Ava Gardner
Who was the spouse of Artie Shaw between Aug 1945 and Oct 1945?
Artie Shaw Artie Shaw ( born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky ; May 23 , 1910 – December 30 , 2004 ) was an American clarinetist , composer , bandleader , actor and author of both fiction and non-fiction . Widely regarded as one of jazzs finest clarinetists , Shaw led one of the United States most popular big bands in the late 1930s through the early 1940s . Though he had numerous hit records , he was perhaps best known for his 1938 recording of Cole Porters Begin the Beguine . Before the release of Beguine , Shaw and his fledgling band had languished in relative obscurity for over two years and , after its release , he became a major pop artist within short order . The record eventually became one of the eras defining recordings . Musically restless , Shaw was also an early proponent of what became known much later as Third Stream music , which blended elements of classical and jazz forms and traditions . His music influenced other musicians , such as Monty Norman in England , with the vamp of the James Bond Theme , possibly influenced by 1938s Nightmare . Shaw also recorded with small jazz groups drawn from within the ranks of the big bands he led . He served in the US Navy from 1942 to 1944 , during which time he led a morale-building band that toured the South Pacific . Following his discharge in 1944 , he returned to lead a band through 1945 . Following the breakup of that band , he began to focus on other interests and gradually withdrew from the world of being a professional musician and major celebrity , although he remained a force in popular music and jazz before retiring from music completely in 1954 . Early life . Arthur Jacob Arshawsky was born on May 23 , 1910 , in New York City , he was the son of Sarah ( née Strauss ) and Harold Harry Arshawsky , a dressmaker and photographer . The family was Jewish ; his father was from Russia , his mother from Austria . Shaw grew up in New Haven , Connecticut , where his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism . Shaw bought a saxophone by working in a grocery store and began learning the saxophone at 13 . At 16 , he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band . Career . Returning to New York , he became a session musician through the early 1930s . From 1925 to 1936 , Shaw performed with many bands and orchestras ; from 1926 to 1929 , he worked in Cleveland and established a lasting reputation as music director and arranger for an orchestra led by the violinist Austin Wylie . In 1929 and 1930 , he played with Irving Aaronsons Commanders , where he was exposed to symphonic music , which he would later incorporate in his arrangements . In 1932 , Shaw joined the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra and made several recordings with the outfit including It Dont Mean a Thing ( If It Aint Got That Swing ) and Fit as a Fiddle . Leader of bands . In 1935 , he first gained attention with his Interlude in B-flat at a swing concert at the Imperial Theater in New York . During the swing era , his big bands were popular with hits like Begin the Beguine ( 1938 ) , Stardust ( with a trumpet solo by Billy Butterfield ) , Back Bay Shuffle , Moonglow , Rosalie and Frenesi . The show was well received , but was forced to dissolve in 1937 because his bands sound was not commercial . Shaw valued experimental and innovative music rather over dancing and love songs . He was an innovator in the big band idiom , using unusual instrumentation ; Interlude in B-flat , where he was backed with only a rhythm section and a string quartet , was one of the earliest examples of what would be later dubbed Third Stream . His incorporation of stringed instruments could be attributed to the influence of the classical composer Igor Stravinsky . In addition to hiring Buddy Rich , he signed Billie Holiday as his bands vocalist in 1938 , becoming the first white band leader to hire a full-time black female singer to tour the segregated Southern U.S . However , after recording Any Old Time , Holiday left the band due to hostility from audiences in the South , as well as from music company executives who wanted a more mainstream singer . Like his main rival , Benny Goodman , and other leaders of big bands , Shaw fashioned a smaller band within the band in 1940 . He named it Artie Shaw and the Gramercy Five after his home telephone exchange . Band pianist Johnny Guarnieri played harpsichord on the quintet recordings , and Al Hendrickson played electric guitar . Trumpeter Roy Eldridge became part of the group , succeeding Billy Butterfield . In 1940 , the original Gramercy Five cut eight sides , then Shaw dissolved the band in early 1941 . The Gramercy Fives biggest hit was Summit Ridge Drive , one of Shaws million-selling records . His last prewar band , organized in September 1941 , included Oran Hot Lips Page , Max Kaminsky , Georgie Auld , Dave Tough , Jack Jenney , Ray Conniff and Guarnieri . The long series of musical groups Shaw subsequently formed included Lena Horne , Helen Forrest , Mel Tormé , Buddy Rich , Dave Tough , Barney Kessel , Jimmy Raney , Tal Farlow , Dodo Marmarosa , and Ray Conniff . He used the morose Nightmare , with its Hasidic nuances , as his theme rather than choosing a more accessible song . In a televised interview in the 1970s , Shaw derided the asinine songs of Tin Pan Alley that were the lifeblood of popular music and which bands , especially the most popular ( such as his own ) were compelled to play night after night . In 1994 , he told Frank Prial of The New York Times : I thought that because I was Artie Shaw I could do what I wanted , but all they wanted was Begin the Beguine . Throughout his career , Shaw had a habit of forming bands , developing them according to his immediate aspirations , making a quick series of records , and then disbanding . He generally did not stick around long enough to reap his bands successes through live performances of their recorded hits . Following the breakup of what was already his second band in 1939 , he rarely toured at all and , if he did , his personal appearances were usually limited to long-term engagements in a single venue or bookings that did not require much traveling , unlike many bands of the era that traveled great distances doing seemingly endless strings of one-night engagements . Radio days . Shaw did many big band remote broadcasts . Throughout the autumn and winter of 1938 , he was often heard from the Blue Room of the Hotel Lincoln in New York City . After touring in 1939 , he led the house band at the Café Rouge of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York . He was the headliner of a radio series with comedian Robert Benchley as emcee . Shaw broadcast on CBS from November 20 , 1938 until November 14 , 1939 . At the Café Rouge he quit his band that week and went to Mexico . The band continued without him into January but eventually broke up . After Shaw returned from Mexico in 1940 , and still under contract to RCA Victor , he experimented with a group of session musicians in Hollywood , trying to combine strings and woodwinds with a jazz band . The result was the hit Frenesi . He was hired as bandleader for the Burns and Allen Show broadcast from Hollywood . He organized a band that was modeled after his swing band concept of the late-1930s with the addition of six violins , two violas , and one cello . The addition of a string section to a big band was not novel , as it had been done by Paul Whiteman and others since the 1920s . Shaw updated the idea with the music trends of the 1940s . Strings gave him a wider tonal palette and allowed him to concentrate on ballads rather than the fast dance songs of the swing era . Shaw was at or near the top of the list of virtuoso jazz bandleaders . The band was showcased on the Burns and Allen program every week . In 1940 , at the height of his popularity , the 30-year-old Shaw earned up to $60,000 per week . In contrast , George Burns and Gracie Allen were each making $5,000 per week during the year that Shaw and his orchestra provided the music for their radio show . He acted on the show as a love interest for Gracie Allen , although he disliked having to be a part of the celebrity culture of the period . Shaws contract was renewed for another 13 weeks when the program was moved to New York . Shaw broke up the Hollywood band , keeping a nucleus of seven musicians in addition to himself , and filled out the ensemble with New York musicians until March 1941 . While taking a few months vacation in the spring of 1941 to reassess what to do next , Shaw recorded in another small group format with three horns and a four-man rhythm section with the addition of a dozen strings . By September , he formed a big band with seven brass , five saxes , four rhythm , and fifteen strings . On December 7 , three months into the tour , the 31-piece band was in the midst of a matinee performance in Providence , Rhode Island , when he was given a note about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor . The note instructed him to tell military personnel to return to their bases . War and after . During World War II , Shaw enlisted in the United States Navy and shortly after formed a band , which served in the Pacific theater . After 18 months playing for Navy personnel , ( sometimes as many as four concerts a day in battle zones , including Guadalcanal ) , Shaw returned to the U.S . in a state of physical exhaustion and received a medical discharge . After the war , the popularity of big bands declined , as Crooners and Bebop began to dominate the charts . Shaw credited his time in the Navy from 1942 to 1944 as a period of renewed introspection . After his discharge , he entered psychoanalysis and began to withdraw from music in favor of a writing career . His autobiography , The Trouble With Cinderella : An Outline of Identity , was published in 1952 ( with later reprint editions in 1992 and 2001 ) . Revealing downbeat elements of the music business , Shaw explained that the trouble with Cinderella is nobody ever lives happily ever after . He turned to semi-autobiographical fiction with the three short novels in I Love You , I Hate You , Drop Dead ! ( 1965 , reprinted in 1997 ) , which