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Jimmy Connors

James Scott Connors (born September 2, 1952) is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. He held the top Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) ranking for a then-record 160 consecutive weeks from 1974 to 1977 and a career total of 268 weeks. By virtue of his long and prolific career, Connors still holds three prominent Open Era men's singles records: 109 titles, 1,557 matches played, and 1,274 match wins. His titles include eight major singles titles (a joint Open Era record five US Opens, two Wimbledons, one Australian Open) and three year-end championships. In 1974, he became the second man in the Open Era to win three major titles in a calendar year, and was not permitted to participate in the fourth, the French Open. Connors finished year end number one in the ATP rankings from 1974 to 1978. In 1982, he won both Wimbledon and the US Open and was ATP Player of the Year and ITF World Champion. He retired in 1996 at the age of 43.

Early years
Connors grew up in East St. Louis, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Missouri, and was raised Catholic. During his childhood he was coached and trained by his mother and grandmother. He played in his first U.S. Championship, the U.S. boys' 11-and-under of 1961, when he was nine years old. Connors's mother, Gloria, took him to Southern California to be coached by Pancho Segura, starting at age 16, in 1968. But she remained part of the team as his coach and manager. He and his brother, John "Johnny" Connors, attended St. Phillip's grade school.

Connors won the Junior Orange Bowl in both the 12- and the 14-year categories, and is one of only nine tennis players to win the Junior Orange Bowl championship twice in its 70-year history. In 1970, Connors recorded his first victory in the first round of the Pacific Southwest Open in Los Angeles, defeating Roy Emerson. In 1971, Connors won the NCAA singles title as a Freshman while attending UCLA and attained All-American status.

He turned professional in 1972 and won his first tournament, the Jacksonville Open. Connors was acquiring a reputation as a maverick in 1972 when he refused to join the newly formed Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), the union that was embraced by most male professional players, in order to play in and dominate a series of smaller tournaments organized by Bill Riordan, his manager. However, Connors played in other tournaments and won the 1973 U.S. Pro Singles, his first significant title, defeating Arthur Ashe in a five-set final, 6–3, 4–6, 6–4, 3–6, 6–2.

Peak years
Connors won eight Grand Slam singles championships: five US Opens, two Wimbledons, and one Australian Open. He did not participate in the French Open during his peak years (1974–78), as he was banned from playing by the event in 1974 due to his association with World Team Tennis (WTT). and in the other four years chose not to participate. He played in only two Australian Opens in his entire career, winning it in 1974 and reaching the final in 1975. Few highly ranked players, aside from Australians, travelled to Australia for that event up until the mid-1980s.

Connors is one of thirteen men to win three or more major singles titles in a calendar year. Connors reached the final of the US Open in five straight years from 1974 through 1978, winning three times with each win being on a different surface (1974 on grass, 1976 on clay and 1978 on hard). He reached the final of Wimbledon four out of five years during his peak (1974, 1975, 1977 and 1978). Despite not being allowed to play or choosing not to participate in the French Open from 1974 to 1978, he was still able to reach the semifinals four times in the later years of his career.

In 1974, Connors was the dominant player. He had a 99–4 record that year and won 15 tournaments of the 21 he entered, including three of the four Grand Slam singles titles. As noted, the French Open did not allow Connors to participate due to his association with World Team Tennis (WTT), but he won the Australian Open, which began in late December 1973 and concluded on January 1, 1974, defeating Phil Dent in four sets, and beat Ken Rosewall in straight sets in the finals of both Wimbledon and the US Open losing only 6 and 2 games, respectively, in those finals. His exclusion from the French Open denied him the opportunity to become the second male player of the Open Era, after Rod Laver, to win all four Major singles titles in a calendar year. He chose not to participate in the season-ending Masters Cup between the top eight players of the world and was not eligible for the World Championship Tennis (WCT) finals because he did not compete in the WCT's regular tournaments. Connors finished 1974 at the top of ATP Point Rankings. He also was the recipient of the Martini and Rossi Award, voted for by a panel of journalists and was ranked World No. 1 by Rex Bellamy, Tennis Magazine (U.S.), Rino Tommasi, World Tennis, Bud Collins, Judith Elian and Lance Tingay.

In 1975, Connors reached the finals of Wimbledon, the US Open and Australia, but he did not win any of them, although his loss to John Newcombe was close as Connors lost 9–7 in a fourth set tiebreak. He won nine of the tournaments he entered achieving an 82–8 record. While he earned enough points to retain the ATP No. 1 ranking the entire year and was ranked number one by Rino Tommasi, all other tennis authorities, including the ATP, named Arthur Ashe, who solidly defeated Connors at Wimbledon, as the Player of the Year. He once again did not participate in the Masters Cup or the WCT Finals.

In 1976, Connors captured the US Open once again (defeating Björn Borg) while losing in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon. While winning 12 events, including the U.S. Pro Indoor in Philadelphia, Palm Springs and Las Vegas, he achieved a record of 90–8 and defeated Borg all four times they played. He was ranked No. 1 by the ATP for the entire year and was ranked number one by World Tennis, Tennis Magazine (U.S.), Bud Collins, Lance Tingay, John Barrett, and Tommasi. The ATP named Björn Borg as its player of the year.

In 1977, an injured Connors lost in the Wimbledon finals to Borg 6–4 in the fifth set and in the US Open finals to Guillermo Vilas, but Connors captured both the Masters, beating Borg, and the WCT Finals. While holding onto the ATP No. 1 ranking, World Tennis Magazine and most tennis authorities ranked Borg or Vilas No. 1 with Connors rated as No. 3 behind Borg.

In 1978, Borg defeated Connors in the Wimbledon final, but Connors defeated Borg at the US Open (played on hard court for the inaugural time) with both of their victories being dominating. Connors also won the U.S. Pro Indoor. While he retained the ATP No. 1 ranking at the end of the year, the ATP and most tennis authorities rated Borg, who also won the French Open, as the player of the year.

Connors reached the ATP world No. 1 ranking on July 29, 1974, and held it for 160 consecutive weeks, a record until it was surpassed by Roger Federer on February 26, 2007. He was the ATP year-end no. 1 player from 1974 through 1978 and held the No. 1 ranking for a total of 268 weeks during his career. Connors relinquished his initial grip (160 weeks) on the No. 1 ranking for only one week, from August 23 to 30, 1977, before resuming as No 1 for another 84 weeks.

In 1979 through 1981, Connors generally reached the semi-finals of the three top Grand Slam events and the Masters each year, but he did win the WCT Finals in 1980. He was generally ranked third in the world those years.

In 1982, Connors experienced a resurgence as he defeated John McEnroe in five close sets to win Wimbledon and Ivan Lendl to win the US Open after which he reclaimed the ATP No. 1 ranking. He also reached the semi-final of the Masters Cup and won five other tournaments. After trading the No. 1 ranking back and forth with McEnroe, he finished the year ranked No. 2 in points earned, but he was named Player of the Year by the ATP and was ITF World Champion due to his victories at Wimbledon and the US Open.

In 1983, Connors, McEnroe and Lendl traded the No. 1 ranking several times with Connors winning the US Open for a record fifth time (beating Lendl in the final) and finishing the year as the No. 3 ranked player.

Connors endorsed Converse but wore Nike Air Tech Challenge IV low’s at one time.

Contemporaries and rivalries
Prominent contemporary players with Connors included Phil Dent, Brian Gottfried, Raul Ramírez, Harold Solomon, Dick Stockton, Roscoe Tanner, and Guillermo Vilas. His older rivals included Arthur Ashe, Rod Laver, Ilie Năstase, John Newcombe, Manuel Orantes, Ken Rosewall, and Stan Smith. His prominent younger opponents included Björn Borg, Vitas Gerulaitis, Ivan Lendl, and John McEnroe.

Björn Borg
During his best years of 1974 through 1978, Connors was challenged the most by Borg, with twelve matches on tour during that time frame. Borg won only four of those meetings, but two of those wins were in the Wimbledon finals of 1977 and 1978. Connors lost his stranglehold on the top ranking to Borg in early 1979 and wound up with an official tour record of 8–15 against Borg as Borg was four years younger and won the last ten times they met. Head to head in major championship finals, they split their four meetings, Borg winning two Wimbledons (1977 and 1978) and Connors winning two US Opens (1976 and 1978).

Ilie Năstase
Nastase was another rival in Connors's prime. Though six years older than Connors, Nastase won ten of their first eleven meetings. However, Connors won 11 of their final 14 meetings. The two would team up to win the doubles championships at the 1973 Wimbledon and the 1975 US Open.

Manuel Orantes and Guillermo Vilas
Orantes upset Connors in the final of the 1975 US Open, but Connors was 11–3 overall against Orantes in tour events. On the other hand, Vilas wore down Connors in the final of the 1977 US Open and was much more competitive in all of their meetings. Connors was able to manage only a 5–4 record against Vilas in tour events.

Rod Laver and John Newcombe
In 1975, Connors won two highly touted "Challenge Matches", both arranged by the Riordan company and televised nationally by CBS Sports from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first match, in February and billed as $100,000 ($0 today) winner-takes-all, was against Laver. Connors won that match, 6–4, 6–2, 3–6, 7–5. In April, Connors met Newcombe in a match billed as a $250,000 winner-takes-all. Connors won the match, 6–3, 4–6, 6–2, 6–4. Connors ended his business relationship with Riordan later in 1975.

Connors played Newcombe in four tour events, with Newcombe winning the first two meetings on grass (1973 US Open quarterfinal and 1975 Australian Open final) and Connors winning the last two on hard courts (1978 Sydney Indoor quarterfinal and 1979 Hong Kong round of 16). Connors won all three meetings with Rod Laver in tour events.

Later years
In 1984 Connors had made both the finals of Wimbledon and the WCT finals with semifinal appearances at the French Open, the US Open, and the Masters Cup. He finished the year as the No. 2 ranked player after McEnroe. In 1985 he made the semi-finals of the big 4 four events and finished number No. 4 for the year, a ranking he would again obtain in 1987 at the age of 35.

