"My Shining Hour" was written in 1943 by Harold Arlen (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the film The Sky's the Limit, released on July 13, 1943. In the film, Fred Astaire sings it, while Sally Sweetland provided the singing voice for actress Joan Leslie, and Freddie Slack led the orchestra. The song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song but lost to "You'll Never Know".
It became a hit in 1944, when Glen Gray's Casa Loma Orchestra, with vocalist Eugenie Baird, reached No. 4 on Billboard's Best Selling Retail Records chart. Mabel Mercer recorded it in 1943, and other notable recordings include those by Ella Fitzgerald (1960), John Coltrane (1961), Liza Minnelli (1965), Frank Sinatra (1980), Rosemary Clooney (1983) and Peggy Lee (1993). It is regarded as a jazz standard.