prompted Terry Southerns comment : Here is a deeply probing examination of the American marital scene . I flipped over it ! Shaws short stories , including Snow White in Harlem , were collected in The Best of Intentions and Other Stories ( 1989 ) . He worked for years on his 1,000-page autobiographical novel , The Education of Albie Snow , but the three-volume work remained unpublished . After his discharge in 1944 , he formed another band , this time what could be considered a modern big band in that it contained what is now considered the standard eight brass and five saxes . It did not include any strings and was based in Hollywood , California , where Shaw was living . He continued to record for RCA Victor , as he had before the war , and limited the bands personal appearances to military bases in California . In August 1945 , his contract with RCA ended and he signed with an independent label , Musicraft . He made a few records for Musicraft before the band broke up , and all of the recordings for Musicraft from 1946 were staffed by top-notch session musicians . The big band was back in the studio , this time including strings . On these Musicraft recordings in 1946 Shaw featured the young singer Mel Tormé . On some of the sides , Tormé was also featured with his vocal group the Meltones . In July 1954 , Shaw undertook a brief Australian tour for promoter Lee Gordon on which he shared the bill with drummer Buddy Rich and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald . After completing that tour Shaw stopped playing the clarinet , citing his own perfectionism , which , he later said , would have killed him . He explained to a reporter : In the world we live in , compulsive perfectionists finish last . You have to be Lawrence Welk or , on another level , Irving Berlin , and write the same kind of music over and over again . Im not able to do that , and I have taken the clarinet as far as anyone can possibly go . To continue playing would be a disservice . He spent the rest of the 1950s living in Europe . In 1983 , after years of prodding by Williard Alexander , the 73-year-old Shaw organized a band and selected clarinetist Dick Johnson as bandleader and soloist . The 58-year-old Johnson , an accomplished woodwind and saxophonist and native of Brockton , Massachusetts , was no stranger to jazz having recorded numerous albums of his own and had idolized Shaws playing throughout his life . Shaws music library , which was the product of his almost 20 years of activity in the music business , contained numerous arrangements of monumental status of popular music in addition to many original big band jazz compositions of the era . It was a collection of music arranged by some of the foremost composer/arrangers of the period , much of which was sketched out by Shaw himself and filled in and completed by his orchestrator/arranger collaborators , among them Jerry Gray , William Grant Still , Lennie Hayton , Ray Conniff , Eddie Sauter , and Jimmy Mundy , among others . Shaw rehearsed his new band , ( based out of Boston , Massachusetts ) , and the band made its official debut on New Years Eve 1984 at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle , New York , the same launching pad for many bands of the swing era decades earlier , when Shaw and his bands were in their prime . Shaw appeared with the band throughout its first few years , limiting his role to being its conductor and front man , while leaving the clarinet playing duties to Johnson . In 1985 , another week-long series of strenuous rehearsals followed during which Shaw added more repertoire , including many arrangements and compositions that were from the later years of his career Shaw had never recorded . By 1987 though , Shaw was no longer touring with the band , quietly content that Johnson and the band kept true to Shaws band spirit and vision . He would , however , show up on occasion just to hear how things sounded . Films and television . Shaw made several musical shorts in 1939 for Vitaphone and Paramount Pictures . He portrayed himself in the Fred Astaire film , Second Chorus ( 1940 ) , which featured Shaw and his orchestra playing Concerto for Clarinet , and his 1940–41 Hollywood period Star Dust band can be heard throughout the soundtrack . The film garnered him two Oscar nominations for Best Score and Best Song ( Love of My Life ) . He collaborated on the love song If Its You , sung by Tony Martin in the Marx Brothers film The Big Store ( 1941 ) . In 1950 , he was a mystery guest on Whats My Line ? and on August 31 , 1952 , was part of the panel . During the 1970s he made appearances on The Mike Douglas Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson . Many of his recordings have been used in motion pictures . His 1940 recording of Stardust was used in its entirety in the closing credits of the film The Man Who Fell to Earth . Martin Scorsese also used the Shaw theme song , Nightmare , in his Academy Award-winning Howard Hughes biopic , The Aviator . Canadian filmmaker Brigitte Berman interviewed Hoagy Carmichael , Doc Cheatham , and others including Shaw for her documentary film , Bix : Aint None