Connors had shining moments against John McEnroe and Ivan Lendl, both of whom rose to prominence after Connors peaked in the mid-1970s. He would continue to compete against much younger players and had one of the most remarkable comebacks for any athlete when he reached the semifinals of the 1991 US Open at the age of 39.

John McEnroe
In the 1980 WCT Finals, Connors defeated the defending champion, John McEnroe. In 1982, at age 29, Connors was back in the Wimbledon singles final, where he faced McEnroe, who by then was established firmly as the world's top player. Connors recovered from being three points away from defeat in a fourth-set tie-break (at 3–4) to win the match, 3–6, 6–3, 6–7, 7–6, 6–4, and claimed his second Wimbledon title, eight years after his first.

Although Connors's tour record against McEnroe was 14–20, McEnroe is 6½ years younger than Connors and had a losing record against Connors until he won 12 out of their last 14 meetings. Head to head in major championship finals, they split their two meetings, Connors winning the 1982 Wimbledon in five sets, and McEnroe winning the 1984 Wimbledon in straight sets. McEnroe won six of their nine meetings in Grand Slam events.

Ivan Lendl
Connors defeated another of the next generation of tennis stars, Ivan Lendl, in the 1982 US Open final and soon regained the No. 1 ranking. Connors had a tour record of 13–22 against Lendl, but Lendl is eight years younger than Connors and had a losing record against Connors until he won their last 17 matches from 1984 through 1992, after Connors's prime. Head to head in major championship finals, Connors defeated Lendl in both meetings, winning the 1982 and 1983 US Open.

Other matches
Connors continued to compete against younger men well into his 41st year.

In the fourth round of the 1987 Wimbledon Championships, Connors defeated Mikael Pernfors, ten years his junior, 1–6, 1–6, 7–5, 6–4, 6–2, after having trailed 4–1 in the third set and 3–0 in the fourth set. In July 1988, Connors ended a four-year title drought by winning the Sovran Bank Tennis Classic in Washington, D.C. It was the 106th title of his career. Connors had played in 56 tournaments and lost 11 finals since his previous victory in the Tokyo Indoors against Lendl in October 1984.

At the 1989 US Open, Connors defeated the third seed (and future two-time champion), Stefan Edberg, in straight sets in the fourth round and pushed sixth-seeded Andre Agassi to five sets in a quarterfinal.

His career seemed to be at an end in 1990, when he played only three tournament matches and lost all three, dropping to No. 936 in the world rankings. However, after surgery on his deteriorating left wrist, he came back to play 14 tournaments in 1991. An ailing back forced him to retire from a five-sets match in the third round of the French Open against Michael Chang, the 1989 champion. Connors walked off the court after hitting a service-return winner against Chang on the first point of the fifth set, having just levelled the match by winning the fourth.

Connors recuperated and made an improbable run to the 1991 US Open semifinals which he later said were "the best 11 days of my tennis career". On his 39th birthday he defeated 24-year-old Aaron Krickstein, 3–6, 7–6, 1–6, 6–3, 7–6, in 4 hours and 41 minutes, coming back from a 2–5 deficit in the final set. Connors then defeated Paul Haarhuis in the quarterfinals before losing to Jim Courier. 22 years later ESPN aired a documentary commemorating Connors's run.

Connors participated in his last major tournament, in the 1992 US Open, where he beat Jaime Oncins, 6–1, 6–2, 6–3 in the first round, before losing to Lendl (then ranked No. 7), 6–3, 3–6, 2–6, 0–6 in the second round.

In September 1992, Connors played Martina Navratilova in the third Battle of the Sexes tennis match at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Connors was allowed only one serve per point and Navratilova was allowed to hit into half the doubles court. Connors won, 7–5, 6–2.

However, this would not be the end of his playing career. As late as June 1995, three months shy of his 43rd birthday Connors beat Sébastien Lareau, 6–4, 7–6, and Martin Sinner, 7–6, 6–0, to progress to the quarterfinals of the Halle event in Germany. Connors lost this quarterfinal, 6–7, 3–6 to Marc Rosset. Connors's last match on the main ATP tour came in April 1996, when he lost, 2–6, 6–3, 1–6, to Richey Reneberg in Atlanta.

Maverick
In 1974, Connors and Riordan began filing lawsuits, amounting to $10 million, against the ATP and its president, Arthur Ashe, for allegedly restricting his freedom in the game. The lawsuits stemmed from the French Open banning Connors in 1974 after he had signed a contract to play World Team Tennis (WTT) for the Baltimore Banners. Connors was seeking to enter the French Open, but the ATP and French officials opposed WTT because of scheduling conflicts, so the entries of WTT players were refused between 1974 and 1978. Connors dropped Riordan and eventually the lawsuits after losing to Ashe in the 1975 Wimbledon final (according to the official film produced by Wimbledon 1975, his $2 million suit against Ashe was still outstanding when the two met in the 1975 Wimbledon final).

At Wimbledon in 1977, he declined to participate in a parade of former champions to celebrate the tournament's centenary, choosing instead to practice in the grounds with Ilie Nastase while the parade took place. In 2000, he also declined to join a gathering of 58 former champions held to mark the millennium. In his 2013 autobiography, Connors blamed his missing the 1977 parade on the All England Club for not letting his doctor onto the grounds so that Connors could try on a customized splint for a thumb injury. Connors explained that this necessitated his rushing to meet the doctor at the entrance to the grounds, and then convincing Nastase to help him try out the splint on a practice court. By Connors's account, he then rushed to Centre Court for the parade, but was too late. Reaching the 1977 final, he lost in five sets to Björn Borg, who a month later was able briefly to interrupt Connors's long hold on the world No. 1 ranking.

Connors also irritated sponsors and tennis officials by shunning the end-of-year Masters championship from 1974 through 1976. However, he entered this round-robin competition in 1977 when it moved to New York City. Although Connors lost a celebrated late-night match to Vilas, 4–6, 6–3, 5–7, he took the title by defeating Borg in the final, 6–4, 1–6, 6–4.

Distinctions and honors
Connors is often considered among the greatest tennis players in the history of the sport. Connors won a male record 109 singles titles. He also won 16 doubles titles (including the men's doubles titles at Wimbledon in 1973 and the US Open in 1975). Connors has won more matches (1,274) than any other male professional tennis player in the open era. His career win–loss record was 1,274–283 for a winning percentage of 82.4. He played 398 tournaments, a record until Fabrice Santoro overtook it in 2008.

In Grand Slam Singles events, Connors reached the semifinals or better a total of 31 times and the quarterfinals or better a total of 41 times, despite entering the Australian Open Men's Singles only twice and not entering the French Open Men's Singles for five of his peak career years. The 31 semifinals stood as a record until surpassed by Roger Federer at Wimbledon 2012. The 41 quarterfinals remained a record until Roger Federer surpassed it at Wimbledon 2014. Connors was the only player to win the US Open on three different surfaces: grass, clay, and hard. He was also the first male tennis player to win Grand Slam singles titles on three different surfaces: grass (1974), clay (1976), and hard (1978).

Connors was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1998 and Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Hall of Fame in 1986. He also has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. In his 1979 autobiography, tennis promoter and Grand Slam winning player Jack Kramer ranked Connors as one of the 21 best players of all time. Because of his fiery competitiveness and acrimonious relationships with a number of peers, he has been likened to baseball player Pete Rose. In 1983, Fred Perry ranked the greatest male players of all time and put them in to two categories, before World War II and after. Perry's modern best behind Laver: "Borg, McEnroe, Connors, Hoad, Jack Kramer, John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, Manuel Santana".

Playing style
In the modern era of power tennis, Connors's style of play has often been cited as highly influential, especially in the development of the flat backhand. Larry Schwartz on ESPN.com said about Connors, "His biggest weapons were an indomitable spirit, a two-handed backhand and the best service return in the game. It is difficult to say which was more instrumental in Connors becoming a champion. ... Though smaller than most of his competitors, Connors didn't let it bother him, making up for a lack of size with determination." Of his own competitive nature Connors has said, "[T]here's always somebody out there who's willing to push it that extra inch, or mile, and that was me. (Laughter) I didn't care if it took me 30 minutes or five hours. If you beat me, you had to be the best, or the best you had that day. But that was my passion for the game. If I won, I won, and if I lost, well, I didn't take it so well."

His on-court antics, designed to get the crowd involved, both helped and hurt his play. Schwartz said, "While tennis fans enjoyed Connors's gritty style and his never-say-die attitude, they often were shocked by his antics. His sometimes vulgar on-court behavior—like giving the finger to a linesman after disagreeing with a call or strutting about the court with the tennis racket handle between his legs; sometimes he would yank on the handle in a grotesque manner and his fans would go wild or groan in disapproval—did not help his approval rating. During the early part of his career, Connors frequently argued with umpires, linesmen, the players union, Davis Cup officials and other players. He was even booed at Wimbledon—a rare show of disapproval there—for snubbing the Parade of Champions on the first day of the Centenary in 1977." His brash behavior both on and off the court earned him a reputation as the brat of the tennis world. Tennis commentator Bud Collins nicknamed Connors the "Brash Basher of Belleville" after the St Louis suburb where he grew up. Connors himself thrived on the energy of the crowd, positive or negative, and manipulated and exploited it to his advantage in many of the greatest matches of his career.

Connors was taught to hit the ball on the rise by his teaching-pro mother, Gloria Connors, a technique he used to defeat the opposition in the early years of his career. Gloria sent her son to Southern California to work with Pancho Segura at the age of 16. Segura advanced Connors' game of hitting the ball on the rise which enabled Connors to reflect the power and velocity of his opponents back at them. In the 1975 Wimbledon final, Arthur Ashe countered this strategy by taking the pace off the ball, giving Connors only soft junk shots (dinks, drop shots, and lobs) to hit.

