The Many Marriages of Artie Shaw, Classic Hollywood’s Biggest Cad

When we think of Hollywood cads, the first name that comes to mind is, of course, Warren Beatty. As we previously discussed, his love life is the stuff of legend (and we barely scratched the surface of every woman he was alleged to have slept with.) When your biographer claims your bedpost has 11,000 notches on it, that leaves your competition in the dust. But he was not the first major Hollywood figure to become defined by his colourful love life. In the early days of the film industry’s golden age, one guy with a clarinet was the pied piper of gorgeous leading ladies who 100% deserved better.

Arthur Jacob Arshawsky, better known as Artie Shaw, was a legendary bandleader and musician who was celebrated as one of the finest clarinet players in modern jazz. He hired Buddy Rich to be in his band, broke colour barriers by having Billie Holiday sing vocals, and worked with everyone from Lena Horne to Cole Porter. He was a headlining act, a radio favourite, and even a movie star. At one point, he was earning up to $60,000 a week, which is about $1.4 million a week in 2026 money. You don’t see Squidward pulling in that kind of cash.

He was a bona fide celebrity, a cycle he claimed to hate, although he certainly enjoyed some of his time in the spotlight. With fame came women. Shaw married eight times and dated countless others, with his love life as extensively documented by fan magazines as that of the actors who dominated the big screen. Reading some of that old coverage, which is frequently blunter than you expect it to be, you get the sense that dating Shaw was almost a rite of passage. He was like the Pete Davidson of his day, but way worse.

And crueller. By his own admission, he was a "very difficult man", and most of his exes were not complimentary about their time with him. He was controlling, jealous, and emotionally and physically abusive. “None of them were real marriages,” said Shaw. “They were legalised affairs. In those days you couldn’t get a lease on an apartment if you were living in sin.”

Yes, that quote is a harbinger of things to come... 

ONE: JANE CAIRNS

Artie married for the first time when he was 22. Jane Cairns was not in show business. She was a typist. As far as I, or any Shaw biographer, can tell, the marriage was brief and uneventful, and no known photos of Cairns exist. At this point in time, in the early 1930s, Shaw was a jobbing musician who worked with the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra and made several recordings with them. By 1935, he was on his way to becoming a headliner. It was time for wife number two.

TWO: MARGARET ALLEN

Of marriage number two, Shaw told the LA Weekly, "When I was twenty-three, I met a nurse named Margaret Allen at a party, and she moved in with me two days later. We were together three years, and the last year was hopeless. She was Catholic and we didn't want children, but she had a problem with the idea of contraception. She had tremendous guilt. You know that Catholic shit people go through? She knew better, but she couldn't deal with the emotion." Sure, okay. I imagine it didn’t hurt that by this point in the ‘30s, Shaw was now a real star, and he had appeal to the likes of...

THREE: LANA TURNER

While still a teenager, Lana Turner was famously spotted at a malt shop (not Schwab's Pharmacy!) by the publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, who then opened the doors to her future as a movie icon. From a very young age, she was sexualized as "the Sweater Girl" and positioned as the gorgeous love idol for Mickey Rooney, forever the glamorous one in contrast to poor Judy Garland.

Lana's love life was wild, with eight marriages to seven different men, and that doesn't include the gangster boyfriend her daughter killed. Artie was husband number one. She was 19, he was 28. The pair met while making a movie and, after one date, they eloped to Las Vegas. Turner's studio, MGM, was furious. They found her tough to control, and even the usually obedient fan magazines were remarkably candid in their judgment of her romantic escapades. Rumours persisted that it was MGM head honcho Louis B. Mayer who pushed Lana to divorce Artie after only four months of marriage. Others claimed it was merely the inevitable end result of two impulsive lovers discovering that they had nothing in common.

Turner later said of Shaw that he was "a very intelligent man, but he didn't treat women well," and that he had a temper. In the spring of 1940, after the two divorced, Turner discovered she was pregnant and travelled to Hawaii to procure an abortion, which was performed in a hotel room without anaesthetic. Turner went on to marry many other times, and also date a gangster who was killed by her daughter. You can read about that case here!

FOUR: BETTY KERN

Another day, another younger wife. Elizabeth Jane “Betty” Kern Miller, age 24, married Shaw when he was 32. Betty was the daughter of Jerome Kern, the legendary composer of musical theatre who wrote "Ol' Man River," "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", and "The Way You Look Tonight." They married in a surprise ceremony (in fairness, I think all of Artie’s weddings were surprise and last-minute elopements) in Yuma, Arizona, in 1942 while Shaw was serving in the U.S. Navy during the Second World War. Going to Arizona meant they could bypass California’s three-day waiting period for marriages. The local Justice of the Peace, when he wasn't doing quickie weddings, was an ice cream seller.

Surprisingly, Kern's family supported the union despite Artie's reputation. Betty had already experienced one failed marriage, and her parents were always quite indulgent of her every whim. Betty’s mother accompanied her to Yuma for the ceremony.

Hedda Hopper asked Artie about the new wife and whether or not he had received congratulations from Lana Turner. He said, "She called me on the phone three times without mentioning the fact of my marriage, and finally I introduced Betty over the telephone to her. You know, Lana's a sweet kid, but I wonder if she wouldn't have been happier if she had been allowed to sit at that soda fountain, marry one of her school friends, and have a brace of kiddies." I dunno, Artie. Maybe if you'd left that teenager alone and not treated her like crap, things would have been different!

The marriage lasted one year—average for this dude—but they did manage to have a child, Steven. It will not shock you to hear that he was not a great father and essentially abandoned him and Betty. Steven Kern Shaw bequeathed his incredibly valuable collection of guitars to Belmonth University when he passed away in 2015.

One week after the divorce was finalized, Artie married…