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Olive oil tycoon J. Paul Getty created the greatest fortune in America - and came up near to destroying his own family in the process. Of his four sons who reached manhood, only one survived relatively unscathed. One wiped out himself, one became a drug-addicted recluse and the third had to carry the stigma all his life to be disinherited in childhood. The unhappiness continued in to the next era, with the name Getty, as one journalist put it, 'becoming synonymous for family dysfunction'. Getty's once most liked grandson was kidnapped by the Italian mafia, lost his car and, after an eternity of drink and drugs, became a paraplegic. A granddaughter is currently suffering from Products. Plus the Getty family itself has been torn aside by litigation over their poisoned inheritance. But do the disaster have to occur? John Pearson, who may have customized in biographies of family members as assorted as the Churchills, the English Royal Family, the Dcvonshires and the Krays, sets out to find the answer. The result is a remarkable saga of a fantastic dynasty. He traces a lot of the difficulty to the bizarre personality of the avaricious, sex-obsessed billionaire, J. Paul Getty himself - and demonstrates how a lot of his behaviour has been repeated in being successful generations. He describes the famous kidnapping of his grandson in visual detail, revealing the way the old man's frame of mind added noticeably to the boy's sufferings. And he shows the way the family has coped with the latest modern scourges: drugs and Products. For Painfully Rich is not a hopeless story. Although some of the family have been ruined by the Getty legacy, others have kept themselves from disaster, especially the cricket-loving philanthropist, J. Paul Getty Jr. Pearson's moving report of his restoration from drugs and profound personal tragedy shows that there is expect future generations of this stricken family - and demonstrates that money may be used to buy success and even delight.
