ARTIE SHAW-- A MAN OF BOTH WORDS AND MUSIC

A conversation with Artie Shaw, who for many years was one of the most renowned clarinetists and bandleaders in jazz, tends to be as much about writing as it is about music.

That might be surprising until you learn that Shaw, 76, has had a split life “between being a writer and a jazz player” since he was in his late teens.

The subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got,” playing at 10:30 Saturday and Sunday mornings at Laemmle’s Monica Theatres, started thinking seriously about being a writer when his first major successes in the mid-’30s proved financially lucrative but artistically disillusioning.

“The kind of music I was making (first Dixieland, then distinctive swing-style jazz) was not taken seriously at all,” he said from his Newbury Park home last week. “Now, jazz has become, while not thoroughly understood, at least not totally misunderstood. At that time, the best place to go was the studios, but there you were selling cigarettes and Studebakers and whatever. Anyway, I didn’t feel that was what I wanted to spend my life at.”

But from 1929, when he arrived in New York, until 1953, when he retired, Shaw’s life was music. Though he was successful before “Begin the Beguine,” that 1938 record made him one of the most popular bandleaders of the swing era, and an overnight celebrity. He gained further fame through his eight marriages; his wives included actresses Lana Turner and Ava Gardner.

He is pleased at the treatment he receives in the documentary by Canadian Brigitte Berman. The film features Shaw’s music, rare photographs, archival film footage and a lengthy interview with its outspoken subject.

“Brigitte did a good job,” Shaw said. “I had seen a film she did on Bix Beiderbecke (“BIX: ‘Ain’t None of Them Play Like Him Yet’ ”) and knew I wanted to do a film with her. I’ve had a number of offers to do a ‘movie of the week,’ based on my book, but Brigitte is a serious film maker and I figured if I was going to leave a footstep in some cement, I might as well leave my own.”

Shaw’s interest in writing springs from the fact that “I had been a voracious reader since I was 8,” he said. “So when I first grew dissatisfied with music, I said to myself, ‘Wait a minute, (writing) is something I might be able to make a living at.’ ”

And he could do it at home and avoid the demanding, and so very public, life of a celebrity. “Writing’s a very private thing,” he said, “from one mind writing in privacy to another mind reading in privacy, and I’m by nature kind of an insulated, private person. I hated being a celebrity. I didn’t know what I was getting into. Suddenly you’re no longer human; you’re an object to be celebrated.”

Twenty years after his initial literary yearnings, Shaw completed his first book, “The Trouble With Cinderella,” an autobiography published in 1952 by Farrar, Straus & Young. At first, it was very tough going.

“I was having a helluva time getting started,” he said, “so I called my friend Sinclair Lewis, and said to him, ‘I’ll be as old as a Sequoia before I finish. What do I do?’ He wrote me a letter, which said, ‘One, you’ll never finish this book. Two, if you do finish, it’ll never be published. Three, if these two unlikely events occur, no one will ever read it.’ That advice saved my life because I stopped thinking about what people would think, and sat down and wrote a book.”

Later, he published a novel, “I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead.” “There’s some pretty good stuff in there, I think,” Shaw said.

He is currently at work on another novel, “The Lives of Alvy Snow,” a fictionalized view of his life. “Fiction frees me. This way, I can tell the truth. Otherwise, I’d get sued by a lot of people.”

Despite his caring for the literary world, it’s music, not writing, that provided him with the millions he’s made, and easily spent. “I had a choice to make between saving money and living like an emperor,” he said. “I did the latter to see what it was like. Your reality is everybody’s fantasy. Now I don’t have that burden anymore.”