One sound effect that has found a following with many sound editors and observant movie fans is a distinctive scream named Wilhelm.

In 1951, the Warner Brothers film "Distant Drums" directed by Raoul Walsh starred Gary Cooper as Captain Quincy Wyatt, who leads a group of soldiers to stop some Seminole Indians from threatening settlers in early 19th Century Florida. During a scene in which the soldiers are wading through a swamp in the everglades, one of them is bitten and dragged underwater by an alligator.

As is usually the case with the making of a movie, the scream for that character was recorded later. Six short pained screams were recorded in a single take, which was slated "man getting bit by an alligator, and he screams." The fifth scream was used for the soldier - but the 4th, 5th, and 6th screams recorded in the session were also used earlier in the film when three Indians are shot, one after another, during a raid on a fort.

After "Distant Drums," the recording was archived into the studio's sound effects library, and was re-used in many Warner Brothers productions.

In "The Charge at Feather River" (1953), the scream is heard when a soldier named Pvt. Wilhelm (played by Ralph Brooke) gets shot in the leg by an arrow. Originally released in 3-D, the film used the "Distant Drums" scream recording two other times as well.

Up until the mid-70's, the scream recording was used exclusively in Warner Brothers productions, including "Them!" (1954), "Land of the Pharaohs" (1955), "The Sea Chase" (1955), "Sergeant Rutledge" (1960), "PT-109" (1963) and "The Green Berets (1968).

In "A Star is Born" (1954), the scream is heard twice - one of the times because a scene with the scream in "Charge at Feather River" is playing in a screening room.

One person who noticed the same distinctive scream reoccurring in so many movies was sound effects fan Ben Burtt. Ben and his friends in the cinema department at USC, Rick Mitchell and Richard Anderson, noticed that a scream was popping up in a lot of movies. One of the films they made together, a swashbuckler parody "The Scarlet Blade" (1974) included the scream - which they borrowed off another film's audio track.

A few years later, when Ben Burtt was hired to create sound effects for Star Wars (1977), he had an opportunity to do research at the sound departments of several movie studios. While looking for sound elements to use in the space adventure at Warner Brothers, he found the original "Distant Drums" scream - which he named "Wilhelm" after the character that let out the scream in "Charge at Feather River."

Ben adopted the scream as a kind of personal sound signature, and included it in all the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" films, and many of the other films he has worked on including "More American Graffiti" (1979) and "Willow" (1988).

Ben's friend Richard Anderson also continued the tradition. Both Anderson and Burtt worked on "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), and Richard used the screams in the film's truck chase - one of the sequences he cut sounds for himself.

Anderson also used it in many of the films he supervised sound editing for, including "Poltergeist" (1982), "Batman Returns" (1992), "Planet of the Apes" (2001), "Agent Cody Banks" (2003), and "Madagascar" (2005).

Because of Ben Burtt, the Wilhelm has lived in the sound library at Skywalker Sound. Other colleagues there including Gary Rydstrom and Chris Boyes have used it in such films as "Toy Story" (1995), "Hercules" (1997) and "Pirates of the Caribbean" (2003).

Richard Anderson and his company, Weddington Productions (now a part of Technicolor Sound Services), archived the scream into his library as well. Editors there including Mark Mangini, David Whittaker, Steve Lee and George Simpson have used it in "Beauty and the Beast" (1991), "Aladdin" (1992), "A Goofy Movie" (1995), "The Fifth Element" (1997), “The Majestic” (2001), “Just Visiting” (2001), “A Man Apart” (2003), and "Tears of the Sun" (2003).

Growing in familiarity with fellow sound editors, especially with its use in the hugely successful "Star Wars" series, the Wilhelm Scream has become a favorite with a few sound editors outside of Skywalker and Weddington. Although it has never been available in any commercial sound effects library, the recording has made it around the sound community through editors who appreciate its history.

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After finishing the last "Star Wars" film and beginning work at Pixar, Ben Burtt has announced he will no longer be using the Wilhelm. This is surely an end of an era for the scream, but there is no indication that it will be silenced anytime soon. The Wilhelm Scream continues to be heard in new films every year.