What do you think of this fact?
There is a scream you have almost certainly heard, probably more than once. It sounds like a man yelping in sheer surprise, and it pops up in blockbusters, cartoons and video games. Film nerds call it the Wilhelm scream.
Born in a swamp in 1951
The sound first appeared in the Warner Bros. western „Distant Drums“ from 1951, in a swamp scene where a soldier gets dragged under the water by an alligator. According to Mental Floss, the scream was recorded later in a sound booth: six screams in one take, and the fifth became the famous one.
After that, Warner Bros. simply kept it in its sound library and reused it, for example in „Springfield Rifle“ (1952). In „The Charge at Feather River“ from 1953 it belonged to a minor character called Private Wilhelm. That is where the name comes from, even though Wilhelm was never the first.
How a film student made it famous
In the 1970s, USC film student Ben Burtt and his friend Richard L. Anderson noticed the same yell turning up again and again and gave it its name. Then Burtt became the sound designer of „Star Wars“. He slipped the scream in when a Stormtrooper falls off a ledge, and he used it in the first four Indiana Jones films too.
From there it spread like an inside joke. Mental Floss lists „Toy Story“, „Titanic“, „The Lord of the Rings“ and „Pirates of the Caribbean“ among its appearances. The National Science and Media Museum counts more than 400 films and TV programmes, and it even turns up in some video games.
Bonus fact: The most likely voice is actor and singer Sheb Wooley, who had an uncredited role in „Distant Drums“ and also recorded the novelty hit „The Purple People Eater“. He never confirmed it himself, but his widow told Burtt he was known on set for doing screams.
The voice without a credit
The whole thing is a bit absurd: one of the most famous sounds in cinema history still has no official performer. A man may have yelled for a few seconds in a recording booth in the early 1950s, and directors are still adding him to films more than 70 years later.
Some actors get an Oscar. Sheb Wooley probably got the longest-running cameo in Hollywood.