In High Noon Sheb Wooley plays Ben Miller, one of the three gunslingers who rides into town at the start of the film.

While he had a modest career as a character actor and went on to a recurring role on TV’s Rawhide, his voice has appeared in over 400 motion pictures.

Wolley appeared in the 1951 film Distant Drums where his character let out a scream so iconic that Warner Brothers added it to its stock sound library. Later on in 1953 that scream was used in The Charge at Feather River when a character named Private Wilhelm gets shot in the thigh with an arrow.

Somewhere along the line George Lucas noticed that scream, and he ended up using it in all the Stars Wars and Indiana Jones pictures. Because of its use by the Private Wilhelm character, it became known as the “Wilhelm Scream”.

As of this writing, it has been used in over 400 feature films.

Here it is:

Yep, that’s Sheb Wooley’s scream.

But that’s not all.

Sheb was also a recording artist, so to speak.

In 1958 after David Seville had success with his hit single “Witch Doctor”, which used tape manipulation, Sheb figured he could do something similar, so he released “The Purple People Eater”, which climbed to number one on the charts. I remember both of those novelty songs.

Here he is on The Ed Sullivan Show: