Hate Those Hotels

Though he is one of the world's richest men (reputed worth: $1 billion), Jean Paul Getty, 66, lives like a man who does not know where his next penury is coming from. For years he kept a diary in which he jotted down every $2.70 dinner check, including "35-c- for ice cream." He has homes in California and Italy, but rarely uses them, prefers instead to run his vast Middle Eastern oil interests (TIME cover, Feb. 24, 1958) from the cheapest two-room suites in Paris' George V and London's Ritz Hotel. He has no personal servant, and it takes a nimble bellhop to beat the billionaire out of carrying his own bags.

Last week Getty set London abuzz with what seemed at first glance an amazing about-face. He announced that he was buying the Duke of Sutherland's vast Sutton Place mansion* on an estate near Woking, 23 miles from London (14 principal bedrooms. 20 servants' rooms, 16 baths, 140-ft. ballroom, 140-ft. library, and Great Hall with minstrels' balcony). Price for the house plus swimming pool, nine-hole golf course and 174 acres of parkland: a Getty secret, but probably well over $1,000,000.

Had Oilman Getty suddenly decided to live it up? Not at all, said he. His only purpose in buying, he told the London press, was to avoid paying those hotel bills. "I generally have a group of business associates with me, and I have worked out that our combined hotel bills will be more than is required to run a stately home. If your name is Getty, you can't expect to be allowed to live in a hotel for less than $100 a day." Retaining his composure, the Ritz manager said that customary manners leave Getty's Ritz bills "up to the imagination." But, he added, "I can tell you he doesn't pay anything like that." Getty's own expenses come closer to $40 a day.

A better explanation for the purchase is Getty's nose for a sharp deal. Only 20 minutes from London's Waterloo Station, Sutton Place is in the center of a rapidly developing suburban area where land goes for $35,000 an acre. On that basis, Getty's investment has a potential market of better than $6,000,000, exclusive of the house.

* Built 1523-30 by Sir Richard Weston, a favorite of Henry VIII, who served on the jury that condemned Henry's enemy, the Duke of Buckingham, to death.

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