This episode was written and produced by Kevin Edds.
For more than seventy years now, filmmakers have been using and reusing a particular scream. Without a doubt, this is Hollywood’s most famous sound effect. Many people even know it by name. But despite how widely-known this sound is, lots of people still don’t know its surprising origin story. To set the record straight, we’ve remixed one of our classic, early episodes. Featuring Steve Lee, sound designer, film historian, and creator of the Hollywood Sound Museum.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Noble by Steven Gutheinz
Short Signals by Steven Gutheinz
Saloma by Steven Gutheinz
Everest by Steven Gutheinz
Desert by Blake Ewing
Badlands by Walt Adams
Traversing by Steven Gutheinz
Moorpark by Steven Gutheinz
Park by Steven Gutheinz
Now You Know by The TVC
Decision by Steven Gutheinz
Hail the Underdog by UTAH
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View Transcript ▶︎
You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.
[music in]
In the film and TV industry, Sound Editors often use sound libraries to find the effects they need. Many of these recordings go back decades, and certain sounds end up getting used over and over.
For instance, here’s a recording you’ve probably heard called Two Cats Angrily Yowling During Cat Fight.
[sfx: Classic Cat Yowls]
These cat sounds have shown up in hundreds of movies and TV shows. For instance, they’re often used for The Simpsons’ cat Snowball.
Lisa: Well I don’t care what you say! She still loves us more! Don’t you Snowball? [yowls]
These cat sounds apparently come from an early 80s recording of two real angry cats. But some people think these sounds might have actually been performed by the legendary voice actor Frank Welker. Here’s Frank making cat noises on a variety show in the 1970s.
[clip: Rich Little show]
In fact, in some Simpsons episodes, Frank is specifically credited as the voice of Snowball and the SImpsons’ dog, Santa’s Little Helper.
[sfx: dog barks]
Mr. Burns: If that were a real Girl Scout, I’d’ve been bothered by now!
[music out]
There’s also a classic scream that you’ll probably recognize. The soundbite is called Man Lets Out Gut Wrenching Scream and Falls Into the Distance.
[sfx: Howie Scream]
That scream was recorded in the late 70s by an unknown voice artist. It was first used in a 1980 film called The Ninth Configuration. During a bar fight scene, a bad guy with a knife lunges through a window.
[clip: The Ninth Configuration]
In the mid 90s, the scream got a new burst of popularity thanks to an action movie called Broken Arrow. In that movie, there’s a character played by the football player turned actor Howie Long. In one scene, Howie’s character gets kicked out of a train which is traveling over a bridge. As he falls down the cliff, you hear this:
[clip: Broken Arrow]
Ever since then, this scream has been known as The Howie Scream.
[music in]
But when it comes to movie screams, there’s one scream to rule them all. And that was the subject of one of our classic, early episodes.
Recently, this scream got some news coverage. These articles said that the original recording session had been rediscovered, after being lost for decades. If only these reporters had been Twenty Thousand Hertz listeners, they could have heard this so-called lost recording years ago.
To set the record straight, I decided it was time to remix our original episode, and spruce it up a bit with a fresh coat of sonic paint. Because, as widely known as this sound is, many people still don’t know where it came from. So, let’s find out.
[music out]
[clip: Anchorman + Evil Dead 2]
[music in]
The two screams you just heard were from Ron Burgundy in Anchorman and Ash in Evil Dead 2. Movie screams seem like easy work, but they’re not. That’s why some of the best are so iconic.
You have scary ones, like Captain Quint from Jaws.
[clip: Jaws]
Or Janet Leigh from Psycho.
[clip: Psycho]
And the original Scream Queen, Fay Wray, from King Kong way back in 1933.
[clip: King Kong]
Then you’ve got non-horror screams, like Kevin from Home Alone feeling the burn of after shave.
Kevin: I can’t seem to find my toothbrush, so I’ll pick one up when I go out today. Other than that, I’m in good shape.