In an era when the serve and volley was the norm, Björn Borg excepted, Connors was one of the few players to hit the ball flat, low, and predominantly from the baseline. Connors hit his forehand with a semi-Western grip and with little net clearance. Contemporaries such as Arthur Ashe and commentators such as Joel Drucker characterized his forehand as his greatest weakness, especially on extreme pressure points, as it lacked the safety margin of hard forehands hit with topspin. His serve, while accurate and capable, was never a great weapon for him as it did not reach the velocity and power of his opponents.

His lack of a dominating serve and net game, combined with his individualist style and maverick tendencies, meant that he was not as successful in doubles as he was in singles, although he did win Grand Slam titles with Ilie Năstase, reached a final with Chris Evert, and accumulated 16 doubles titles during his career.

Racket evolution
At a time when most other tennis pros played with wooden rackets, Connors used the "Wilson T2000" steel racket, which utilized a method for stringing that had been devised and patented by Lacoste in 1953. He played with this chrome tubular steel racket until 1984, when most other pros had shifted to new racket technologies, materials, and designs.

At the Tokyo Indoor in October 1983, Connors switched to a new mid-size graphite racket, the Wilson ProStaff, that had been designed especially for him and he used it on the 1984 tour. But 1985 again found Connors playing with the T2000. In 1987, he finally switched to a graphite racket when he signed a contract with Slazenger to play their Panther Pro Ceramic. In 1990, Connors signed with Estusa.

Connors used lead tape which he would wind around the racket head to provide the proper "feel" for his style of game.

Commentating
Connors did commentary with NBC-TV in 1990 and 1991, during its coverage of the French Open and Wimbledon tournaments. During the Wimbledon tournaments of 2005, 2006, and 2007, Connors commentated for the BBC alongside John McEnroe (among others), providing moments of heated discussion between two former archrivals. Connors returned to BBC commentary at Wimbledon in 2014. Connors has also served as a commentator and analyst for the Tennis Channel since the US Open tournament of 2009.

Coaching
On July 24, 2006, at the start of the Countrywide Classic tournament in Los Angeles, American tennis player Andy Roddick announced his partnership with Connors as his coach. In September, 2006 Roddick reached the final of the U.S. Open, where he lost to Roger Federer. On March 6, 2008, Roddick announced the end of that 19-month relationship.

In July 2013 former women's world No. 1 Maria Sharapova announced on her website that Connors was her new coach. On August 15, 2013, Sharapova confirmed that she had ended the partnership with Connors after just one match together.

Author
In 2013, Connors published his autobiography The Outsider. It won the British Sports Book Awards in the "Best Autobiography/Biography" category.

Personal life
Connors was engaged to fellow tennis pro Chris Evert from 1974 to 1975, and they each triumphed in the singles events at the 1974 Wimbledon Championships, a feat labelled "The Lovebird Double" by the media. Their engagement was broken off shortly before the 1975 Wimbledon championship. Connors and Evert briefly reconciled in 1976 and 1978, before parting for good. In May 2013, Connors wrote his autobiography in which he alleged that Evert was pregnant with their child and that she unilaterally made the decision to have an abortion.

Former Miss World Marjorie Wallace was engaged to Connors from 1976 to 1977, but in 1979 Connors married Playboy model Patti McGuire. They have two children, son Brett and daughter Aubree, and live in the Santa Barbara, California, area.

In the fall of 1988, Connors auditioned to host the NBC daytime version of Wheel of Fortune, a show of which he and his wife "never missed an episode". However, the job went to Rolf Benirschke. According to show creator Merv Griffin, many news outlets tried to get their hands on Connors' audition tape, but Griffin refused to release it because he said "it wouldn't have been fair to Jimmy."

In the 1990s, he joined his brother John as an investor in the Argosy Gaming Company, which owned riverboat casinos on the Mississippi River. The two owned 19 percent of the company which was headquartered in the St. Louis metropolitan area of East Alton, Illinois. Argosy narrowly averted bankruptcy in the late 1990s and Connors' brother John personally sought Chapter 7 bankruptcy. In the liquidation, Connors, through his company, Smooth Swing, acquired the Alystra Casino in Henderson, Nevada, for $1.9 million from Union Planters Bank, which had foreclosed on John. In 1995, John Connors had opened the casino with announced plans to include a Jimmy Connors theme area. It was shuttered in 1998 and became a magnet for the homeless and thieves who stripped its copper piping. The casino never reopened under Connors' ownership and it was destroyed in a May 2008 fire.

In October 2005, Connors had successful hip-replacement surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

On January 8, 2007, Connors' mother Gloria died at age 82.

On November 21, 2008, Connors was arrested outside an NCAA basketball game between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California at Santa Barbara after refusing to comply with an order to leave an area near the entrance to the stadium. The charges were dismissed by a judge on February 10, 2009.

On July 24, 2018, LiveWire Ergogenics, Inc. announced that Connors joined the firm as a spokesman and advisor. The company focuses on special purpose real estate acquisitions and the licensing and management of fully compliant turnkey production facilities for cannabis-based products and services.

In December 2019, Connors appeared as himself on season 18 episode 9 of Family Guy titled Christmas is Coming.

Singles performance timeline

 * Australian Open was held twice in 1977, in January and December. Connors did not play these tournaments.

Records

 * These records were attained in Open Era of tennis.
 * Combined tours included Association of Tennis Professionals, Grand Prix Circuit, World Championship Tennis.
 * Records in bold indicate peer-less achievements.

Professional awards

 * ITF World Champion: 1982
 * ATP Player of the Year: 1974, 1982
 * ATP Comeback Player of the Year: 1991

Video

 * Charlie Rose with Jimmy Connors (August 7, 1995) Studio: Charlie Rose, DVD Release Date: October 5, 2006, ASIN: B000JCF3S8
 * Biography: Jimmy Connors DVD A&E 2002.
 * Jimmy Connors Presents Tennis Fundamentals: Comprehensive, Starring: Jimmy Connors; Chris Evert, Foundation Sports, DVD Release Date: May 1, 2006, Run Time: 172 minutes, ASIN: B000FVQWCY.
 * Wimbledon 1975 Final: Ashe vs. Connors Standing Room Only, DVD Release Date: October 30, 2007, Run Time: 120 minutes, ASIN: B000V02CTQ.

title: Jimmy Connors


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Altenkirchen (district)

Altenkirchen is a district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by (from the north and clockwise) the North Rhine-Westphalian districts Rhein-Sieg, Oberbergischer Kreis, Olpe and Siegen-Wittgenstein, and the districts of Westerwaldkreis and Neuwied.

History
The history of the district is linked with the Westerwald region.

The district was established in 1816 by the Prussian administration. It combined the county of Wildenburg and the two counties of Sayn. The former had been part of Berg, the latter ones had belonged to the duchy of Nassau.

The county used to be divided into nine mayoralties, including the Bürgermeisterei Weyerbusch.

Geography
Altenkirchen is the northernmost district of Rhineland-Palatinate. It is occupied by the northern portions of the Westerwald mountains. The valley of the river Sieg borders the Westerwald on the north. The lands north of the Sieg are called Wildenburgisches Land, after the tiny county of Wildenburg, that once existed here.

Coat of arms
The coat of arms displays:
 * Top left: The golden lion of the county of Sayn, which occupied the territory in the 12th century
 * Top right: The symbol of the tiny county of Wildenburg, which existed until 1806 in the very north of the district
 * Bottom: The black and red cross is a combination of the bishops' emblems of Cologne and Trier

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Altenkirchen (district)


text:
Talk:Theodore Sturgeon

Vulcan Hand Sign
The page reads "The latter is known for his invention of the pon farr, the Vulcan mating ritual, the first use of the phrase "Live long and prosper" and the first use of the Vulcan hand symbol. "

WRONG. Leonard Nimoy has repeatedly claimed credit for this invention, which comes from Jewish ritual. I know of no-one who disputes this claim. -- don't have a login, 5-18-09 18:45 EDT —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.180.7.205 (talk) 22:46, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

 * Cite it and fix it!--NapoliRoma (talk) 22:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually both POVs are correct. Sturgeon and Nimoy worked this ritual out together. My source is Sturgeon, as I am one of his daughters. Tandyjen (talk) 17:21, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

 * Glad to have you join in. Is there a published written source we can cite?  The standard for inclusion is verifiability, rather than truth, so we do need a source that can be checked by someone else. Mike Christie (talk) 17:26, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi: There is a quote from Leonard Nimoy used as a blurb for The Complete Stories, that you can see on the new Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust page that credits Ted with "live long and prosper." I don't know how to cite this so if someone can help that would be great. Sturgeon spent much time on the Star Trek set learning how to write the scripts, and was friends with most of the actors and crew. Nimoy would not dispute that these things were collaborations with Ted, though Nimoy was particularly attached to the symbolism of the Vulcan hand sign as part of his Jewish heritage. Nevertheless, Ted had his children practicing that hand maneuver years before Star Trek came along. I think it is fair to say, that as the writer of the episode, Ted was responsible for these things, which came out of his collaboration with Nimoy. Perhaps that's how this section should be worded. Here, and in some of my comments below, citation policy can be difficult to work out. As an academic, I respect citation above all; yet, when materials are not in the public domain as published items, but can prove one POV or another, I do think it is important to still have an accurate historical record. (Mike, I am amused by your distinction between verifiability and truth!)Swimslikeafish (talk)Noel Sturgeon, Trustee, Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust —Preceding undated comment added 17:15, 27 July 2011 (UTC).

