The Wilhelm Scream

Podcast Transcript

Many filmmakers are known for small signatures that they always put inside their films.

Alfred Hitchcock always used himself in a cameo. George Lucas always found a way to integrate the number 1138. Quentin Tarrentio almost always mentions the fictional “Big Kahuna Burger.”

And Stan Lee, of course, has found his way into every Marvel Movie.

However, there is one film signature that is shared by a wide range of movie makers and has appeared in hundreds of films. You’ve probably come across it even if you didn’t realize it.

Learn more about the Wilhelm Scream, where it came from, and how it spread on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

In the course of doing this podcast over the last five years, I’ve covered many important topics. I’ve covered wars, empires, genocides, civilization-changing technologies, plagues, and scientific revolutions.

….this is not such an episode.

This episode is about as minor a subject as I think you could do an episode on, yet still have it be worth doing.

The entire episode is about one second of audio.

Whether you know it or not, you have almost certainly heard it. It is estimated to have appeared in over 400 films at least, and has become an iconic element of moviemaking over the last several decades.

I am, of course, talking about the Wilhelm Scream.

If you aren’t familiar with it, here it is:

<Insert Wilhelm Scream>

That’s it. That is the entire focus of this episode. Some of you probably know what it is and recognize it whenever you hear it.

If you don’t recognize it…well, you are going to now because by the end of this episode, you are going to have it burned into your head, and you’ll start hearing it everywhere.

You’re welcome.

<Insert Wilhelm Scream>

The scream was originally recorded in 1951 for the film Distant Drums, directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Gary Cooper. In the movie, the scream is used when a character is dragged underwater by an alligator in the Florida Everglades.

The sound effect was recorded during a session that produced multiple screams, and it was labeled as “man getting bit by an alligator” in the Warner Bros. sound effects library.

The actual voice actor who performed the scream can’t be proven definitively, though many believe it was Sheb Wooley, a character actor and singer who had a role in the film.

A Warner Bros. call sheet from the Distant Drums shoot listed actors who were scheduled to come in to record additional dialogue after the film was completed. The only person on the list that made sense was Sheb Wooley.

In the course of researching this episode, I couldn’t find a single other name that was proposed for the voice, so while the proof isn’t definitive, all signs point to Sheb Wooley.

His widow later said he used to joke about how well he could “scream and die” in Westerns.

Wooley had a solid career in Hollywood, landing lots of bit roles. He was a regular on the TV series Rawhide, played the assistant coach in the movie Hoosiers with Gene Hackman, appeared in High Noon, and had many bit roles in TV and film during the 1950s.

In the film Distant Drums, he had an uncredited role as Pvt. Jessup, the soldier who was dragged underwater by the alligator.

His biggest claim to fame, however, was the fact that in 1958 he released the comedy song “The Purple People Eater,” which, believe it or not, hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

Just to get even further off topic, but I’ll probably never have a chance to address this song again in an episode, the origin of the song comes from a bad children’s joke.

What has one eye, one horn, flies, and eats people? A one-eyed, one-horned, flying people-eater.

Getting even further off topic, the 1970s Minnesota Vikings were also known as the Purple People Eaters, which is apt, because they are also a bad joke.

Ok. Back to the scream….

<Insert Wilhelm Scream>

Movie studios, being businesses, seek to reduce their costs whenever possible, so the screams recorded for Distant Drums were put into an audio archive for Warner Bros. Studio.

Over the next twenty years, the scream was used in many films produced by Warner Bros., such as A Star Is Born, The Command, Them!, Land of the Pharaohs, Helen of Troy, Sergeant Rutledge, PT 109, The Green Berets, and The Wild Bunch.

In the early 1970s, a group of film students at the University of Southern California noticed that this scream was appearing in a lot of different films.

It became a running joke amongst the film students, and they dubbed it the “Wilhelm Scream” based on its appearance in the 1953 film The Charge at Feather River. In it, a minor character named Private Wilhelm screams after taking an arrow to the leg.

He used to be an adventurer like you before he took an arrow to the knee…..

The scream

Would probably have remained an inside joke except that one of the students, Ben Burtt, landed a position as the sound designer on a small science fiction film titled Star Wars.

While combing studio archives for Star Wars in the mid-1970s, Burtt found the old scream and dropped it into a moment where a Stormtrooper falls from a ledge. He liked the throwback texture and the private joke of using the same recognizable scream that his buddies back in film school had made fun of.

This began a tradition of him using it in all of the subsequent movies that he worked on as his personal calling card, many of which were high-profile.

The list includes

The Empire Strikes Back
The Return of the Jedi
The Indiana Jones
Willow
Gremlins
Anchorman
Die Hard with a Vengeance
Lethal Weapon 4
The Fifth Element

Ben Burtt became one of the most accomplished sound effects editors in Hollywood, and many others in the field began to study his films.

