In this song, Nat King Cole compares his love to the famous painting by Leon

ardo da Vinci. The Mona Lisa if famous for her smile and her mystique, as the po
rtrait has become one of the most famous works of art in history.
This song was written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston for the movie Captain
Carey, U.S.A.. It won an Oscar for Best Song. Others songs Evans and Livingston
wrote include "Silver Bells," "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)" and "
Buttons And Bows." They also composed the theme songs for the TV shows Bonanza a
nd Mr. Ed. Livingston told American Songwriter Magazine July/August 1988 the sto
ry behind this song: "There was a picture called OSS, which took place during Wo
rld War II, and Alan Ladd was in a little Italian town where the clandestine rad
io was, and they needed a song to warn them that the German patrol was coming. T
here was this blind accordion player who wasn't blind playing on the street and
every time he saw the Germans coming he would play a certain melody, so we wrote
'Mona Lisa' and they said that it sounded Italian and they liked it. Then they
called us and said they had changed the title from OSS to After Midnight and we
had to write a song with that title. They loved title songs because it sold thei
r picture. So we threw away the lyrics of 'Mona Lisa' and wrote 'After Midnight.
' A month later we picked up Variety and read where Alan Ladd's new picture was
going to be called Captain Carey, USA.
We went back to the studio and asked for 'Mona Lisa' back, and then pitched
it to Nat King Cole and he liked it and recorded it on the back of 'The Greatest
Inventor Of Them All.' So we went on a junket for Paramount about that time, an
d we took the records with us and we must have been on 25 or 30 radio shows, and
when we got back the song was a hit. But the original ads for the record didn't
even mention 'Mona Lisa,' just 'The Greatest Inventor.' I think us pushing it r
eally made the difference in that song being a hit."
Before this big hit Nat King Cole was better known as a pianist. Until 1947
when he was credited as a solo artist on "Nature Boy," he recorded as a member o
f the King Cole Trio. "Mona Lisa" helped establish his reputation as a top vocal
ist of the era, although many Jazz aficionados consider Cole one of the best pia
no players of the time.
This soundtrack version by Nat King Cole spent 8 weeks as #1 in the Billboar
d chart in the USA in 1950.
In 1987, this was used as the theme of the British film Mona Lisa.
Nat's daughter Natalie Cole waited until after college to begin a singing ca
reer, and when she first started performing, "Mona Lisa" was the only Nat King C
ole song she included in her set. She found that performing the song was very em
otional, and while it got a very strong reaction from the crowd, it was too much
for her. She eventually dropped the song and started singing one of her father'
s more upbeat selections: "L-o-v-e."
Cole recorded this song in March, 1950 at the recording studios owned by Cap
itol Records on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Les Baxter played the arrangement
at the session, but didn't write it - a young arranger named Nelson Riddle did.
It was a while before Cole realized that Riddle wrote this arrangement, and the
one for his next hit, "Young Love." Riddle's orchestrations soon became the cho
ice for top artists at Capitol (notably Frank Sinatra), and in 1952 he did the a
rrangements on Cole's hit "Unforgettable."