A real kidnapping, a real refusal, and the richest man in the world
On July 10, 1973, sixteen-year-old John Paul Getty III was snatched off a Rome street by the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta and held for a ransom of $17 million. His grandfather, J. Paul Getty, then widely considered the wealthiest private individual on earth, refused to pay. The standoff lasted five months. The kidnappers eventually sent a severed ear. Getty finally negotiated a reduced sum, loaned the rest to his daughter-in-law Gail at interest, and the boy came home alive but permanently damaged.
That story sat in the public record for decades, feeding news coverage, magazine profiles, and occasional documentary attention, before John Pearson's 1995 biography Painfully Rich: The Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty gave it its most thorough written treatment. Hollywood circled the material repeatedly. It finally reached wide audiences through Ridley Scott's 2017 feature, which arrived trailing its own scandal: original lead Kevin Spacey was replaced by Christopher Plummer in nine days of reshoots after allegations against Spacey surfaced, and Plummer received an Academy Award nomination for the performance. FX then mounted a prestige limited series in 2018, Trust, written by Simon Beaufoy, which covered much of the same ground with more time and a darker comic edge.
The story's grip comes from a specific moral obscenity: that a man of almost incomprehensible wealth chose calculation over a grandson's safety, and that the choice was arguably rational on his own terms. Every adaptation returns to that question.
The story through time
- 1973J. Paul Getty III kidnapped in Rome; five-month standoff ends with partial ransom
- 1995John Pearson publishes Painfully Rich, the definitive account of the Getty family Painfully rich
- 2004Channel 4 documentary Getty: The World's Richest Man airs in the UK
- 2017Ridley Scott releases All the Money in the World; Christopher Plummer replaces Kevin Spacey in emergency reshoots All the Money in the World
- 2018FX limited series Trust, written by Simon Beaufoy and directed by Danny Boyle, covers the kidnapping with Donald Sutherland as Getty Trust
The definitive version is the film, despite everything
Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World should not work as well as it does given the circumstances of its production. Christopher Plummer had nine days to inhabit J. Paul Getty, and he made the character more chilling than Spacey's heavily-prostheticized version almost certainly would have been: leaner, drier, quieter, more genuinely alien. Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams anchor the human cost. The film is not faultless, but it is the version that will endure.
If you love the cold calculus of All the Money in the World
True stories of wealth, power, and the cost of loyalty
Trust is the underrated one: funnier and stranger than the film
Danny Boyle's FX series Trust has Donald Sutherland as Getty and Brendan Fraser in a supporting role, and it treats the material with a dark absurdist tilt that the film avoids. It is longer, looser, and willing to be genuinely strange. It also devotes real time to the kidnappers' internal politics, which the film largely skips. Streaming made it easy to overlook. It deserves a second look.
If the kidnapping thriller is what got you
Ransoms, hostages, and the long wait
If Ridley Scott's period atmosphere is the draw
1970s cinema and the moral rot underneath the surface
