Lady Sybil Vimes in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. She’s so wealthy, she can afford to muck about in rubber boots all day.
Richie Rich
Eugene Morgan from “The Magnificent Ambersons” is a hard-working industrialist.
Pierre Bezukhov from “War and Peace” is very wealthy, but he continuously strives to improve himself and his workers (with not much success).
The aristocracy in The Mote In God’s Eye are titled and independently rich, but also devoted servants of humanity, by no means restricted to Roderick, Lord Blaine.
In the Ramage naval series, Lord Ramage, his father the Earl, and a good many other nobles, are hard-working naval officers or otherwise servants of His Majesty, and the occasional exiled French nobleman generally shows up in a good light too. Earl Ramage is also shown to be a good and responsible landlord and land-owner who takes care of his tenants. While there are titled villains in the series, they are more usually social climbers jealous of their more elevated associates, or nouveaux riches unsure of their station and compensating by throwing their weight about.
Lydia - 1941, United Artists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_%28film%29
Mrs. Parkington - 1944, MGM (Based on a novel – don’t know if the lead character acts the same in original book)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs._Parkington
A false dichotomy. Germany (either war) could be defeated more efficiently and economically without corporate executives gouging the government. Or selling to both sides. Wartime profiteers are not simply canny businessmen. They are thieves stealing from taxpayers and traitors endangering a national war effort.
Breaking Bad
What war? Little Orphan Annie started in the mid-20s and the strip’s heyday was in the 30’s. Given creator Harold Gray’s arch-conservatism (He temporarily killed off Daddy Warbucks by having him die of despair when FDR was re-elected), I wouldn’t be surprised if Warbucks was selling arms to Hitler as a bulwark against communism.
Comic books and comic strips are loaded with examples:
Bruce Wayne
Tony Stark
Professor Xavier
Reed Richards
Prince Namor
Black Panther
Aquaman
Oliver “Green Arrow” Queen
Ted "Blue Beetle " Kord
Danny “Iron Fist” Rand
Alan “Green Lantern” Scott
Rex “Hourman” Tyler
It’s a pretty common superhero trope.
Different Strokes
Silver Spoons
Don’t get the White Christmas entry. Wasn’t the story about a couple of song and dance guys who throw a fund-raiser so their WW2 Commanding Officer wouldn’t lose his Vermont ski lodge? I guess having a “Vermont Ski Lodge” might sound rich, but (a) the guy was a retired US Army officer (not a high-paying occupation) and (b) when you need to do a fund-raiser to save it… I don’t think that person would be considered rich.
Or maybe there’s somebody I don’t remember in that one…
The presumption is that he made the bulk of his fortune as a defense contractor during World War I.
I have read few of the comic strips, and never watched the entire movie. Is it ever explicitly stated that he was a profiteer? Or is that simply an assumption made by people who hate guns, and believe that any gun-maker must automatically be evil?
[aside]
The war that Daddy Warbucks originally made his (first) fortune from was WWI and in-canon he had made it legitimately and not by gouging or cronyism – during the interwar period there was a populist claim that WWI had been a conflict fabricated by the armaments lobby that America should have never joined, and Gray portrayed him in ways as to counter that view of capitalists.
[/aside]
His name is Warbucks.
You guys are talking about the same Lord Grantham who’s already lost one fortune and thinks Charles Ponzi’s got some interesting new schemes to look into, right? Mary seems to have a good head on her shoulders, but let’s not forget this is the show that brought us the (admittedly awesome) line “What is a weekend?”
The question wasn’t weather Lord Grantham was a *good *businessman. It’s clear he’s not. But you cannot deny he has a work ethic.
The Dowager Countess doesn’t know what a week-end is because their world isn’t split into time that way, not because Lord Grantham doesn’t work. He works, in a gentlemanly kind of way. It’s just that his work is running the estate, and entails going out to his fields and looking lordly and attending the right parties to rub shoulders and shoot guns with the right people, and answering letters and telegrams, whether they arrive on a Saturday or a Wednesday.
There was a comic film from 1951, Rhubarb.
A rich, eccentric self made millionaire adopts a feral cat. The old dude is shown as a nice guy, who respects hard work and people who stand up for themselves, relying on their own abilities. That’s why, when he dies, he leaves most of his estate to the cranky cat, and not his daughter, who doesn’t have a job, prefering to live off of daddy’s money.
Hilarity ensues!
She has plenty of “bad” rich people and people who get rich by not doing anything useful. Often, her heroes are rather poor and/or sacrifice (I know she did not believe in the term “sacrifice” as I am using it) economically and withhold their “gifts” of genius rather than be compensated.
There are MANY books and movies with extremely wealthy protagonists that we’re expected to like and root for. But I don’t THINK that’s quite what the OP was asking for (I could be wrong, of course).
Sure, Fred Astaire played a lot of charming, likable rich guys in his musicals. Bruce Wayne (like many other super heroes) is a charming, likable rich guy. But did we ever see how Fred got rich? Do we see Bruce burning the midnight oil in his office? No, we’re just told they’re filthy rich (probably old money), and don’t think any more about it. The source of their wealth usually isn’t important to the stories they appear in.
How many people do we see in movies who’ve gotten rich by working their butts off and building a successful business WITHOUT being moral dirtbags? And how often does the business they’ve built figure prominently in their stories?
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Different Strokes, Silver Spoons.
Exactly
Again, exactly.
North and South, which I assume the OP was referencing with “mill-owners beating up the plebs”, has that scene in which the mill-owner, a man driven in his work by his own demons, beats up a mill-worker who was smoking inside the mill, endangering everyone’s lives (because cotton fluff is so thick in the air, it can ignite and explode). He doesn’t come off well to the soft-hearted heroine who witnesses the scene, but he has damn good reason to make an example of the man.
Because he ends up being the hero of the story–albeit after Learning Some Lessons via Hard Knocks–I’d say he isn’t a moral dirtbag. Certainly the business is the core of the story, there.