The Original 'Wilhelm Scream' Was Found, And It's A Call For Better Sound Effect Preservation

The "Wilhelm scream" is arguably the most recognizable stock sound effect in the history of film and television, having been used in everything from mega-franchises like "Star Wars," "Indiana Jones" and "Die Hard,' to beloved TV shows from "X-Files" to "SpongeBob SquarePants" to "Game of Thrones" and beyond.

If the mere mention of its name doesn't immediately make the sound play in your head, you may recognize it from this scene in the movie that made it popular, 1977's "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope," when the effect is used for a stormtrooper that falls off a ledge after Luke Skywalker shoots him with a blaster round.

The scream that's been used in more than 400 films is finding new life this year after California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) Professor Craig Smith discovered the Wilhelm's original recording session while preserving a collection of 35-millimeter sound films he got from USC's Cinematic Arts Library.

Here it is, you'll hear the official scream at the :27 second mark:

The yell heard 'round the theater

Smith says he makes experimental films in his spare time, and in 2016 he was working on a 1940s-era Western for which he needed sound effects. But modern sound effects, he says, don't sound the same as effects from that time period, so he started seeking out local archives that might have them. In discussions with USC's film archive, he was offered boxes of old sound effect tapes that had been donated to them. After listening to them, it was clear to him that these sound effects were unique, and needed to be preserved.

"I started transferring it myself. I was digitizing [and] cleaning them up a little," Smith told LAist host Larry Mantle on our daily news show AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM. "Then I decided I [did not] want these to disappear. The only way to do that is to spread it all over the place and try to make it as available as possible."

Among the effects he came across? The original recording session of the Wilhelm scream, which he posted to the online sound database Freesound.org and the Internet Archive under a Creative Commons license.

Sweet screams are made of this

Smith says the scream was originally recorded for use in the the 1951 film "Distant Drums" in this scene where a man is bitten by an alligator. Smith says the sound effect's original title was, appropriately, "man bitten by alligators, short screams."

There is no official documentation to confirm it, but it's widely believed across the film and sound community that the voice of the Wilhelm scream is likely that of 1950s singer/songwriter and actor Sheb Wooley, best known for his novelty song, "The Purple People Eater."

"It's pretty certain. There's not a piece of paper that actually says that but Sheb Wooley was in [Distant Drums] and it's known that he was contracted to do some dialogue replacement and voice sounds for the film," Smith noted.

After its first use, the sound was archived and used several times over the next two decades in Warner Bros. films like 1954's "A Star is Born," 1960's "Sergeant Rutledge" and 1968's "The Green Berets."

The name "Wilhelm scream," however, wouldn't be coined until the 1970s, when sound designer Ben Burtt came upon the effect while at Warner Bros. sound department doing research for a little film that was then just called "Star Wars." Burtt instantly recognized the effect as one he'd heard in several movies, and called it the "Wilhelm" as a nod to Private Wilhelm, a character in the 1953 film "The Charge at Feather River" for whom the effect is used after he's shot in the leg with an arrow.

Burtt included the scream in "Star Wars," which went on to be an international phenomenon and cash cow franchise, and he made it a calling card that he used in many subsequent films he worked on, including both in both "Return of the Jedi" and "Empire Strikes Back" as well as the "Indiana Jones" movies.

Soon enough, people started to notice the effect showing up over and over again in film, and today the Wilhelm has become somewhat of a running joke among film aficionados and in communities of sound designers.

SOS: Save our sounds

Through the retrieval of sounds like the "Wilhelm scream," Smith says he hopes to spur greater interest in archiving this specific piece of history aside from the songs or films that use effects. This work even gave him an opportunity to speak at the Library of Congress during a conference put together by the Audio Engineering Society.

"What I was trying to do is convince the archives of the world that they're dropping the ball here. They're archiving images and voices [but] not these other sounds that are [also] an incredibly important part of film history," Smith said. "Sound effects are a real easy way to create emotion. I think they have as much power as music does, and if we let these disappear, they can't be used anymore."

Listen to the conversation