When Brigitte Berman’s “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got” won the Academy Award as Best Documentary Feature Film for 1986, the Canadian production had yet to secure a theatrical release. Unfortunately for Berman, the film’s subject – clarinetist and band leader Artie Shaw – sued her to secure a greater share of potential box office profits. Due to the litigation, the film never played theatrically after its Oscar win – Shaw died in December 2024 and Berman’s production didn’t have its theatrical premiere until January 2024.
Shaw certainly had a tumultuous life. Born Arthur Arshawsky in New York City, he confronted anti-Semitism when his family moved to New Haven, Connecticut, during his childhood. A self-taught musical virtuoso, he dropped out of school at 15 to tour with a band. As he established himself as a musician, he broke a racial taboo in hiring Billie Holiday as the vocalist for his all-white band – a racist incident in a Southern club engagement brought an end to that breakthrough.
Shaw was a popular performer whose recording of “Begin the Beguine” was a commercial smash. Movie and radio appearances gave him further exposure, and he gained a reputation as a chronic romantic through a series of short-lived but high-profile marriages that included Hollywood glamour gals Lana Turner, Ava Gardner and Evelyn Keyes – the latter is interviewed in the film, along with musical collaborators Mel Torme, Buddy Rich and Helen Forrest.
To its credit, “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got” presents a wonderfully nostalgic service of Shaw’s musical greatness through recordings and vintage footage. It also provides insight into the mystery of Shaw’s disappearance from the music scene into the 1950s to pursue farming and writing, as well as a glimpse of a late life return to performing.
Shaw is front and center in the film as an interview subject – but, unfortunately, he is not the liveliest raconteur and his recollections of the highs and lows of his professional and personal lives are presented in a flat talking head manner. Likewise, filmmaker Berman unwisely took on the mantle of off-screen narrator, and her strangely sleepy voice fails to convey the vitality of Shaw’s jumping music and off-screen antics.
Still, it is wonderful that this long-unseen film is finally available, which should be a blessing for film lovers who take it upon themselves to see every Oscar-winning movie – especially in this in this handsomely mounted digital restoration that is now available on VOD and leading digital platforms.