need federal role in the company, the combined AB InBev, BY ABRAM BROWN
support to keep going. with some $45.5 billion in annual sales, is the
world’s largest beer maker.
26 | FORBES FEBRUARY 28, 2018