Written in 1941 for Sun Valley Serenade, the movie debut of Big Band leader Glenn Miller, “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” became a top-selling pop hit during the early years of World War II, spent nine weeks at No. 1 on the pop charts, and has been revived frequently. Songwriter Harry Warren later said, “I never went near the South, just wrote a cheerful, folksy tune.” Warren and his co-writer, Mack Gordon, were both prolific: Warren wrote songs including “I Only Have Eyes for You,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” and later “That's Amore” for Dean Martin, with his songs appearing in 300 movies, while Warren and Gordon also co-wrote “At Last,” initially recorded by Miller and later a pop and R&B standard. Gordon wrote “I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo,” “The More I See You,” “You'll Never Know,” and hundreds more songs, earning nine Oscar nominations for his movie work, including one for “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” Miller recorded the song for RCA Victor on May 7, 1941. As record sales rebounded after the Great Depression, RCA Victor sales manager W. Wallace Early appeared on Miller's radio show on Feb. 10, 1942, and announced that the song had sold more than 1.2 million copies, then presented Miller with a framed gold-plated stamper, making it the first gold record. The song remained the best known among many songs about Chattanooga, and its enduring appeal helped inspire local investors to buy the city's former Terminal Station after Southern Railway closed it in 1970 and reopen it on April 11, 1973, as a hotel and entertainment complex that became a leading visitor attraction after renovation. In 1996, Miller's recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and his original gold-plated record is displayed at the Glenn Miller Archive at the University of Colorado Boulder.