Five stories about musicians that would make great movies part 1

Be my guest (or commission me)

1. Artie Shaw and Lana Turner

   The only musician as popular as clarinetist and bandleader Artie Shaw in the 1930s was clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman. It was the Stones v the Beatles, Oasis v Blur, with all the attendant hysteria that this implies, including stage invasions and groupies. In early 1939 - Variety quaintly dubbed it ‘The Battle Of The Killer-Dillers’ - they both played an entire week in Newark, New Jersey, six shows a day, and sold out every one. No kid in Newark went to school that week.

   Shaw, a difficult man with movie-star good looks, was in theory dating Betty Grable in February 1940, but she was in a show on Braodway. (Cheating spouse on Jerry Springer once: “You weren’t there for me.” Aggrieved wife: “I was shopping.”) 17-year-old Judy Garland was in love with him, but her mother wasn’t too keen on her spending unchaperoned time with a 39-year-old, so Shaw and his friend Phil Silvers drove to Metro, where Silvers had a contract, to visit a film set. Lana Turner was in the movie being made, and there was an immediate attraction between her and Shaw.

   He asked her out for dinner, but Turner had a fiance, and was wary. Later that day, having tried and failed with a dancer he knew, Shaw called Turner and tried again. As luck would have it, the fiance had just cancelled dinner, and she was furious with him, so she said yes to Shaw. Silvers went on the dinner date too. By the following morning, Shaw and Turner were married.