 * Noel, hi -- nice to meet you. Can you point me at the right place in the website?  I had a look around but couldn't spot it.  Could you also point me to a page there that gives the details of who is the publisher of the website?  It looks like it's hosted by the University of Kansas, but for Wikipedia we need to know who is exerting editorial control -- i.e. is this site "self-published" in some way, or can we treat it as a reliable source.  Wikipedia has it's own definition of a reliable source which we're obliged to follow here.  I agree that the distinction between verifiability and truth is amusing -- it can lead to odd conclusions, sometimes. In reality we are all trying to put the truth in articles, but without the constraint of verifiability we would be open to anyone arguing for the truth.  Verifiability is a more objectively determinable standard.  Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 01:55, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Hi Mike: On the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust page, there are quotes from various people that run every 10 seconds under the header. You can forward them manually by clicking on the words of the quotes. You will see the quote from Leonard Nimoy there. It came from the back cover of Volume 7: A Saucer of Loneliness, The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (North Atlantic Books 2000). The blurb was most likely located by Paul Williams, who was editing the volumes at that time. Unfortunately, since he now has Alzheimer's, I can't ask him where he found it and I have been unable to locate the source. Maybe you Wikipedia experts can find it. It reads "The words 'live long and prosper' were written by Theodore Sturgeon, a wonderful dramatist with the heart of a poet." I suppose I could just ask Nimoy himself, but I hate to bother him and your standards of verifiability won't be satisfied by a personal, unpublished comment anyway. It does seem to me that Sturgeon's authorship of "Amok Time" is unchallenged, and so saying he came up with these ideas, in collaboration with all of the people involved with Star Trek, is fair. As far as the Trust website, that is published by me as the Trustee. Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it. Best, Noel Swimslikeafish (talk) 03:54, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

 * I found it, with the aid of Google Books; it's in Nimoy's I Am Spock. I'll add a citation to that in the next couple of days. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 12:44, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Mike Swimslikeafish (talk) 19:18, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Done. I just cited the phrase; I can't see most of the text in Google Books, so we'll have to wait till someone gets a physical copy to see if we can cite the other things such as the hand sign from there. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 22:18, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Comments
Apologies for forgetting to reclick the "minor edit" box after a sloppy edit! Ted's ghosting of EQ's The Player on the Other Side is mentioned here: http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/kirkland/266/eq/eqoff.htm#ten k4f 15:59 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

To the sampling of short stories, I would add "The Man Who Lost the Sea", "And My Fear Is Great", and "If All Men Were Brothers Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?"

corallary?
Isn't it supposed to be 'corollary?'

Date
Date of death differs from Find-A-Grave. Lincher 03:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

The date (May 8, 1985) is mentioned in my copies of The Complete Stories of ... and Venus Plus X. It is most likely correct. JöG 07:18, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Trivia
It rather seems to me that the "Trivia" section ought to be removed. It deals entirely with a story that wasn't even written by Sturgeon; the only link is that his father happened to share his name with that of the story, but that's not very interesting given that Waldo wasn't that unusual a name in the early 20th century. 32.97.110.142 17:55, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

 * I just learned from reading this article that Sturgeon's birth surname was "Waldo", and the first thought that came to mind was whether Heinlein chose that name for his character as a shout-out to a colleague, not an unusual thing for authors to do. In one of his short story collections, Sturgeon related how Heinlein had helped him through some rough times, so the connection isn't implausible, but I agree it shouldn't be in here unless there's a reference. If anyone happens to have one...--NapoliRoma (talk) 05:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Problems
This article is sloppy. There's POV stuff about how great or how trusted thisi guy is. --69.255.17.40 02:24, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
 * If he was universily regarded as great and trustworthy, then it is not POV.Yobmod (talk) 10:24, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Image
Can anyone make an image of the "ask the next question" thing? Would be a great addition i think, as it is one of those rare times that an image really does give more than the words. I would do it, but i've never seen it, and the description is too vague.Yobmod (talk) 10:24, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

There is some info at Iliad Books. and The Theodore Sturgeon Page, including images. JöG (talk) 20:20, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think we can poach simple line drawings, which cant be copyrighted, so here's a couple of locations:  , , both pretty decent. previously mentioned sites may be good references, but dont have an image to poach.(mercurywoodrose)66.80.6.163 (talk) 18:20, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Photo of author
I have removed the needs-photo parameter from the Biography template above and made an explicit photoreq so that the page will not be tagged as possibly no longer needing the image. If you provide a picture, please delete the photoreq above. (John User:Jwy talk) 15:38, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * image is now in article, so i removed it. however, As stated above, an image of his symbol may be helpful.

Rhythmic prose
as an example of the lack of sourcing here, where exactly is this discussed? the google hits all seem to be mirrors of the phrasing here. I always wonder why fans of various authors cant show their respect better. on a fansite, write anything you want, praise him to high heaven. on WP, it shows MORE love for the subject to stick to notable, sourcable facts, not less love. Im afraid Mr. Sturgeon would list his article here as part of the 90%.(mercurywoodrose)66.80.6.163 (talk) 20:55, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I removed that part just now. It's a fact that he did enjoy playing with rythm and that he was unusually good with language for a 1940s SF writer, but: JöG (talk) 21:25, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) it was unsourced
 * 2) its place in the intro made it sound as if it was his most important trait
 * 3) little (or nothing) else about the actual character of his work can be found in the article

Template
I created a template to encourage creation of articles on other works. I have included it in all the articles listed. The complete short story volumes would be nice here, but only when they have articles. "ask the next question" should have an article as well.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 17:00, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Possible source for this article
I found this recently:

Hope it helps! ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WikiProject Japan ! 15:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Wina Sturgeon
The editor who has been removing the information about Wina Sturgeon contacted me on my talk page, saying that she is Wina Sturgeon, and that the removed info was inaccurate and was hurting her position in search engine results for certain queries. I've explained that the latter reason is not one we can use to justify removing material. If the information is inaccurate, we need to correct it, and I have asked for sources that would give the information correctly. She has already gone over the three revert limit, despite having been warned; since she is a new user I am inclined to give her a couple more chances, particularly since she may have access to sources that might prove she is correct on this point. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:58, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I will cease to revert the edits, and leave this between the two of you.Sir Rhosis (talk) 16:19, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * No, please continue to revert if you think it's appropriate. See her talk page for more background.  I don't want to see sourced material removed from the article without a debate, and I'd be glad of your support if you agree. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 16:31, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Although a Google search of "Wina Sturgeon New York Times" does list this article first, her published works and stories are immediately next. Anyone searching for her work only has to look at the other entries on the Google results page.  Doesn't seem that difficult.Sir Rhosis (talk) 16:46, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

WINA STURGEON RESPONSE
There are problems with Mr. Christie's version of events, as well as with his page on Theodore Sturgeon (the latter I will discuss with Wikipedia dispute resolution). To begin, numerous sources stated by Mike Christie are suspect. He originally stated on his Sturgeon page "Wina Sturgeon claims to have been married to him." In my first ever Wikipedia edit, I changed "claims to" to "was." Shortly after, to my surprise, the search terms "Wina Sturgeon" and "New York Times" suddenly began resulting in a top ranking for Mike Christie's Theodore Stugeon page, using internal code for my copyrighted work. However, Theodore Sturgeon has NO connection whatsoever to my NYT work written more than a quarter century after his death. Why does he use me, instead of Theodore Sturgeon, to link his page to the New York Times?

It is a known fact that searchers usually click on the first link, regardless of what is second. I believe Mike Christie's personal agenda to hijack my  visible web presence to improve his own rankings is demonstrated by the fact that he doesn't use similar coding for others mentioned in Ted Sturgeon's personal life, despite the fact that at least two, including his daughter Noel, are published writers.

Mr. Christie asked me why I was deleting my name, with the code, from his page on Theodore Sturgeon. I include below my very respectful responses to Mr. Christie, requesting that he remove the coding that gives him a top ranking when readers searching for my work are instead directed first to a totally unconnected Wikipedia page: Mike, you asked why I edited the page you wrote on Theodore Sturgeon I deleted all references to my marriage to Ted and the birth of our son Andros because in your writing of the page, hidden code was used containing titles of my copyrighted articles which cause the Wikipedia Theodore Sturgeon page to come up first when "Wina Sturgeon New York Times" or "New York Times Wina Sturgeon" is searched. Please know that I am a writer who works very hard on my career. For you to code my articles, my work, in order to put a Wikipedia page above my name and the name of one of my major clients when those terms are coupled and searched for by those obviously looking for my work, is not ethical, and in fact, is a theft of my services. Thus, rather than have one of Ted's eager fans hijack my name and work to get rankings for him, I feel I must very reluctantly edit out all mention of me from your page on Ted (your 'relationship' facts about Ted and I were also wrong, by the way). Sincerely, Wina Sturgeon
 * Please work it out, but not by edit warring. You are way over the limit for reversions, and it is becoming very  difficult to avoid reporting you for violation of the 3 reversion rule. Hertz1888 (talk) 23:38, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

SECOND RESPONSE TO MIKE CHRISTIE AFTER HE THREATENED ME WITH BEING 'BANNED' FROM WIKIPEDIA:
MIKE: As I asked you previously, please remove coding of my copyrighted work that is causing your Wikipedia page on Theodore Sturgeon to take precedence over my work, like my front page New York Times story in the June 11, 2011 edition. Obviously, anyone searching the terms 'New York Times Wina Sturgeon' or 'Wina Sturgeon New York Times' is looking for MY work, not for Theodore Sturgeon. In internet copyright law (which of course is still being established), using coding that misdirects searchers to an unconnected source can be considered theft of services and/or restraint of trade. Theodore Sturgeon is absolutely unconnected to any of my New York Times work. Just because you are able to "source" MY work as a writer does not give you the right to use it to advance rankings for your page on Theodore Sturgeon. In addition, some other information on that page is provably inaccurate, regardless of how it is "sourced." Since you are the editor of the page, I believe you will defend what you have written, legitimately sourced or not, thus you may defend your use of my name and the term "New York Times" to hijack my rankings and transfer them to yourself. But such actions are not defensible. You say, "If we can find another source to correct the data...you may get what you want..." What kind of data do you suggest 'we' find that will resolve this issue? I ask that because I would prefer to resolve this problem without a fight and without taking it to Wikipedia dispute resolution. Please know that I will vigorously defend my work, my career and my brand. If you wish to use Ted's name with the term 'New York Times,' here are two links that connect the term with Theodore Sturgeon: http://sfscope.com/2011/05/more-than-sturgeon-at-nyrsf-re.html; and: http://www.nndb.com/people/207/000048063/. Perhaps you should do more research to find if there are other, more legitimate sources that link Theodore Sturgeon's name with the term "New York Times," but I will not accept the unconnected use of my work, and my greater visibility in the New York Times, to give your page an undeserved higher ranking in search engines.

