In 1949, he married Katharine Mortimer (1923–2003), the daughter of financier Stanley Grafton Mortimer, Sr. She had previously been married to Oliver Cadwell Biddle, with whom she had a daughter, Christine Mortimer Biddle, who became a stepdaughter to Shields. Shields had three children with Mortimer: Shields and Mortimer divorced and in 1962 she married Richard Gillespie Blaine. In his later years he was frequently drunk, at which times he became destructive and bullying with his strength. After two heart attacks and a stroke, he died at 65 of a third heart attack, in a Manhattan taxi. He was the grandfather of Brooke Shields, Morgan Christina Shields, and Holton Joseph Shields. Shields appeared in the following films:  Shields was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island in 1964.