of Them Play Like Him Yet ( 1981 ) about Bix Beiderbecke , and afterward she went on to create an Academy Award-winning documentary , Artie Shaw : Time Is All Youve Got ( 1985 ) , featuring extensive interviews with Shaw , Buddy Rich , Mel Tormé , Helen Forrest , and other musicians , in addition to Shaws eighth wife , actress Evelyn Keyes . The documentary ends with Shaw rehearsing his new band with co-leader Johnson present and rolls to credits perhaps quite fittingly with the band taking a final segue to Shaws theme song Nightmare . In 2000 , filmmaker Ken Burns interviewed Shaw at his home for his PBS documentary/miniseries Jazz where Shaw appears in multiple segments . His last major interview was in 2003 , when he was interviewed by Russell Davies for the BBC Television documentary , Artie Shaw – Quest for Perfection . The documentary includes interviews with surviving members of his original bands , Johnson , and other music industry professionals . Personal life . A self-proclaimed very difficult man , Shaw was married eight times . Two marriages were annulled ; the others ended in divorce : Jane Cairns ( 1932–33 ; annulled ) ; Margaret Allen ( 1934–37 ) ; actress Lana Turner ( 1940 ) ; Betty Kern , the daughter of songwriter Jerome Kern ( 1942–43 ) ; actress Ava Gardner ( 1945–46 ) ; Forever Amber author Kathleen Winsor ( 1946–48 ; annulled ) ; actress Doris Dowling ( 1952–56 ) , and actress Evelyn Keyes ( 1957–85 ) . He had two sons , Steven Kern ( with Betty Kern ) and Jonathan Shaw ( with Doris Dowling ) . Both Lana Turner and Ava Gardner later described Shaw as being extremely emotionally abusive . His controlling nature and incessant verbal abuse drove Turner to have a nervous breakdown , soon after which she divorced him . In 1940 , before eloping with Lana Turner , Shaw briefly dated actresses Betty Grable and Judy Garland and , according to Tom Nolans biography , had an affair with Lena Horne . Apart from his interest in music , Shaw had a tremendous intellect and almost insatiable thirst for intellectual knowledge and literature . During his self-imposed sabbaticals from the music business , his interests included studying advanced mathematics , as cited in Karl Sabbaghs The Riemann Hypothesis . In 1946 , Shaw was present at a meeting of the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts , Sciences and Professions . Olivia de Havilland and Ronald Reagan , part of a core group of actors and artists who were trying to sway the organization away from Communism , presented an anti-Communist declaration which , if signed , was set to run in newspapers . There was bedlam as many rose to champion the communist cause , and Shaw began praising the democratic standards of the Soviet constitution . In 1953 , Shaw was forced to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee for his leftist activities . The committee was investigating a peace activist organization , the World Peace Council . Shaw was also a precision marksman , ranking fourth in the United States in 1962 , and an expert fly fisherman . In his later years , Shaw lived and wrote in the Newbury Park section of Thousand Oaks , California . He died on December 30 , 2004 , aged 94 . According to his publicist , he had been in ill health for some time , but I dont know the specific cause of death . In fact , Shaw had long been suffering from diabetes . In 2005 , Shaws eighth wife , Evelyn Keyes , filed suit , claiming she was entitled to one-half of Shaws estate , pursuant to a contract to make a will between them . In July 2006 , a Ventura , California , jury unanimously held that Keyes was entitled to almost one-half of Shaws estate or $1,420,000 . She died less than two years later from cancer . Awards and honors . In 1980 , Shaw donated his papers , most of which amounted to his music library of over 700 scores and parts and approximately 1,000 pieces of sheet music , to Boston University . In 1991 , the collection was transferred to the School of Music of the University of Arizona in Tucson . In 2004 , he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award . In 1938 , DownBeat magazine readers voted Artie Shaws the best swing band . In response to Benny Goodmans nickname , the King of Swing , Shaws fans dubbed him the King of the Clarinet . He felt the titles should be reversed . Benny Goodman played clarinet . I played music , he said . Longtime Duke Ellington clarinetist Barney Bigard cited Shaw as his favorite clarinet player . Bibliography . - Tom Nolan , Artie Shaw , King of the Clarinet : His Life and Times ( W . W . Norton , New York , 2011 ) . - John White , Artie Shaw : His Life and Music ( Bloomsbury Academic , London , 2004 ) . - Vladimir Simosko , Artie Shaw : A Musical Biography and Discography ( Scarecrow Press , Lanham , MD , 2000 ) . External links . - Artie Shaw Interview NAMM Oral History Library ( 1994 ) - Biography at swingmusic.net - Rare film blog : Artie Shaw 1985 - Swing Bandleader , Clarinetist Artie Shaw Dies , The Washington Post , December 31 , 2004 - University of Arizona : Artie Shaw Collection - Artie Shaw recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings .