I'll Walk Alone

One of the defining songs of the wartime home front, written for the 1944 film Follow the Boys and introduced by Dinah Shore. The song earned Cahn and Styne an Academy Award nomination and became one of the biggest hits of the war years — a soldier’s sweetheart pledging faithful devotion until he returns.

Dinah Shore, Martha Tilton, and Mary Martin all had simultaneous hit recordings, a measure of how deeply the lyric resonated with a nation of separated families and lovers.