[screams]
And Marv the burglar from the same film when Kevin puts a tarantula on his face.
Marv: Harry, help me get up!
[screams]
[music out]
But the most famous scream is one you’ve heard, but maybe… never heard of, the Wilhelm Scream.
[music in]
Steve: Hi I'm Steve Lee, I'm a sound effects wrangler, a film historian, and I'm forming the Hollywood Sound Museum.
Steve: It's interesting how Wilhelm has sort of become this sort of, you know, go to sound effect that sort of represents a lot more than just the one sound. It's fascinating how many of these sounds are actually reused over and over and over.
[music out]
You may be thinking, What’s the Wilhelm Scream? If you think you’ve never heard it, it’s been used in movies such as Batman…
[clip: Batman]
Star Wars…
[clip: Star Wars]
Toy Story…
[clip: Toy Story]
Lord Of The Rings…
[clip: LotR]
Tropic Thunder…
[clip: Tropic Thunder]
Beauty And The Beast…
[clip: Beauty and the Beast]
Team America…
[clip: Team America]
Spaceballs…
[clip: Spaceballs]
Jurassic World…
[clip: Jurassic World]
300…
[clip: 300]
Cars…
[clip: Cars]
Fight Club…
[clip: Fight Club]
Indiana Jones…
[clip: Indiana Jones]
And this barely scratches the surface.
[music in]
Steve: When I was a kid growing up, I went to Disneyland. I lived in LA and I went to Disneyland, and I watched movies, and I recorded movies off the TV, and you know, studied the soundtrack. And I started to hear sound effects over and over. Wilhelm was one of them. But there are many other, too.
Steve: There was a dog bark, that is in The Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland… And, I remember hearing it again in Mary Poppins when I was watching that on TV once. And I'm going, "somebody must reuse these sound effects."
Steve: And that sort of was a very early realization. And that sort of lead the way for my research and fascination with how these sounds are collected, and reused, and cataloged.
[music out]
The Wilhelm Scream has been used in tons of movies, but where did it come from?
Steve: We've done some sort of back-tracking. Most of this done by Ben Burtt himself, who is the
Steve: Star Wars sound effects designer who started using this as sort of a personal sound signature.
[music in]
Steve: The name actually comes from what is probably the second film it was used in, which was Charge at Feather River, which was 1953 at Warner Brothers. Poor Private Wilhelm is at the end of this party going by on horses, and the leader yells back to him, to, you know, "Pick up your pace,” and he says, "Oh I'm just filling my pipe." And in that moment he gets an arrow in the leg and lets out the scream.
[music out]
[clip: Charge at Feather River Clip]
They must have liked the Wilhelm Scream a lot because they ended up using it two more times in the film, once when a soldier is killed.
[clip: Charge at Feather River]
And another for an American Indian warrior in battle.
[clip: Charge at Feather River]
The Charge at Feather River was the film that gave Wilhelm its name, but it was the second film it was used in. What was the first?
[music in]
Steve: It started at Warner Brothers. The first film it was in was a western called Distant Drums, a Gary Cooper western.
Distant Drums was released two years before The Charge At Feather River, in 1951.
Steve: And it had a scene where a man is walking across the Florida Everglades with other soldiers, and he's bitten and dragged underwater by an alligator. And they needed a scream for that.
[clip: Wilhelm Scream]
Steve: Ben found a memo in the Warner Brothers archives that said that several people came in to do sort of post vocals for the film. And we're pretty sure that the scream was recorded in that session.
[music out]
Steve: And one of the gentlemen on the list of people was a guy named Sheb Wooley… [clip: Sheb Wooley - Purple People Eater] Steve: Who is most famous for his pop song "Purple People Eater." Steve: But he was a character actor, and he was in a lot of these old westerns. [clip out] Steve: We're pretty sure that he's responsible for the scream. And many years later, I was able to put Ben Burtt in touch with Sheb's widow. Sheb Wooley died a few years ago. And she was delighted. And she actually remembered that Sheb used to talk about going in to do sessions like that, and screams, and things like that. So we're like 99% sure it's Sheb Wooley.
