What Do “Hoosiers,” “The Purple People Eater” and “Star Wars” Have in Common?

Sheb WooleySheb Wooley, who is famous for writing and recording his 1958 chart-topping song “Purple People Eater” and for much more, was born April 10 in 1921.  His website captures the range of Wooley’s talents by saying he has been a “cowhand, rodeo rider, country and western singer, Hollywood actor, writer, and comedian.”

Over many decades Wooley appeared in classic films like High Noon (1952) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). And he was on TV’s Rawhide.

Wooley in Hoosiers

I was most surprised to discover that I already knew the singer of “Purple People Eater” as an actor for his role in Hoosiers (1986), a movie I have seen many times. In Hoosiers, Wooley played Cletus, the school’s principal who hires Norman Dale, played by Gene Hackman.

Later in Hoosiers, Cletus (Wooley) helps Dale as an assistant coach before Cletus’s health prevents him from continuing.  Then, Dale recruits Shooter (Dennis Hopper) to take Cletus’s place.

There was not a good scene with Wooley available on YouTube, but you can catch a little bit of him sitting on the bench in a suit with Gene Hackman (around the 30-second mark).

“Purple People Eater”

Below is Sheb Wooley in June 1958 singing about the “Purple People Eater,” who ate people but came to earth because “I wanna get a job in a rock ‘n roll band.” The song got its inspiration when Wooley heard a joke from a neighborhood kid.

The song “Purple People Eater” later inspired a 1988 movie of the same name. Of course, the film also had a role for Wooley.

Like most depictions of the song’s subject, the movie showed the monster as being purple.  But the song’s lyrics reveal that purple is the color of the people that the monster likes to eat, not the color of the creature: “I said Mr. Purple People Eater, what’s your line / He said it’s eatin’ purple people and it sure is fine.” Check out Wooley singing his hit song.

Wooley also wrote the Hee Haw theme (“Hee-hee, hee-haw-haw . . “).  And he often appeared on the country music-comedy show too.

For his acting roles in Westerns, check out this post on some of his classic movie lines.  Below is a short bio film about Wooley and his diverse talents.

Wooley and “The Wilhelm Scream”

Finally, Wooley’s voice possibly may be heard in many more classic films, including Star Wars. This connection and “The Wilhelm Scream” takes some explaining. . . .

Wooley’s connection to more than a hundred other films goes back to the early 1950s. Wooley played Private Wilhelm in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River. In a scene where Wilhelm is shot, he lets out a scream that has been used as stock scream footage in numerous films.

The scream has become known as “The Wilhelm Scream,” although Wikipedia reports that the scream had actually appeared in an earlier movie, Distant Drums (1951). Wooley played an uncredited role (Private Jessup) in Distant Drums, and he is listed as a voice extra for that film.

Thus, Wooley “is considered by many to be the most likely voice actor” for the scream, according to various sources, including Wooley’s website. The scream is so well-known that sometimes filmmakers add it because they think it is funny.

If it is correct that the scream originally came from Wooley, he has indirectly appeared in numerous movies.  The films cross a broad spectrum, including Them! (1954), Star Wars (1977), Return of the Jedi (1983), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Batman Returns (1992), Reservoir Dogs (1992), and Toy Story (1995).  This video collage collects a number of uses of the Wilhelm Scream, beginning with Wooley’s famous scream in The Charge at Feather River.

Wooley passed away on September 16, 2003, but his humor, his movies, and his other work lives on. And his scream will probably continue to appear in more new movies to the delight of filmmakers and audience members alike.

Photo of Wooley via public domain.

What is your favorite part of Wooley’s diverse career? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • Visiting the Hickory of “Hoosiers” Today
  • NBA Finals: Take the Hoosiers Quiz
  • Senator Robert Byrd Played Fiddle On Hee Haw
  • Movie Tributes on “The Simpsons”
  • The Star Wars Holiday Special 1978
  • Weird Al Summarizes “The Phantom Menace”
  • (Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    Visiting the Hickory of “Hoosiers” Today

    hoosiers revisited
    One of my favorite movies of all time is Hoosiers (1986), so I really liked this Hoosiers Revisited video by Michael Watson that tracks down the location of many scenes from the movie to show what the locales look like today. The video does a cool job of blending movie scenes with the new shots. And every time I hear the theme music by Jerry Goldsmith it makes me want to run home and put in my Hoosiers DVD.