They noticed the exact same thing that Burtt and his film school contemporaries noticed back in the early 70s. The scream…

…seemed to be everywhere.

As other sound designers and filmmakers learned about Burtt’s running gag, they began incorporating the Wilhelm Scream into their own films as well.

It evolved from a personal Easter egg into an industry-wide inside joke. Directors like Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen Brothers began using it.

It began appearing in even more movies, including Toy Story, Reservoir Dogs, The Lord of the Rings, Transformers, and many, many, many more films.

With the rise of the internet and film fan culture, the Wilhelm Scream transitioned from an insider’s joke to public knowledge. Movie enthusiasts began actively listening for it, websites cataloged its appearances, and it became a pop culture phenomenon in its own right.

By the 2000s the Wilhelm Scream was widely recognized in film culture. The National Science and Media Museum in the United Kingdom noted its use in more than 400 films..

At this point, the sound had crossed into television, animation, and video games, which made the gag even more familiar to general audiences.

Eventually, the scream….

…became so well known that it began to distract from films.

In 2018, Lucasfilm’s supervising sound editor Matthew Wood said that Star Wars would stop using the Wilhelm. The Last Jedi quietly omitted it, and the series moved to a different signature scream, a way of signaling that its soundscape was evolving.

The choice did not end the Wilhelm scream’s use elsewhere, but it did pause the very tradition that had popularized it.

In the process of researching this episode, I came across several mentions from the sound editors of the recent Star Wars films who claimed that they have created a new scream that they have started using.

Supposedly, the voice behind this scream was none other than George Lucas himself, and it was supposedly recorded for his 1973 film American Graffiti.

They dubbed the new scream “The George.”

However, despite a great deal of searching on my part, I was unable to find anyone who has identified the scream or who has come forward with what it sounds like.

So, I’m throwing this out there. If anyone listening can find out what The George scream is, you would be greatly advancing the cause of scream science.

There was another twist to this story….

In 2023, preservation work at the USC School of Cinematic Arts surfaced the complete original recording session of the Wilhelm scream in high-quality form.

CalArts sound professor Craig Smith had been transferring and restoring the Sunset Editorial sound-effects library, a trove of 35 mm magnetic film elements donated to USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 1990.

He described how student engineers transferred those elements to ¼-inch tape in 1990, how the tapes later developed sticky-shed syndrome, and how he stabilized them by baking and then digitized and restored the tracks.

Among the reels was the complete original session for the now-famous scream that was recorded for Distant Drums in 1951. Smith decided the best way to keep these effects from disappearing was to make them broadly accessible.

Smith uploaded the Wilhelm session to the Freesound.org website in February 2023 with a Creative Commons 0 public-domain license, which explicitly allows free reuse even in commercial work.

The item’s notes identify it as the original “Man eaten by alligator” take.

If you are curious, and because it is in the public domain, here is the full recording of the scream takes from 1951. It’s only 30 seconds, and history is made in scream number four:

<Insert scream takes>

The Wilhelm Scream is a miniature history of Hollywood.

A one-off recording made for a swamp attack scene in 1951 became a studio library asset, then a running inside joke among sound editors, then an audience-spotted Easter egg, and finally a piece of film folklore that archiveists now preserve and share.

Its endurance rests on two simple facts. First, stock sounds were a practical necessity for decades, so this particular scream had many chances to reappear. Second, Burtt and his peers turned that practicality into something fun, which proved contagious.

That is how one second of audio from the guy who sang One Eyed One Horned, Flying Purple Eater became cinema’s most famous scream.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Today’s review comes from listener Christian Longwolf over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write:

Not all podcasts are created equal

In the early 21st century, one podcast arose to create a smarter and more advanced civilization. One that allowed listeners to build their knowledge and become smarter every day.

Learn more in today’s review of Everything Everywhere Daily.

This podcast covers broad and diverse topics to help listeners better understand history, science, and culture, and how they come together to shape the world we live in today.

It will surely inspire listeners to take on the “completionist quest,” but more on that later. Suffice to say, this podcast is quite addictive, in the most cognitively healthy way to be addicted to anything. And podcast addiction will certainly be a future review. To put it succinctly, you can turn any free moment of your day into a fascinating journey of knowledge.

I am also proud to report that I have finally completed my quest and have now established the Gainesville, FL chapter of the completist club. As the first in my town, I will donate a portion of my garage as the chapter club house, where IPAs and red wine will be served nightly.

Thanks, Christian! Congratulations on your completionist club membership. Glad to see that you are donating your garage space for the clubhouse. We need more people with that sort of gumption.

Hopefully, your chapter will soon have a curiosity of members.

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