Wina Sturgeon 172.190.30.236 (talk) 22:17, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Note on the Wina marriage source...
While the efforts of the account above to get this removed (up to and including edit warring) are the wrong way to approach things, I would like to point out that the cited article supporting the fact that Sturgeon was married to someone named Wina is very weak, verging on WP:OR. The abc4 article listed as the source for that information mentions that the author of the piece had a husband named Ted and that he was a science fiction author. The obvious inferrance is that it's Theodore Sturgeon, but surely there are better sources available for this information? While Theodore's dead, it appears that at the very least one wife is still alive and thus we should source this information much better than using something that verges on OR. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:52, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree it's not the best source, but I didn't think it was controversial enough to delete. It took me just a few seconds to find a reference in one of his collectiosn to a wife named Wina, so I'll add that as a reference instead. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 02:16, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, added. I actually think it's not entirely clear from the given source that they married; the Slow Sculpture intro says they lived together and she took his name; Ted does say she came to marry him in the intro to Sturgeon is Alive and Well ... but doesn't say they did marry.  However the ABC4 cite does say she was his wife, so I could reintroduce that if you think the combination is good enough; or I could remove the statement that they married. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 02:34, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

RESPONSE TO MIKE CHRISTIE'S MOST RECENT MESSAGE TO WINA STURGEON
(originally posted on his talk page)

Mike,

Please see the comments I have posted on Sir Rhosis' page. In my copyrighted work "Wina On The Web," which you code my name for, there is NO mention of 'Theodore Sturgeon.' There are merely two mentions of 'Ted,' as follows:

"My husband was a science fiction writer. The moon landing was as important to him as the child inside was to me; but then, in some mysterious way, the two became connected in my mind; the child that would come out of me and the astronauts that would come out of the ship and walk on the moon. I remember Ted and I sat on the edge of the bed, watching our small black and white television set, our shoulders pressed together, both of us feeling a tinge of worry."

The story is about the 1969 moon landing, not about Theodore Sturgeon, who, while referred to as "a science fiction writer" is only mentioned as "Ted," with no last name included. Worse, what I didn't know until just now is that the links to my actual ABC4 story are hard to find; because every link directs readers to your Theodore Sturgeon page on various sites besides Wikipedia. This is a form of plagarism that is totally unethical.

I have not at any point threatened to sue Wikipedia, and it is BOGUS of you to imply that I have(ON TALK PAGE). I will again remove the (again) BOGUS coding that is allowing you to wrongfully hijack my more visible name and writing to unethically obtain hits from visitors searching for my work. I have already used my valuable time to provide you with more correct sources you can use, sources that you yourself should have researched as a responsible editor. To paraphrase one of a number of criticisms on the Theodore Sturgeon talk page, source your work and do it accurately. If Theodore Sturgeon deserves a link to the New York Times, don't be lazy, find it yourself and source it, don't use my published work to do the job for you.

Wina Sturgeon 172.190.30.236 (talk) 02:30, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Note on the question of Sturgeon's marriages: I am not personally invested in whether someone was legally married or not and respect all of Ted's long-term relationships as historically important. And I am certainly not interested in a public tiff over this. But, for the record, Theodore Sturgeon remained legally married to Marion McGahan Sturgeon until his death. His last two long term committed relationships, with Wina Golden and Jayne Tannehill Englehart, were not legal marriages, though both parties took the name Sturgeon professionally (Jayne no longer does, as she has remarried). The citations for the most recent statement on the page before I edited it ("He married Wina Golden, a journalist...") are from Sturgeon's introduction to Sturgeon is Alive and Well, which as the poster above points out, indicates that Wina arrived "to marry" Ted, but doesn't prove they did (they did not). The second citation is from my Story Notes to Volume 12, Slow Sculpture, in which I explicitly say that Wina and Ted never married. The convention of calling Ted her "husband" publicly is understandable, given the mores of the time, but does not prove marriage. The proof of Marion's continued marriage to Ted can be found in Sturgeon's papers, just donated to the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas, in which there is extensive correspondence between Ted, Jayne, Marion, and Marion's lawyer discussing the possibility of divorce, which never came to fruition. If Ted was married to Wina, why was he trying to negotiate a divorce with Marion in order to marry Jayne years after he broke up with Wina? He was either a bigamist, or Wina's claim is incorrect. If Wina wants to dispute this, I respectfully ask her to stop reverting these edits and take it up with me out of the public Wikipedia format. If she wants to show me proof of marriage (which appears nowhere in his papers), let her send me the marriage certificate and I will publicly apologize and change the record to indicate Ted's bigamy. It's embarrassing to air this in public. Again, this issue has nothing to do with disrespecting or downplaying Wina's relationship with Ted, which I certainly feel was very important. But for her to cite me as the source of her marriage to Ted is highly misleading and the last straw. It needs to be corrected, as I have done in my edit, and stay corrected. Continuing to revert the edits is against WIkipedia policy, as I understand it. This is really a minor point, but I do believe in historical accuracy. As Wikipedia is the go-to source for a lot of people, an inaccuracy in his bio tends to pop up in other places, and it is frustrating to have to deal with it as people try to reconcile the contradictions in the public record. I do hope this settles the matter, and I am sorry Wina has chosen to make this a public issue. Swimslikeafish (talk) 17:44, 27 July 2011 (UTC)Noel Sturgeon, Trustee, Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust

 * I've no problem with letting the article stand as it is, and I suspect any other editors of this article would agree. As you noted, I was already suspicious that the sources didn't quite demonstrate that they were married, so I'm not too surprised -- after Wina's comments the claim that they were married was made on the basis of the ABC4 article, which presumably just assumed the marriage rather than verified it.  Your story notes say they lived together -- if I'm not mistaken you don't actually say "they never married" in those notes, but I think that's good enough to leave things as they are. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 02:03, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff
I just reverted the removal of the brackets in this title -- the story was originally published with the brackets and is usually indexed that way -- see the ISFDB, for example, or Erwin Strauss's 1951-1965 magazine index. The brand new SFE v.3 also does it that way. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:24, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

 * OK. The book I have is a German translation and gives the title for the orginal with-out the brackets. The three-volume "complete" stories of TS doesn't seem to have the story at all -- listing it only (with brackets) as a recent book.  Can some-one find the original (not re-prints) and check? Kdammers (talk) 11:17, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

 * I have the original magazine publication in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; I just checked and it does have the square brackets in that version. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:17, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk page issue
There is a discussion at Help desk which relates to this talkpage. Basically someone claiming to be Wina Sturgeon (the same Wina Sturgeon who's created lots of arguments in this talkpage above), is complaining that this talkpage shows up too highly in Google searches of their name. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:05, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
 * While I don't care too much about this, and some of the comments by Ms. Sturgeon an IP claiming to be Ms. Sturgeon do indeed seem unreasonable, I note that Monty845 added a NOINDEX tag to this talk page, and you removed it. I can't figure out a reason for removing it except for spite; your comment at the help desk page emphasizes this.  It seems a harmless, easy compromise.  Especially since this is BLP-related, please replace it, and if you really think it is harmful, wait until you get consensus to remove it again. --Floquenbeam (talk) 14:24, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The way I see it, it's Google's problem and not ours. Also, doesn't adding a NOINDEX tag directly affect the searchability of the article, as well as the talkpage? Because the article should definitely be searchable- this was my main reason for removing it, if the logic is wrong then it should definitely be restored. I genuinely have no "spite" towards them, and many other editors at the helpdesk don't agree with their assertions. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:54, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
 * It would have no effect on the article even if it was on the article page, and certainly not when on the talk page. See WP:NOINDEX.  I understand better now why you objected, I agree you shouldn't NOINDEX an article.  Based on this misunderstanding, I'll restore the tag. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:03, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
 * My mistake, thank you for restoring it. Joseph2302 (talk) 15:06, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

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Improvement
I'm surprised that this article is so poor given Sturgeon's stature in the field. The biggest problem is the extreme lack of sources for claims. A lot of the text sounds a bit like opinions and since there are no sources, it is hard to decide either way. Also the text is very meandering and hard to read, especially the persona life section. I'm going to go in and clean up. Please comment if you feel I am overreaching. Ashmoo (talk) 15:00, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Unneeded mentions
Sturgeon's relationship with Scientology is an appropriate topic for this article, but there is no reason to include an off-topic and possible false comparison with another author who is not the topic of the article. The point about Sturgeon's relationship with Scientology stands on its own without a gratuitous comparison to van Vogt. The latter's relationship with Scientology, on which there are differing opinions from different sources, doesn't add any knowledge about Sturgeon to the article and should not be included. I can't imagine a valid argument for inclusion of such an off-topic detail. Skyerise (talk) 19:41, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

