He studied business and then began clerking in a country store in Joplin and soon became a salesman with the Campbell-Redell Wholesale Grocery Company.

He remained in the grocery business for thirty years, except when he was briefly with the Ozark Coal and Railroad Company at Fort Smith, Arkansas.

A jury sided with the Lawrence claim that Shaw had been unduly influenced by his new wife, but the verdict was not put into effect because all of the parties later agreed to a settlement.

[12][13] Shaw was a large property owner who was active in the United Commercial Travelers' Association when he filed for the 1925 election in the 8th Council District.

Both Shaw and Council Member Robert Stewart Sparks raised criticism in advance of the May 1927 primary election when they each sent letters on city stationery to people who were on a tentative list for appointment as election workers asking them to call on the two councilmen to discuss, in the words of Shaw's letter, "several matters which I believe will prove advantageous to you."

[19] While still a supervisor, Shaw ran for the mayoralty of Los Angeles in 1933 against the incumbent, John C. Porter, and was elected in the final vote, 187,053 to 155,513.

It developed that Shaw's Canadian-born father had taken out his first U.S. citizenship papers in Hays City, Kansas, in 1887, but no record could be found of a final disposition.

The matter was finally settled on July 24, 1933, when Shaw took the oath of allegiance to the United States, and Butler withdrew his suit.

He said the film depicts him, Shaw, as having ordered his police aides to plant the bomb that severely injured a private investigator named Harry.

The first article, "The Lid Off Los Angeles," ran in installments beginning November 11, 1939, and included the statement: Until the boodling Shaw machine was handed its hat and a decent and unfettered man was elected Mayor in September, 1938, the city of Los Angeles for 20 years had been, almost uninterruptedly, run by an underworld government invisible to the average citizen.

[28]The second article was said to have been based on material furnished by the wife of anti-vice crusader Clifford Clinton under the title "My Husband's Death Struggle With the Vice Czars of Los Angeles.