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Show Family Weekly December 11, 1966 America’s Wackiest Millionaires! “I’m eccentric,” one of them admits, “but I’ve noticed the word'sused only for people with money;if you're poor, you're crazy” By CLEVELAND AMORY ‘Author of “Whe Killed Society?” “The Last Resorts,” Gnd “The Proper Bostonians” Hunt eagerly autographs copes of his book. HE SECOND PLACE on our list of millionaires belongs to Texas’ legendary Haroldson Lafayette Hunt. Like Getty, oilman Hunt operated for years in comparative obscurity. He still is as shy as a woman about his-age and refuses to give his birth date. This six-foot-tall, baby-faced, green-eyed, expecan farmer, who supposedly won his first oil Jease in-a bluff during a poker game, has in recent years taken to writing. He has turned out four books,all of which are right-wing treatises, and he writes both a daily and a weekly newspaper column. Hunt-is-weak on friendship (“How,” asks-an associate, “do you-warm upto Fort Knox?”) but strong on health. “I used to chain-smoke cigars,” Be E S BS Getty threw a party for orphans at his English estate—and entertained them by doing the twist! NY CATALOG of America’s most eccentric millionaires should begin with the beginning—therichest—and the going price tag on J. Paul Getty is, by his own admission, “several billion.” “But you ‘must remember,” he says, “that a billion dollars ian’t what it used to be.” Andto think we’d almost forgotten. But things are tough all over. In any case, Getty has other odd observations. “Without the businessman,” he says, “what have you got left in the U.S.?” Well, one thing we haven't gotleft is businessman Getty himself. For many years he has lived in England in solitary splendor in his Sutton Place estate—which, characteristically, he picked up for peanuts. “Some people have said I'm stingy,”Gettyremarks, “but I’m not. In business I’m willing to pay the going rate for anything. But why should 4 Family Weekly, December 11, 1966 I pay more because I have more? I’ve washed my own socks, and I'll probably do it again.” Like most multimillionaires, Getty is not only unhappy but looks the part. But, in contrast to so many other of the unhappiness boys, he admits his unhappiness. “I don’t have the best personality in the world,” he laments. Getty, in common with most millionaires, also has his pet economies, his most famous being his installation in Sutton Place of a pay telephone for his house guests. But he also has some pretty unusual pet opinions. “T despise American big business with its managerial complex. Who paysfor the fancy salaries, the inflated expense accounts, the limousines, and the fantastic great office buildings? Why,it’s the common shareholders who pay. My heart bleeds for shareholders, The best office is the back seat of an automobile.” Detroit will be glad to hear this. he says. “But I gave them up because it was costing $300,000 of my time per year just to unwrap them.” His income? It runs from $10,000 to $12,000 per hour! Hunt had six children by his first wife. After her death, he married his secretary. With her, he lives in a house on Dallas’ White Rock Lake— a house which is a copy of, although slightly larger than, Mount Vernon. After dinner his favorite entertainment is to have a family“hootenanny of hymns and barbershop-type. ballads, many of which he likes to lead. ~ After the appearance of his book, Alpaca, a Utopian novel which calls for an “incomeocratic” government (that is, the upper bracket taxpayers would have seven times as many votes as those in the-lower 40 percent), he made a promotional trip to a Dallas book store. There he stood by while his two little stepdaughters did a commercial for the book by singing these lyrics to the tune of “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” How much is that book in the window? The one that says all the smart things. How much is that book in the window? T do hope to learn all it brings. |