Sheb Wooley sounds like a fascinating guy: a singer, and on-screen actor, and a voice actor. But how was the Wilhelm Scream actually captured on tape?
Well, thanks to Steve, we’ve acquired the full length original recording of the session. It was recorded from a Warner Brothers soundstage in 1951, on the set of Distant Drums. Remember, Sheb is not actually in a river surrounded by alligators. He’s trying to create the sound of tremendous pain, agony, and fear, but from the safe surroundings of a film lot.
[music in]
Steve: The session starts out, you hear several people on the stage. We believe it was actually recorded on a filming sound stage, and not a recording stage, because you hear several people milling about. Steve: And then you hear someone slate through, and he says, "Man getting bit by an alligator, and he screams." And you hear a director like, shutting everyone up, and then he tells the guy, "Okay." Steve: And he asks for the first scream. And it's pretty good, it's like a quick scream, and he does another one…. And then he asks for a little direction. You know, I share the frustration with the director, and say "No that's not what I want, I want a real scream." Steve: And he’s getting closer and it’s still not quite, and then the director gives him something that motivates him to do the classic scream that we all recognize. And then the next two are very similar to that. And we've actually used these, all three of these last ones, as sort of the official Wilhelm.
If this obscure scream was first used back in 1951, how did it become so popular that it’s been used in so many movies since then? We’ll find out after this.
[music out]
MIDROLL
[music in]
We’re now pretty sure that Sheb Wooley was the voice behind the Wilhelm Scream and know how it was recorded… But how did this spread like wildfire and become the most iconic movie scream in history?
[music out]
Steve: Ben Burtt went to college with two guys, Rick Mitchell, and Richard Anderson. Richard and Ben won an Oscar for Raiders of the Lost Ark together, for sound effects.
[music in]
Steve: They were sort of doing this as a little joke in film school, at USC, using this scream that they remembered from all these old westerns. And they started using it in their short films at USC, and when they went pro, they started sneaking it into the films that they did for real. Real, feature films.
For decades, this was a below the radar thing that only sound designers knew about. Maybe someone in the industry who used the Wilhelm Scream themselves might recognize it in another film, but it wasn’t really a thing.
Steve: Warner Brothers used it quite a bit. It was in their library. And Sound Editors could just pull it and use it. And up until the early seventies it was still getting used out of Warner Brothers exclusively. And Ben tracked it down when he was doing research for Star Wars. He said, "Oh I gotta use this. This is a favorite of mine." He tracked down the master, and he started using it in all the Star Wars films...
[music out]
[clip: Montage of Star Wars Wilhelm Screams]
Steve: All the Indiana Jones films.
[clip: Montage of Indiana Jones Wilhelm Screams]
Steve: And that's when I started to really take notice and started maintaining a list of all, as best I could, I mean there are hundreds of films.
[music in]
Steve: When I started working professionally in the mid to late eighties, I started sort of pushing Wilhelm, and we used it in quite a few films. And, I think I sort of overdid it. Because, it really got noticed by a lot of people.
Ben Burtt started this and Steve kind of took the baton and ran with it.
Steve: He was just doing it as a little in-joke and then I sort of pushed the envelope a little in the late eighties and early nineties. We used it in everything. I even got it in a Goofy movie. I was the sound designer of a Goofy movie, and it has absolutely no business being in a Goofy movie.
[music out]
[clip: Goofy Movie]
And like many things, when the internet came along, everything changed.
Steve: And then when I published the list online, on a movie history website I run, I published this list and sort of the definitive history of Wilhelm. And that's pretty much when the dam broke.