 * "Unneeded mentions"? Odd way of putting it. Let me return to that.
 * I think I may be able to clear up a misunderstanding. The edit in question references Dianetics, not Scientology. The former was the precursor of the latter from 1950 to about 1953... Yes, my edit parenthetically mentions Scientology as emerging from Dianetics, for the benefit of those who may not know. But here's the thing: It is beyond dispute that van Vogt took a deep dive into Dianetics in the early '50s. He moved to Los Angeles to set up its headquarters there. He stopped writing science fiction altogether for several years because he was too busy with Dianetics. He went bankrupt over its financial turmoil. According to the Nevala-Lee book (which has an extraordinarily high reputation, BTW), this all had the effect of "forever diminishing his status in the genre" (pg 288). None of this is news. (Also see the account in Sam Moskwitz's book from long ago Seekers of Tomorrow, pg 225, etc). So, (1) Dianetics, not Scientology; (2) it is not controversial that van Vogt went bonkers over Dianetics, to his detriment; and (3) nothing in the edit says anything about van Vogt and Scientology. (I leave it to others to say whether they think that van Vogt can be "cleaned up" as having nothing to do with the Church of Scientology, since the change from Dianetics to the CoS is little more than a change from a "philosophy"/"therapy" to a registered "church". Nm.) Should all this stuff about van Vogt be in the Sturgeon article? Of course not! And it's not! But Skyerise maintains that Nevala-Lee made an "off-topic and possible false comparison" between van Vogt and Sturgeon in his book. He did not. His statement is on-topic, accurate, relevant and well-sourced. (His footnote for that statement references a recording/transcript of a public talk given by Sturgeon himself in 1978.)
 * So, this supposedly "gratuitous comparison to van Vogt" is hardly that. It puts Sturgeon's status relative to Dianetics, and other SF writers, in the early '50s into its proper context. It further states that he defended the Church for decades thereafter (without any reference to van Vogt), which is equally well documented.
 * The assertion that this edit is "unneeded mentions" (when it's manifestly not) makes me wonder if Skyerise doesn't have a fixation, or bias, in favor of suppressing unflattering information regarding van Vogt. Why pick a fight on such a weak point? I haven't looked into it. I don't know. I will assume good faith. Valerius Tygart (talk) 14:52, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Theodore Sturgeon


text:
User talk:Oliver Pereira/and0rod

Ben Hajioff: To keep or not to keep?
That is the question... Now, Ben is undoubtedly a fascinating chap; however, is his article worthy of being in an encyclopaedia? Since I've pretty much written it myself (rescuing it from something which could be classified as a "newbie experiment"), I'd rather like to see it stay. :) However, I don't want people to think I'm sneaking complete nonsense into the Wikipedia, so I'm hereby opening this up for discussion. So, first a summary of some of the relevant facts:-

 * Google searches for "ben hajioff" and "benjamin hajioff" result in no matches. However, this is not surprising as he uses pseudonyms in his artistic life. (The article could perhaps be moved to and0rod.)
 * A Google search for "and0rod" results in "about 22" matches. About five or six refer to his track "Piss House". The others all seem to be pages from his websites, and messages he has written himself.
 * The existence of the tune "Piss House" by and0rod, and its inclusion on a compilation album, can be confirmed by following the external link to the "Discogs" site.
 * Some information, such as his birthday, can be confirmed by trawling through his websites, although it is not certain if one can do this and remain sane.
 * His date of birth could further be confirmed by ordering his birth certificate, which I am prepared to do if necessary. :) (Hey, I never claimed to be sane...)
 * His family background and connection to the slightly more famous Dr. Steve Hajioff can perhaps be confirmed by asking the good doctor himself, and we can trust doctors, right? :) In fact, there are several doctors and other varieties of "respectable" professional people scattered throughout the Hajioff family tree, so no shortage of reliable people who may be persuaded to confirm things for us... :)
 * If I put the article up somewhere else on the Web, and cited it as my reference, wouldn't that be as valid as many of the other online sources people use as references...? I mean, you all trust me, right...? :)

So, how about it, folks? -- Oliver P. 16:16 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

 * I think no.

 * Yes, you can confirm some, limited information, but it seems clear to me that this article is always going to remain a stub. There's no area of human knowledge that this entry will help illustrate, except knowledge of Ben Hajioff. Are you even sure that you're talking about a single person here? I just feel that this kind of article is a distraction to building an encyclopedia.

 * If you think turnaround is fair, you might want to look at Luke Rhinehart and related articles. Luke gets 1,400 article, so is about sixty times more important than Ben. More importantly, to my mind, Luke's entry isn't a stub... Martin

 * Well, it won't ever become more than a small stub. But hey, many things covered in any other encyclopedia are stubs, too. There are things no more than two or three sentences can be said about. This guy seems to be more "real" than e.g. Deeper Than Schmigit. Wikipedia is not paper. After all, keep it. -- JeLuF

Hello again. So, apart from me (and the article's original author, who is remaining silent), the score is now one all! I should confess a personal interest at this point. I have myself been to the forum mentioned in the article, and have corresponded with Mr. Hajioff by e-mail in the past. However, I have not used information from this private correspondence in the article, except in the sense that this private correspondence may unfortunately be the only extant evidence to tie together the names "Ben Hajioff" and "and0rod", and to confirm that the "and0rod" responsible for "Piss House" is the same person. I have confirmed his year and place of birth by checking in the Family Records Centre in London; the rest of the information either is, or has been, on the Web. Unfortunately, some of it has vanished from the Web, but I have it on my hard disc. (Argh, I'm not making a very good case here, am I?)

However, regarding adding to human knowledge, I think Ben Hajioff could play a part in the illumination of the social structure of the British Jewish intelligentsia. I'm not entirely joking here, either! Being descended from the Hajioff family (which contains a professional violinist, several doctors, and a rabbi) on his father's side and the Bermange family (which contains several artists) on his mother's side, Ben is an intriguing example of what happens when you mix the two. :) With enough articles on individual members of a social group, even if all of them are stubs, some general principles about the social group in question could perhaps be pulled out and added to a more general article at some point. Conversely, a general article becomes more informative if there are specific examples to link to. -- Oliver P. 07:12 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

 * Well, I'd advocate deleting Deeper Than Schmigit too. That stuff really is unverifiable.

 * If there was a general article and if it linked to this article as a specific example, and if that example was beneficial, then I might consider the article worth keeping. Sure, in that context there could be some benefit. But that's not the case here, is it? Martin

No, not at all. And making a case for Ben Hajioff based on the fact that he happens to have a few relatives who work in respectable professions is rather poor, I must say. ;) On reflection, I suggest we leave Hajioff out of the Wikipedia until he's done something a touch more noteworthy than 'Piss House'. Birchtree 07:02 Mar 5, 2003 (UTC)

Very well. However, I have quite developed quite a sentimental attachment to the article now. May I be allowed to keep it in my own user area, say at User:Oliver Pereira/and0rod...? :) -- Oliver P. 00:54 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

 * There's absolutely no reason to delete this entry. It's perfectly acceptable. -The Cunctator

 * Thank you for your support, Cunctator. :) However, note from what I have written above that although I have documentation to support what is in the article, much of it exists now only in the form of saved webpages on my hard disc. Firstly, I'm not sure that it's fair on the world's population to ask them to just trust me on this; secondly, for me to republish the saved pages on my hard disc would be an infringement of copyright. I've suggested above that one could contact relatives of Mr. Hajioff to confirm some details, but I'm a little hesitant to do so, as they would think I was very odd... :) -- Oliver P. 07:06 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

 * Certainly - move it over there with the move tool - I'm even happy to leave this entry redirected to the one in your namespace. :) Martin

Summary of the page-moving business
Okay, it appears that there is some need to clarify what happened to the Ben Hajioff article, since its fate is apparently being used as a precedent for some highly suspect goings-on at Daniel C. Boyer.

 * 1) At 16:53 on 3 Mar 2003, I added the Ben Hajioff article to Votes for deletion. I stated at the time, "I don't really want this deleted, but I would like other people's opinions on whether it could be allowed to stay or not."
 * 2) There was then some discussion at Talk:Ben Hajioff (which is now this very page), in which Martin argued for deletion, and JeLuF argued for keeping it.
 * 3) At 07:02 on 5 Mar 2003, Birchtree - who started the article in the first place - came along to the talk page and suggested that we leave Ben Hajioff out of the Wikipedia after all.
 * 4) At 00:54 on 6 Mar 2003, I agreed, and asked if I could keep the article in my user area.
 * 5) At 01:00 on 6 Mar 2003, I stated the agreement on VfD, and asked the same question there. I added, "The resulting redirect in the article space would still have to be deleted, of course." (I thought the reason was obvious - it is important to maintain the distinction between the article space and the user space.)
 * 6) At 06:43 on 6 Mar 2003, The Cunctator arrived to voice his support for the article, but didn't counter anyone else's arguments about why the article was not acceptable.
 * 7) At 07:06 on 6 Mar 2003, I replied to The Cunctator to explain that I thought that the material was not verifiable by anyone other than me.
 * 8) At 21:54 on 6 Mar 2003, I moved Ben Hajioff to User:Oliver_Pereira/and0rod. This was my most dodgy act. I should have waited until the page had been listed on VfD for a week. However, note that if anyone had protested, I would certainly have been happy to move the page back to where it was until their complaint had been sorted out.
 * 9) At 21:57 on 6 Mar 2003, I moved Talk:Ben Hajioff to User_talk:Oliver_Pereira/and0rod. Notes as above.
 * 10) At 22:10 on 6 Mar 2003, I informed the readers of VfD that I had moved the page into my user space. I also said, "The redirects in the article space should probably be deleted, though, to prevent Wikipedia articles from linking to it." I'm not sure why I said "probably".
 * 11) On 7 Mar 2003, I became a sysop. I probably didn't need to mention this, but I just thought I'd bring it up anyway. :)
 * 12) At 02:39 on 8 Mar 2003, I replaced the Ben Hajioff discussion on VfD with a note asking someone to delete Ben Hajioff, which was now just a redirect from the article space to my user space.
 * 13) At 16:26 (or 17:26?) on 16 Mar 2003, I deleted Ben Hajioff, the redirect. This was, admittedly, a violation of the deletion policy, as I was the one who nominated it for deletion. But it had been on VfD for a week with no objections, and nobody else had bothered to delete it...
 * 14) At 17:01 (or 18:01?) on Mar 16, 2003, I deleted Talk:Ben Hajioff. Notes as above.
 * 15) At 17:57 on 16 Mar 2003, I removed the Ben Hajioff entry from VfD, since it had now been deleted.

