My Shining Hour is a 1943 jazz standard composed by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Johnny Mercer for the film The Sky’s the Limit. In the movie it is sung by Fred Astaire with Sally Sweetland dubbing for Joan Leslie, and the orchestra was led by Freddie Slack. The song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song but lost to You’ll Never Know. The film opened July 13, 1943, and Glen Gray’s Casa Loma Orchestra with Eugenie Baird on vocals turned the tune into a hit in 1944, reaching No. 4 on the Billboard Best Selling Retail Records chart. Its hopeful wartime mood and flowing melody have carried it into the jazz and swing repertoire, with notable album appearances such as Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen Songbook (1961) and John Coltrane Coltrane Jazz (1961), plus later versions by Liza Minnelli, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Peggy Lee, among others. The title may reference Winston Churchill’s finest hour remark. The song has appeared in other films as well, including Youth Runs Wild (1944) as an instrumental, Radio Stars on Parade (1945) sung by Frances Langford, and The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) as an instrumental.