While Ben introduced the Wilhelm Scream to people like George Lucas, it sounds like Steve has done his fair share. I wondered if there’s a good story about any directors he brought into the Wilhelm Club.
Steve: We were very lucky at our sound shop. We worked with a lot of directors over and over, who kept coming back, and some first timers that went on to be really great and do some amazing things.
[music in]
Steve: One of them is a guy, I'm sure you've heard of, named Quentin Tarantino. We did his first film, Reservoir Dogs, and there are a couple Wilhelms in that one.
[clip: Reservoir Dogs]
Steve: And I will never forget. We cut it in, and then when we were dubbing the film, we pointed it out to him and told him the history. We actually, we schooled him on it. And he loved it. Quentin's a huge movie fan, and just eats that stuff up.
Steve: And I had a little tiny black and white TV in my office, and I turned it on, and lo and behold Distant Drums is on the Saturday afternoon film. So I ducked my head into the dub stage and said, "Hey guys, you remember I told you about that scream, well the movie's on right now, that it was recorded!" And Quentin went nuts. "Oh my God, really? Really? Do you know when it's coming up? Can you tell us when it's coming up?" …”Yeah, I could probably give you five minutes notice.” ..."Okay, do that, and we'll take a break!"
Steve: And sure enough, I did, and I called them in, and there was like, ten guys in my little office. And as soon as it came on, Quentin was screaming, "That's in my movie!".
But Quentin Tarantino isn’t the only modern director with a soft spot for Wilhelm.
Steve: Peter Jackson was another one. When it was in The Two Towers, he apparently told the mixers to, “Turn it up, make it louder!”
The Wilhelm Scream is in all three Lord of the Rings movies, and all three Hobbit movies.
[music out]
Like many movie styles or special effects, they eventually fade out. So has interest in using the Wilhelm Scream started to die down?
[music in]
Steve: It's still used all the time. It's in commercials. I'll turn on the TV and I'll hear it in an Exxon commercial or something.
Steve: A week does not go by where I don't get an email, or a message from someone saying, "I heard it in such and such," or "Hey we're on a dub stage in Australia putting it in some little movie" or you know "Hey, it's gonna be in a Twix commercial! It's gonna start airing in December!" You know, that kind of thing.
Steve: You know, kids coming out of film school are eager to use it too, there's a scene in the Judy Garland "Star is Born" where it's actually completely in the clear and you can notch out the classic, take number four, Wilhelm. And people are stealing it out of that to use in their student films, and things like that. It's pretty crazy.
Steve: Ben accused me of starting a cult, and I'd have to agree with him.
So why does the movie industry continue to use the Wilhelm Scream? Is it cliché? Or cache?
Maybe it's a connector, a through-line, a way to be a link in the chain of movie history, from 1951 to today—to share a common bond with directors like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, and Quentin Tarrantino.
Steve: It's sort of a way of communicating with others in our craft. It's like a way of saying “Hi.” One of my dear friends, another Oscar winner, Dave Stone, he equated it to dogs on a fire hydrant. And other dogs would come by and "Oh yeah, Sam's been here."
Steve: We put it in there to see if others of our kind get noticed. And I for sure, if I hear it in a movie that I wasn't aware it was in, I'll wait and look at the credits more closely, and say, "Oh yeah, so and so did this! Yeah, that dirty dog, he snuck it in!”
[music out]
[music in]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound. Find out more at Defacto Sound dot com.
This episode was produced and edited by Kevin Edds. It was story edited by Casey Emmerling, with help from Grace East. It was sound designed and mixed by Nick Spradlin and Joel Boyter.
A huge thanks to film historian and sound effects archivist Steve Lee who’s heading up the Hollywood Sound Museum project. The museum will be a destination for fans, students, scholars, and professionals - where you’ll be able to discover the art of creating sound for film, TV, and other media through exhibits and educational programs. Please help get this great cause off the ground by visiting hollywoodsoundmuseum.org.
I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks for listening.
[music out]
