"Paper Doll" was a hit song for the Mills Brothers. In the United States it would be the Billboard Hot 100 number one hit from November 6, 1943 to January 22, 1944. The success of the song represented something of a revival for the group, after a few years of declining sales.
The song has been named as one of the Songs of the Century. It appeared in the films The Execution of Private Slovik and The Majestic and in the British television miniseries The Singing Detective. Four lines of it are sung by Rodolfo in the first act of William Bolcom's operatic adaptation of Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge.
The song was written in 1915 by Johnny S. Black, whose greatest success would come with his song "Dardanella," which sold 5,000,000 copies in a recording by bandleader Ben Selvin in 1920, and a further 2,000,000 copies of sheet music. Black died in 1936, six years before his second greatest success, "Paper Doll," swept the country.