    Hoosiers, which starred Gene Hackman and was directed by David Anspaugh, is set in the fictional town of Hickory, Indiana. While the story is based on the Milan High School basketball team that won the 1954 state championship, the filmmakers used the town of New Richmond, Indiana for many of the scenes in the movie. But some of the scenes are from other towns, such as the white barn at the beginning of the film, which is in Sheridan, Indiana.

    If you want to test how much you know about Hoosiers, check out our Hoosiers trivia quiz.

    What is your favorite scene in Hoosiers? Leave your two cents in the comments.

  • NBA Finals: Take the Hoosiers Quiz
  • What Do “Hoosiers,” “The Purple People Eater” and “Star Wars” Have in Common?
  • What’s the Deal With the Ending of Wyatt Earp?
  • (Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)

    What’s the Deal With the Ending of Wyatt Earp?

    On July 7 in 1900, Warren Earp — the youngest of the Earp brothers — was killed in a saloon in Wilcox, Arizona. Warren’s most famous brother, Wyatt Earp, lived until 1929. On the day he died, Warren was drinking and confronting other customers when John Boyett killed him in a gunfight. In a later trial, Boyett was found not guilty because he was acting in self-defense.

    Warren Earp did not participate in the famous 1881 gunfight at OK Corral with his brothers and Doc Holliday.  But he was in the town at the time. And later he helped Wyatt with the revenge killings after the gunfight.  All of those events surrounding the gunfight are portrayed in the movie Wyatt Earp (1994), a decent movie with an odd ending.

    The Ending of “Wyatt Earp” . . . on a Ship?
    “You ended a movie about me with a luxury cruise?”

    Wyatt Earp is an enjoyable movie and in some ways superior to the more popular Tombstone from the same year.  But there is one major problem with it. The movie has a poor ending. Had director Lawrence Kasden given the movie a memorable ending, the movie would be more highly regarded than it is. (Spoiler Alert: This entry discusses the film’s ending, although it is not a twist or surprise ending.)

    In Wyatt Earp, the movie follows Earp’s life from his time as a child to adulthood.  The film, of course, focuses largely on Earp’s western exploits.  And much of the movie centers on Earp’s time in Tombstone, Arizona. It is in Tombstone where Earp and his brothers participated in the Gunfight at OK Corral.

    The movie provides a realistic portrayal of that famous fight.  Then, the movie shows subsequent events and the anger among the survivors. As the movie nears the end, we see Kevin Costner’s Earp exacting revenge on other characters who participated in the Tombstone gunfight.

    Then, the movie cuts to many years in the future.  Earp and his wife Josie Marcus are on a ship near Alaska.

    They are approached by a young man who recounts a story, by aid of a flashback, of how Earp saved his uncle, Tommy “Behind the Deuce” O’Rourke (based on real-life Michael “Johnny-Behind-the Deuce” O’Rourke). Tommy’s nephew describes how Earp had intervened to protect Tommy from an angry mob many years earlier in Tombstone.

    Then, after Tommy’s nephew leaves, Earp says to Josie, “Some say it did not happen that way.” She responds to the effect, “Don’t worry Wyatt, it happened that way.” End of movie.

    The video below includes most of the movie’s conclusion, although it omits the comments by Wyatt and Josie at the end of the scene.

    Why the Ending of “Wyatt Earp” Does not Work

    This coda to the movie does not work for a number of reasons.  First, the scene includes a distracting flashback after a short jump to the future.

    We are thrown into a big jump in the future, which could work if the future showed us something meaningful about the movie we have been watching for three-plus hours. But the purpose of this flash-forward is to show a flashback to Earp’s lawman days — a time period the movie already covered.

    Further, the ship ending — especially along with the flashback — makes it appear that the Tommy-Behind-the-Deuce character has some big significance for summarizing Earp’s life.  But what happened with Tommy does not really seem that significant. It is not any more important than the rest of the movie that already focused on Earp’s lawman.  But by ending with a discussion of the flashback, the movie makes the viewer think they should see something important that just is not there.

    On the IMDb website, one astute viewer notes that earlier in the movie Josie had mentioned having heard the Tommy-Behind-the-Deuce story when she first met Wyatt. But, even assuming viewers will remember one passing mention of Tommy early in the three-hour movie, viewers may not remember at the end.  And even if they remember and make the connection at the end, it is still confusing about why the movie ends on the Tommy-Behind-the-Deuce note.

    What Was the Director Thinking?

    There does not seem to be much discussion of the ending on the web.  But there are a few brief critiques (“muddled,” “neutered climax,” etc.).  And Roger Ebert calls the ending sequence “pointless.”

