The Sheb Wooley Centennial

If Shelby “Sheb” Wooley (1921-2003) had made it to Hollywood a decade earlier he might have realized his fond hope of becoming a singing cowboy in the movies. The fad for that was fading by the 1950s however, though he did realize his dreams piecemeal: he was definitely a movie cowboy, and he was also a hit recording artist.

Wooley’s best known screen credit was as a regular on the tv series Rawhide (1959-1965) with Clint Eastwood. His big screen debut was in Rocky Mountain (1950) with Errol Flynn. He played Custer in Bugles in the Afternoon (1952) and had roles (usually as henchmen) in such classics as High Noon (1952), Johnny Guitar (1954), Man Without a Star (1955), Giant (1955), Terror in a Texas Town (1958) and The War Wagon (1967), and tv shows like The Adventures of Kit Carson, The Lone Ranger,Cheyenne, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin,Tales of Wells Fargo, Death Valley Days, et al.

But none of these performances have proved to be as enduring as his performance on his one hit song:

That’s right. Sheb Wooley was the artist behind the novelty song, “The Purple People Eater”, which went all the way to #1 on the pop charts in 1958. Sure it did! It was the height of the flying saucer craze! Wooley had been playing country music ever since he was a teenager in his native Oklahoma. His cousin was married to Roger Miller. Needless to say, the success of this tune altered both his music and his screen careers. He turned out many more novelty songs, some of them recorded under the name “Ben Colder”. (Get it? “Ben Colder”? It had to do with his release of a song called “Don’t Go Near the Eskimos”.) In the wake of “Purple People Eater” he also began to appear frequently on variety programs like The Ed Sullivan Show, Juke Box Jury, The Jimmy Dean Show, Kraft Music Hall, and inevitably Hee Haw.

His acting working became far less frequent, but he did appear in some significant later films, including Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Silverado (1985), and Hoosiers (1986) with Gene Hackman, Dennis Hopper, and Barbara Hershey. Wooley was fourth billed in that one as the school principal Cletus. In 1988, The Purple People Eater was adapted into a film — with the unbelievable cast of Ned Beatty,Shelley Winters, Peggy Lipton, and Neal Patrick Harris!

Yet none of these projects has gotten more play than one of Wooley’s earliest and most unusual screen credits. In the early days, he lent his voice to the recording of sound effects. One of them, known as “The Wilhelm Scream” has achieved a fame of its own. This high pitched scream, ideal for a character getting swallowed by an alligator or thrown off a roof, was recorded for the 1951 Gary Cooper western Distant Drums and has been used by Hollywood film makers in over 200 movies.

For more about show business historyconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.