Artie Shaw’s ex-wife gets half

A jury in Ventura has awarded the ex-wife of the late jazz clarinetist and bandleader Artie Shaw $1.42 million, which accounts for about half of his estate.

Evelyn Keyes, the last of Shaw’s eight wives, was best known for playing Scarlett O’Hara’s sister in the 1939 film “Gone With the Wind.”

Shaw died in 2004 at age 94. He and Keyes were married from 1957 to 1985 but separated in 1970.

Long after they separated but while they were still married, Shaw wrote a two-page contract in which they promised each other half of their estates, said Henry Gradstein, lawyer for Keyes, 89.

“She went to his executor to collect her half, and he refused,” Gradstein said. “She had no choice but to sue.”