There. So you see although there were a few minor violations of policy, I didn't move Ben Hajioff out of the article space until I thought there was a consensus that it was a non-article. (JeLuF and The Cunctator, the only two people who had made objections that had not been withdrawn, had gone quiet.) We should certainly never move pages out of the article space if there is no consensus that they are non-articles. The distinction must be maintained between articles (in the article space) and non-articles (elsewhere - e.g. User, Talk, and Wikipedia pages), because different rules apply in the different areas. Pages in the user space are not required to be encyclopaedia articles. They are not required to follow the policies of NPOV, verifiability, or pretty much any other policy for that matter. To move a page into the user space is to state that it is not a real article, and that anyone can do pretty much anything they want with it. I only moved Ben Hajioff because by that time I was confident that it was a non-article. I would certainly not move a contentious article out of the article space, and I strongly recommend that no-one else do it either. -- Oliver P. 19:54, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for putting up this page. It would be nice to have a definitive list of work by a0d, and a few examples.. As much as I hate sounding sycophantic or glib, what he did was to me, some of the only Internet art that really had any authenticity to it.

title: User talk:Oliver Pereira/and0rod


text:
Artie Shaw

Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky; May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004) was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, actor and author of both fiction and non-fiction.

Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led one of the United States' most popular big bands in the late 1930s through the early 1940s. Though he had numerous hit records, he was perhaps best known for his 1938 recording of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine." Before the release of "Beguine," Shaw and his fledgling band had languished in relative obscurity for over two years and, after its release, he became a major pop artist within short order. The record eventually became one of the era's defining recordings. Musically restless, Shaw was also an early proponent of what became known much later as Third Stream music, which blended elements of classical and jazz forms and traditions. His music influenced other musicians, such as Monty Norman in England, whose "James Bond Theme" features a vamp possibly influenced by Shaw's 1938 recording of "Nightmare".

Shaw also recorded with small jazz groups drawn from within the ranks of the big bands he led. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1944, during which time he led a morale-building band that toured the South Pacific. Following his discharge in 1944, he returned to lead a band through 1945. Following the breakup of that band, he began to focus on other interests and gradually withdrew from the world of being a professional musician and major celebrity, although he remained a force in popular music and jazz before retiring from music completely in 1954.

Early life
Arthur Jacob Arshawsky was born on May 23, 1910, in New York City to Sarah (née Strauss) and Harold "Harry" Arshawsky, a dressmaker and photographer. The family was Jewish; his father was from Russia, his mother from Austria.

Shaw grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism. He bought a saxophone by working in a grocery store and began learning the saxophone at 13. At 16, he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band.

Career
Returning to New York, he became a session musician through the early 1930s. From 1925 to 1936, Shaw performed with many bands and orchestras; from 1926 to 1929, he worked in Cleveland and established a lasting reputation as music director and arranger for an orchestra led by the violinist Austin Wylie. In 1929 and 1930, he played with Irving Aaronson's Commanders, where he was exposed to symphonic music, which he would later incorporate in his arrangements. In 1932, Shaw joined the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra and made several recordings with the outfit including "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" and "Fit as a Fiddle".

Leader of bands
In 1935, he first gained attention with his "Interlude in B-flat" at a swing concert at the Imperial Theater in New York. During the swing era, his big bands were popular with hits like "Begin the Beguine" (1938), "Stardust" (with a trumpet solo by Billy Butterfield), "Back Bay Shuffle", "Moonglow", "Rosalie", and "Frenesi". The show was well received, but was forced to dissolve in 1937 because his band's sound was not commercial. Shaw valued experimental and innovative music over dancing and love songs.

He was an innovator in the big band idiom, using unusual instrumentation; "Interlude in B-flat", where he was backed with only a rhythm section and a string quartet, was one of the earliest examples of what would be later dubbed Third Stream. His incorporation of stringed instruments could be attributed to the influence of the classical composer Igor Stravinsky.

In addition to hiring Buddy Rich, he signed Billie Holiday as his band's vocalist in 1938, becoming the first white band leader to hire a full-time black female singer to tour the segregated Southern U.S. However, after recording "Any Old Time", Holiday left the band due to hostility from audiences in the South, as well as from music company executives who wanted a more "mainstream" singer.

Like his main rival, Benny Goodman, and other leaders of big bands, Shaw fashioned a smaller "band within the band" in 1940. He named it Artie Shaw and the Gramercy Five after his home telephone exchange. Band pianist Johnny Guarnieri played harpsichord on the quintet recordings, and Al Hendrickson played electric guitar. Trumpeter Roy Eldridge became part of the group, succeeding Billy Butterfield. In 1940, the original Gramercy Five cut eight sides, then Shaw dissolved the band in early 1941. The Gramercy Five's biggest hit was "Summit Ridge Drive", one of Shaw's million-selling records. His last prewar band, organized in September 1941, included Oran "Hot Lips" Page, Max Kaminsky, Georgie Auld, Dave Tough, Jack Jenney, Ray Conniff and Guarnieri.

The long series of musical groups Shaw subsequently formed included Lena Horne, Helen Forrest, Mel Tormé, Buddy Rich, Dave Tough, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow, Dodo Marmarosa, and Ray Conniff. He used the morose "Nightmare", with its Hasidic nuances, as his theme rather than choosing a more accessible song. In a televised interview in the 1970s, Shaw derided the "asinine" songs of Tin Pan Alley that were the lifeblood of popular music and which bands, especially the most popular (such as his own) were compelled to play night after night. In 1994, he told Frank Prial of The New York Times: "I thought that because I was Artie Shaw I could do what I wanted, but all they wanted was 'Begin the Beguine'".

Throughout his career, Shaw had a habit of forming bands, developing them according to his immediate aspirations, making a quick series of records, and then disbanding. He generally did not stick around long enough to reap his bands' successes through live performances of their recorded hits. Following the breakup of what was already his second band in 1939, he rarely toured at all and, if he did, his personal appearances were usually limited to long-term engagements in a single venue or bookings that did not require much traveling, unlike many bands of the era that traveled great distances doing seemingly endless strings of one-night engagements.

Radio days
Shaw did many big band remote broadcasts. Throughout the autumn and winter of 1938, he was often heard from the Blue Room of the Hotel Lincoln in New York City. After touring in 1939, he led the house band at the Café Rouge of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York. He was the headliner of a radio series with comedian Robert Benchley as emcee. Shaw broadcast on CBS from November 20, 1938, until November 14, 1939.

Shaw became increasingly disillusioned with not having time to develop new arrangements, and having to play the same pop tunes over and over. In an interview, he explained, "'Begin the Beguine' is a pretty nice tune. But not when you have to play it 500 nights in a row." Finally, in frustration, he walked off the Café Rouge bandstand while on the air, and quit the band two days later. He departed for Mexico, and the band continued without him into January but eventually broke up.

After Shaw returned from Mexico in 1940, and still under contract to RCA Victor, he experimented with a group of session musicians in Hollywood, trying to combine strings and woodwinds with a jazz band. The result was the hit "Frenesi".

He was hired as bandleader for the Burns and Allen Show broadcast from Hollywood. He organized a band that was modeled after his swing band concept of the late-1930s with the addition of six violins, two violas, and one cello. The addition of a string section to a big band was not novel, as it had been done by Paul Whiteman and others since the 1920s. Shaw updated the idea with the music trends of the 1940s. Strings gave him a wider tonal palette and allowed him to concentrate on ballads rather than the fast dance songs of the swing era. Shaw was at or near the top of the list of virtuoso jazz bandleaders. The band was showcased on the Burns and Allen program every week.

In 1940, at the height of his popularity, the 30-year-old Shaw earned up to $60,000 per week. In contrast, George Burns and Gracie Allen were each making $5,000 per week during the year that Shaw and his orchestra provided the music for their radio show. He acted on the show as a love interest for Gracie Allen. Shaw's contract was renewed for another 13 weeks when the program was moved to New York.

Shaw disliked having to be a part of the celebrity culture of the period, with its professional obligations. He told Metronome magazine: "I don't like the business of music. I'm unhappy in the music 'business.' Maybe I don't even belong in it. I like the music part, but for me the business part just plain stinks." Shaw also resented the constant pressure imposed on him by networks, agencies, publishers, and promoters. He summed up his feelings in a self-penned 1939 Saturday Evening Post article: "My job is to play music, not politics, and my only obligation is to the people who pay to listen to me. I don't attempt to ram hackneyed, insipid tunes down the public's throat just because they've been artificially hypoed to the so-called 'hit' class. This policy of trying to maintain some vestige of musical integrity has, naturally, earned me enemies, people who think I'm a longhair, impressed with my own ability. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My faith in dance music — I refuse to call it swing — borders on the fanatic. I have the utmost respect for the many real musicians who are creating a new music as important as the classics, but I have no respect for musical clowns who lead an orchestra with a baton and a quip. However, more power to them if they can make it pay."

When Shaw told his agents that he was walking away from the big band, they warned him that he couldn't do that; he had a million dollars in contracts that had to be honored. Shaw didn't care, and responded, "Tell 'em I'm insane. A nice, young American boy walking away from a million dollars, wouldn't you call that insane?"