    One might concede there is an argument for what Director Lawrence Kasden was trying to accomplish. The scene does reflect on the myth of the Western and how events may be remembered differently than how they really happened.

    But without a significant connection to the rest of the movie, the coda is confusing and does not work as effectively as the way the same theme was explored in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. I had hoped the Extended Two-Disc Special Edition would add more to explain the confusing ending, but unfortunately nothing was added that affects the end.

    The flashback does show Earp as a pure hero.  When we watch Earp in the real-time of the movie, we see many flaws in the man.  But when we see him in the memory, Earp does his job as a lawman perfectly.  So, perhaps Kasden wanted viewers to see that contrast to show how Earp became remembered as a hero and his flaws forgotten in that memory.

    That interpretation of the ending makes some sense.  But if that interpretation was Kasden’s goal, the contrast should have been clearer for the viewer disoriented by the sudden jump to the future on a boat.  Maybe the scene needed to be longer.

    Perhaps Kasden was trying to invoke another famous movie scene from To Kill a Mockingbird.  In that movie, lawyer Atticus Finch protected a man from a lynch mob, and the viewer saw him as a courageous hero.

    That all being said, with the exception of the ending, Director Lawrence Kasden created a very good Western epic biopic with Wyatt Earp.  The film does a decent job of trying to convey much of a long adventurous life.

    I even prefer Wyatt Earp to the less realistic Tombstone.  Kevin Costner does a good job in the lead role, portraying the hero as a dark and troubled character. And Dennis Quaid gives one of his best performances ever as Doc Holliday. One of the best things about both Wyatt Earp and Tombstone are the portrayals of Doc Holiday by Quaid and Val Kilmer, respectively.

    If you do not mind the awkward ending and the length of the film, and if you appreciate character-studies and Westerns, you might want to spend a lazy weekend afternoon watching Wyatt Earp.


    This trailer has a better ending than the movie, withe Gene Hackman’s lines summarizing the theme of the movie better than the lines that actually ended the movie.

    Photo via.

    Disagree? Have another movie with a stupid ending? Post a comment.

  • Rating the Lonesome Dove Series, Part 1: The Prequels
  • “Horizon: An American Saga” Trailer
  • A Dark Humorless Somewhat Revisionist Western: “Hostiles” (Short Review)
  • “Westworld” is Coming to HBO
  • “McFarland, USA” and Cross-Country Coach Costner
  • Moral Ambiguity and “Lawman” (Missed Movies)
  • (Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)

    NBA Finals: Take the Hoosiers Quiz

    Hoosiers

    In honor of the NBA finals, Chimesfreedom presents a quiz about one of the greatest basketball movies of all time, Hoosiers. Since our previous Baseball Movie Quote Quiz, we gained the technology to make a quiz more reader-friendly, so we hope you enjoy these twelve questions to test your Hoosiers knowledge.

    Your score and the answers, as well as explanations for some of the answers, appear at the end.

    1. What is the name of the small town in Indiana that is featured in the movie Hoosiers?





    2. The team that the small-town school plays in the state finals is from what town?





    3. Hoosiers was written by Angelo Pizzo and was directed by David Anspaugh. On what other sports movie did the two work together?





    4. What is the name of Gene Hackman's character in Hoosiers?





    5. In what year was the movie Hoosiers released?





    6. Hoosiers is loosely based on the real-life 1954 Indiana state champions. What was the name of the high school of that real-life championship team?





    7. Which character made the final shot to win the championship game?





    8. What was the name of Barbara Hershey's character?





    9. Hoosiers received only two Academy Award nominations, including one for Jerry Goldsmith for Best Original Score. Who is the actor who received the other Oscar nomination?





    10. What actor plays the son of Gene Hackman's character in the sequel, Hoosiers II: Senior Year?





    11. What device does Gene Hackman's character use to show his team that the basketball court for the championship is "the same as back home"?





    12. Which player is told by his coach, "God wants you on the floor"?









    How did you do? Were you surprised by any of the answers? Leave a comment.

  • Visiting the Hickory of “Hoosiers” Today
  • What Do “Hoosiers,” “The Purple People Eater” and “Star Wars” Have in Common?
  • Take the 1966 Music Quiz
  • The “I Shoulda Won” Best Picture Oscar Quiz
  • Taxi Driver Music: “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33”
  • What’s the Deal With the Ending of Wyatt Earp?
  • (Some Related Chimesfreedom Posts)