Gordon Getty

Gordon Peter Getty (born December 20, 1933) is an American businessman and classical music composer, the fourth child of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. His mother, Ann Rork, was his father's fourth wife. When his father died in 1976, Gordon assumed control of Getty's $2 billion trust. In March 2026, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his wealth as $8.15 billion and placed him at number 463 on their list of billionaires worldwide, while the Forbes 400 estimated it at $5.5 billion, making him number 276 on their list of the wealthiest Americans.

Getty was raised in San Francisco, California, where he attended St. Ignatius College Preparatory and the University of San Francisco. He also earned a B.A. in music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He studied singing with Verna Osborne.

He joined the oil business to please his father; however, he eventually sold the family's Getty Oil to Texaco in 1986 for about $10 billion.

In 2002, Getty founded ReFlow, a company which temporarily purchases shares in mutual funds to save funds taxes and commissions.

Among several professions, Getty is a classical music composer whose compositions include the opera Plump Jack, Joan and the Bells, piano pieces, and a collection of choral works. His one-act opera Usher House was performed by the San Francisco Opera in 2015. Aspiring to become an opera singer, Getty studied in the mid-1970s with Louise Caselotti, a mezzo-soprano who had been Maria Callas' voice teacher (1946–47). He and his wife have supported the fine arts, especially underwriting productions of the San Francisco Opera and the Russian National Orchestra.^{[full citation needed]}

Getty's opera The Canterville Ghost was premiered on May 9, 2015, at the Leipzig Opera.

On Christmas Day, 1964, he married Ann Gilbert (1941–2020) in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gordon and Ann Getty lived in a yellow Italianate mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, with sweeping views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. Over the years, Getty and Ann, a publisher and a decorator, expanded their living space, buying the house next door (to make room for his work at the piano) and then the house next door to that. They hosted charity events, opera stars, and fundraisers for politicians, including Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom's father, William Newsom, one of Gordon's friends since high school, managed the family trust for years.

Gordon and Ann Getty had four sons: Gordon Peter Getty Jr (born 1965); William Paul Getty (born 1970); Andrew Rork Getty (1967–2015); John Gilbert Getty (1968–2020).