Shaw broke up the Hollywood band, keeping a nucleus of seven musicians in addition to himself, and filled out the ensemble with New York musicians until March 1941. While taking a few months' vacation in the spring of 1941 to reassess what to do next, Shaw recorded in another small-group format with three horns and a four-man rhythm section with the addition of a dozen strings. By September, he formed a big band with seven brass, five saxes, four rhythm, and fifteen strings. On December 7, three months into the tour, the 31-piece band was in the midst of a matinee performance in Providence, Rhode Island, when he was given a note about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The note instructed him to tell military personnel to return to their bases. Shaw was shaken by the news, as he told interviewer Freddie Johnson in 1994: "Everything seemed to pale into insignificance, and I had to go back out on stage and announce "Star Dust" or something, and it sounded so fatuous. Here we were in the middle of a conflagration. On impulse, I went to the front row of the band where Les Robinson, first alto man, was sitting, and I said, 'Pass the word. This is two weeks' notice.' It went through the band and we played the rest of that show with a pall over it. Anyway, I joined the Navy."

War and after
During World War II, Shaw enlisted in the United States Navy and shortly after formed a band, which served in the Pacific theater. After 18 months playing for Navy personnel, (sometimes as many as four concerts a day in battle zones, including Guadalcanal), Shaw returned to the U.S. in a state of physical exhaustion and received a medical discharge. After the war, the popularity of big bands declined, as Crooners and Bebop began to dominate the charts.

Shaw credited his time in the Navy from 1942 to 1944 as a period of renewed introspection. After his discharge, he entered psychoanalysis and began to withdraw from music in favor of a writing career. His autobiography, The Trouble With Cinderella: An Outline of Identity, was published in 1952 (with later reprint editions in 1992 and 2001). Revealing downbeat elements of the music business, Shaw explained that "the trouble with Cinderella" is "nobody ever lives happily ever after." He turned to semi-autobiographical fiction with the three short novels in I Love You, I Hate You, Drop Dead! (1965, reprinted in 1997), which prompted Terry Southern's comment: "Here is a deeply probing examination of the American marital scene. I flipped over it!" Shaw's short stories, including "Snow White in Harlem", were collected in The Best of Intentions and Other Stories (1989). He worked for years on his 1,000-page autobiographical novel, The Education of Albie Snow, but the three-volume work remained unpublished.

After his discharge in 1944, he formed another band, this time what could be considered a modern big band in that it contained what is now considered the standard eight brass and five saxes. It did not include any strings and was based in Hollywood, California, where Shaw was living. He continued to record for RCA Victor, as he had before the war, and limited the band's personal appearances to military bases in California. In August 1945, his contract with RCA ended and he signed with an independent label, Musicraft. He made a few records for Musicraft before the band broke up, and all of the recordings for Musicraft from 1946 were staffed by top-notch session musicians. The big band was back in the studio, this time including strings. On these Musicraft recordings in 1946 Shaw featured the young singer Mel Tormé. On some of the sides, Tormé was also featured with his vocal group the Meltones.

In the late 1940s Shaw commissioned Norman Dello Joio to compose a solo work; Shaw premiered the resultant Concertante for Clarinet and Orchestra with the Chautauqua (NY) Symphony on 23 July 1949, Franco Autori conducting. Shaw again performed the work in Town Hall on 20 February 1950 with Thomas Scherman and the Little Orchestra Society; on the preceding day (19 February) Shaw had performed the Mozart concerto in Newark (NJ) with Scherman and the L.O.S.

In July 1954, Shaw undertook a brief Australian tour for promoter Lee Gordon on which he shared the bill with drummer Buddy Rich and vocalist Ella Fitzgerald. After completing that tour Shaw stopped playing the clarinet, citing his own perfectionism, which, he later said, would have killed him. He explained to a reporter: "In the world we live in, compulsive perfectionists finish last. You have to be Lawrence Welk or, on another level, Irving Berlin, and write the same kind of music over and over again. I'm not able to do that, and I have taken the clarinet as far as anyone can possibly go. To continue playing would be a disservice." He spent the rest of the 1950s living in Europe.

In 1983, after years of prodding by Williard Alexander, the 73-year-old Shaw organized a band and selected clarinetist Dick Johnson as bandleader and soloist. The 58-year-old Johnson, an accomplished woodwind and saxophonist and native of Brockton, Massachusetts, was no stranger to jazz having recorded numerous albums of his own and had idolized Shaw's playing throughout his life. Shaw's music library, which was the product of his almost 20 years of activity in the music business, contained numerous arrangements of monumental status of popular music in addition to many original big band jazz compositions of the era. It was a collection of music arranged by some of the foremost composer/arrangers of the period, much of which was sketched out by Shaw himself and filled in and completed by his orchestrator/arranger collaborators, among them Jerry Gray, William Grant Still, Lennie Hayton, Ray Conniff, Eddie Sauter, and Jimmy Mundy, among others. Shaw rehearsed his new band, (based out of Boston, Massachusetts), and the band made its official debut on New Year's Eve 1984 at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York, the same launching pad for many bands of the swing era decades earlier, when Shaw and his bands were in their prime. Shaw appeared with the band throughout its first few years, limiting his role to being its conductor and front man, while leaving the clarinet playing duties to Johnson. In 1985, another week-long series of strenuous rehearsals followed during which Shaw added more repertoire, including many arrangements and compositions that were from the later years of his career Shaw had never recorded. By 1987 though, Shaw was no longer touring with the band, quietly content that Johnson and the band kept true to Shaw's band spirit and vision. He would, however, show up on occasion "just to hear how things sounded".

Films and television
Shaw made several musical shorts in 1939 for Vitaphone and Paramount Pictures. He portrayed himself in the Fred Astaire film, Second Chorus (1940), which featured Shaw and his orchestra playing Concerto for Clarinet, and his 1940–41 Hollywood period Star Dust band can be heard throughout the soundtrack. The film garnered him two Oscar nominations for Best Score and Best Song ("Love of My Life"). He collaborated on the love song "If It's You", sung by Tony Martin in the Marx Brothers' film The Big Store (1941). On March 2, 1950, he was the mystery guest on the fifth episode of What's My Line? and on August 31, 1952, was part of the panel. During the 1970s he made appearances on The Mike Douglas Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Many of his recordings have been used in motion pictures. His 1940 recording of "Stardust" was used in its entirety in the closing credits of the film The Man Who Fell to Earth. Martin Scorsese also used the Shaw theme song, "Nightmare", in his Academy Award-winning Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator.

Canadian filmmaker Brigitte Berman interviewed Hoagy Carmichael, Doc Cheatham, and others including Shaw for her documentary film, Bix: Ain't None of Them Play Like Him Yet (1981) about Bix Beiderbecke, and afterward she went on to create an Academy Award-winning documentary, Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got (1985), featuring extensive interviews with Shaw, Buddy Rich, Mel Tormé, Helen Forrest, and other musicians, in addition to Shaw's eighth wife, actress Evelyn Keyes. The documentary ends with Shaw rehearsing his new band with co-leader Johnson present and rolls to credits perhaps quite fittingly with the band taking a final segue to Shaw's theme song Nightmare. In 2000, filmmaker Ken Burns interviewed Shaw at his home for his PBS documentary/miniseries Jazz where Shaw appears in multiple segments. His last major interview was in 2003, when he was interviewed by Russell Davies for the BBC Television documentary, Artie Shaw – Quest for Perfection. The documentary includes interviews with surviving members of his original bands, Johnson, and other music industry professionals.

Personal life
A self-proclaimed "very difficult man," Shaw was married eight times. Two marriages were annulled; the others ended in divorce: Jane Cairns (1932–33; annulled); Margaret Allen (1934–37); actress Lana Turner (1940); Betty Kern, the daughter of songwriter Jerome Kern (1942–43); actress Ava Gardner (1945–46); Forever Amber author Kathleen Winsor (1946–48; annulled); actress Doris Dowling (1952–56), and actress Evelyn Keyes (1957–85). He had two sons, Steven Kern (with Betty Kern) and Jonathan Shaw (with Doris Dowling). Both Lana Turner and Ava Gardner later described Shaw as being extremely emotionally abusive. His controlling nature and incessant verbal abuse drove Turner to have a nervous breakdown, soon after which she divorced him. In 1940, before eloping with Lana Turner, Shaw briefly dated actresses Betty Grable and Judy Garland and, according to Tom Nolan's biography, had an affair with Lena Horne.

Apart from his interest in music, Shaw had a tremendous intellect and almost insatiable thirst for intellectual knowledge and literature. During his self-imposed "sabbaticals" from the music business, his interests included studying advanced mathematics, as cited in Karl Sabbagh's The Riemann Hypothesis.

In 1946, Shaw was present at a meeting of the Independent Citizens' Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. Olivia de Havilland and Ronald Reagan, part of a core group of actors and artists who were trying to sway the organization away from Communism, presented an anti-Communist declaration which, if signed, was set to run in newspapers. There was bedlam as many rose to champion the communist cause, and Shaw began praising the democratic standards of the Soviet constitution.

Shaw was also a precision marksman, ranking fourth in the United States in 1962, and an expert fly fisherman. In his later years, Shaw lived and wrote in the Newbury Park section of Thousand Oaks, California. He died on December 30, 2004, aged 94. According to his publicist, he had been "in ill health for some time, but I don't know the specific cause of death." Shaw had been diabetic since the 1980s.

In 2005, Shaw's eighth wife, actress Evelyn Keyes, filed suit, seeking one-half of Shaw's estate, pursuant to a contract to make a will between them. In July 2006, a Ventura, California, jury unanimously held that Keyes was entitled to almost one-half of Shaw's estate or $1,420,000.

Awards and honors
In 1980, Shaw donated his papers, most of which amounted to his music library of over 700 scores and parts and approximately 1,000 pieces of sheet music, to Boston University. In 1991, the collection was transferred to the School of Music of the University of Arizona in Tucson. In 2004, he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 1938, DownBeat magazine readers voted Artie Shaw's the best swing band.

In response to Benny Goodman's nickname, the "King of Swing", Shaw's fans dubbed him the "King of the Clarinet". He felt the titles should be reversed. "Benny Goodman played clarinet. I played music," he said.

Longtime Duke Ellington clarinetist Barney Bigard cited Shaw as his favorite clarinet player.

title: Artie Shaw