Alva Review-Courier -

As we saw last week, Sheb Wooley was able to achieve a successful acting career with supporting roles in numerous westerns on television and in movie theaters.

Beginning in 1950, Wooley acted in many low-budget westerns with occasional roles in major films. His career peaked with a continuing role in “Rawhide” – a popular television series that ended in 1965.

Thereafter, Wooley acted only sporadically, choosing instead to concentrate on the music business. But there is one interesting footnote to his Hollywood experience that must be noted.

In 1951 Wooley had a small part in a western called “Distant Drums.” One scene in the film has soldiers wading through a swamp when an alligator bites a man and pulls him under water.

The soldier, of course, screams in agony. In wrapping up production on the movie, sound effects technicians had several cast members practice screams – for the man killed by the alligator as well as for other actions.

The screaming actors were doing nothing other than having fun and helping to get the film completed. Today, most Hollywood sound effects experts believe that Wooley voiced the scream used for the alligator victim. Wooley always claimed credit for it.

Two years later, in another western (“The Charge at Feather River”) in which Wooley did not act; a sound engineer needed a “canned” scream for a scene in which a soldier’s leg is wounded by an arrow launched, of course, by a Native American.

The sound man found the alligator scream from “Distant Drums” and used it in “The Charge at Feather River.” The character whose leg was pierced by the arrow was “Private Wilhelm.”

Consequently, the sound effect became known as the Wilhelm Scream. To date, it has been used in over 400 television shows and movies, including several of the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” series.

While the scream never earned Wooley any money, it definitely gave his acting career a unique measure of immortality. Next week, in Part 3 of this story, we will examine Sheb Wooley’s singing success.