My Shining Hour

"My Shining Hour" is a song composed by

The film was released on July 13, 1943.[3] The song became a hit the following year by Glen Gray's Casa Loma Orchestra with Eugenie Baird as vocalist, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard "Best Selling Retail Records" chart.^[4] The song's title may have been a reference to Winston Churchill's speech to British citizens during World War II: "if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, this was their finest hour."^[1]

In the 1944 film Youth Runs Wild an instrumental version of the song plays during a scene with Kent Smith and Glen Vernon.^[5] The song was also used in the film Radio Stars on Parade (1945) when it was sung by Frances Langford accompanied by the Skinnay Ennis orchestra.^[6] An instrumental version of the song was also used in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947).

Other notable recordings

• 1943 Mabel Mercer
• 1953 Dorothy Carless, Dorothy Carless Sings Informally: 4 Songs by Kurt Weill, 4 Songs by Harold Arlen
• 1955 Warren Galjour, The Music Of Harold Arlen: The Walden Sessions.^[7]
• 1960
  Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook
  .
• 1961 John Coltrane, Coltrane Jazz
• 1963 Nancy Wilson, Hollywood – My Way
• 1965 Sammy Davis Jr., Our Shining Hour
• 1965 Liza Minnelli, It Amazes Me
• 1977 June Christy, Impromptu (June Christy album)
• 1980 Frank Sinatra, Trilogy: Past Present Future
• 1983 Rosemary Clooney, Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Harold Arlen
• 1993 Peggy Lee, Love Held Lightly: Rare Songs by Harold Arlen
• 1996 Rebecka Törnqvist & Per 'Texas' Johansson, The Stockholm Kaza Session
• 2006 Barbra Streisand, Live in Concert 2006

References