"I Never Felt Better" from ATHENA (1954)

I was glad to see this song, from the 1954 Joe Pasternak production Athena, finally get uploaded to YouTube. It's sung by Debbie Reynolds with a few interjections by Jane Powell, and it was written by the team of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, and while I don't love it quite as much as their "An Occasional Man," I think it's one of the best songs they wrote for MGM. They specialized in happy, peppy songs propelled by Martin's jazzy vocal arrangements, and this song -- in the time-honored "I have no money but I'm happy anyway" genre -- is so full of charm and wit and energy that it always cheers me up when I'm in a bad mood.

The movie it's from, Athena, is not very satisfying as a whole; Esther Williams came up with the idea for the story, about a woman raised by health/fitness nuts, but the studio took the idea and gave it to Jane Powell instead. It would have made more sense with Williams, and Edmund Purdom and Vic Damone are just about the deadliest team of leading men you can imagine. But it's still more fun than a lot of better-known MGM musicals, and it deserves a DVD release.