"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is a show tune written by American
composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Otto Harbach for their 1933
operetta
Roberta. It was performed by Irene Dunne for the 1935
film adaptation, costarring Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and
Randolph Scott. It has been covered by numerous artists,
beginning with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra with Bob
Lawrence on vocal, which went to the top of the charts in 1934,
and including Nat "King" Cole who first covered it in 1946. It
also featured in "Lovely to Look At", a 1952 remake of
"Roberta", where it was sung by Kathryn Grayson. Possibly the
most famous version was recorded in 1958 by the doo wop group
The Platters, which became a number one hit on the U.S.
Billboard Hot 100 and reached number three on the R&B
charts in 1959 .
In 1956, Vic Damone covered this song with a very dramatic
and different rendition. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" became one
of Vic Damone's most famous songs. A 1972 remake by British
band Blue Haze also became popular. Saxophone player Boots
Randolph did an acoustic cover of the song on the B-side of his
LP Yakety Sax. Bryan Ferry recorded a quavering, briefly
popular version of the song in 1974 on the album
Another Time, Another Place, which reached number 17 on
the UK charts in September 1974. Jerry Garcia, who was named
after Jerome Kern, released a music video in the early 1990s
covering the classic tune, with actress Ashley Judd sitting in
the background listening. Similarly in the early 1990s the song
was performed by Eartha Kitt as part of her work with a small
jazz combo in Germany; these recordings are preserved under the
name Thinking Jazz.
Australian singer Jason Donovan recorded the song for his
album "Let It Be Me" (2008).
The song has been featured in several films, including
George Lucas's
American Graffiti(1973) (The Platters recording) and
much later in the 2004 Golden Globe-winning film
Being Julia, directed by István Szabó. J.D. Souther's
rendition is the centerpiece song to Steven Spielberg's 1989
film
Always, and features significantly in both the plot and
soundtrack of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's 2005 film,
Three Times. It has also appeared in Rainer Werner
Fassbinder's "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant".
Additionally, Cher's character briefly sings the last verse of
the song during the 1999 film
Tea With Mussolini. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is the
title of the 2007 pilot episode of the AMC original drama
Mad Men. It appears in the end of Tropic Thunder. In
Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield listens to this song when
he is at the carousel. The song title is also mentioned in the
lyrics of the CAKE song "Wheels".
A parody of the song was used in the British TV advert for
Esso Blue paraffin (kerosene) rewording it as "They asked me
how I knew / It was Esso Blue / I of course replied / With
lower grades one buys / Smoke gets in your eyes".