Hollywood star Tom Cruise transforms into an eccentric oil baron in the new movie Digger, saying his character is “outrageous and unpredictable”. In the blockbuster, the 64-year-old actor’s kooky persona, Digger Rockwell, unleashes a global disaster before going on a mission to save the world.
Though Cruise says the American tycoon is entirely fictionalised, there have been plenty of real-life oil oddballs he could have drawn on, as James Moore reveals.
Ruthless Texan oil man
Haroldson Lafayette Hunt Jr. helped inspire TV rogue JR Ewing in the soap opera Dallas. Hunt used gambling winnings to invest in oil and managed to convince a desperate prospector to sign over his valuable oilfield for what turned out to be a pittance, in a story that would later be echoed in the show. Hunt’s eventual worth was over £2 billion.
Despite his wealth and living in a huge mansion, he carried his homemade lunch to work in a paper bag, parked blocks away from his office to save on parking fees and wore cheap shiny blue suits. A legendary philanderer, he also had fifteen children by three wives, allegedly marrying one bigamously. In an attempt to live to 150, he lived off a raw food diet, largely consisting of homegrown carrots, while practising an exercise regime called ‘creeping’, where he crawled around on all fours. He died, aged 85, in 1974.
Bigfoot hunter
Maverick oil prospector and geologist Jack Grimm famously spent some of his honeymoon panning for gold, before starting drilling independent wells looking for oil riches. An ex-US Marine, he hit oil with the first well he drilled in Oklahoma and went on to find more in Texas, becoming a millionaire at 31.
He once described his life as “a continuous search for the unknown” and in later life used his wealth to fund searches for mythical creatures like Bigfoot, the Yeti and Loch Ness Monster. He spent a fortune fruitlessly trying to locate the wreck of the Titanic and boffins once vetoed his attempts to use the diving powers of a monkey to help find the ship, which sank in 1912.
He even maintained he’d personally found a carved piece of wood from the ‘lost’ Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey and subsequently carried it around in his briefcase for the rest of his days. A poker addict, he wore custom made cowboy boots and drove custom made Cadillacs. Grimm passed away in 1998, aged 72.
Payphone Scrooge
Son of a pioneer oilman, American J. Paul Getty set up Getty Oil in 1942 and went on to become the world’s wealthiest man worth £4.5 billion. But he was seriously stingy. Getty famously put a payphone in his lavish Tudor mansion, Sutton Place, in Surrey, for guests to use so he didn’t have to pay the bill for their calls. He always reused stationery and to save on laundry costs washed his own shirts and underwear in a sink.
In 1973 he refused to pay the full ransom when his grandson, John Paul Getty III, was kidnapped in Italy, only relenting on a smaller payout when the culprits sent him the boy’s severed ear. Getty did splash out on an art collection, strict security for his house and a pet lion for the grounds. A notorious womanizer, who slept with at least 100 women, he was married and divorced five times, and died aged 83, in 1976.
Sued over a sandwich
With his long flowing beard, monocle and wearing a fresh orchid in his lapel every day, Nubar Gulbenkian was the very model of an eccentric. And the Armenian-born playboy’s habits lived up to his appearance.
Nubar was the son of the world’s richest man, oil fixer Calouste Gulbenkian, known as Mr Five Per Cent. He went to work for his dad, but ended up suing the company for ten million dollars after miserly Calouste refused to pay for a chicken sandwich he’d eaten at his desk. The suit was eventually dropped, but his dad largely disinherited him.
Nubar went on to work as a British secret agent in occupied France during World War Two and made his own fortune in oil. He was later known for driving a gold-plated custom-built London taxi and once flew in a troupe of belly dancers from Turkey to London for a half hour performance at a party. A legendary lothario, he was married three times and once said: “I've had good wives, as wives go, and as wives go, two of them went.” Gulbenkian died in 1972, aged 75.
Hair-raising habit
John D. Rockefeller, who founded Standard Oil, became America’s first billionaire in the 19th century and later gave away millions to charitable causes. But he also had an eccentric personal regime. When it came to his diet, he always skipped breakfast and would chew his food dozens of times until it liquified.
When he started going bald the tycoon purchased multiple wigs of varying lengths. He then rotated them regularly so people would think his hair was naturally growing and getting trimmed. He celebrated Job Day, the day aged he got his first gig as a bookkeeper, over his birthday. In later life carried a pile of shiny dimes. He’d hand one to adults he met, then give them a sermon on being thrifty. But the dad-of-five would also balance expensive china plates on his nose at home to make his kids laugh. He died in 1937, aged 97.
