Stirling Silliphant
| Stirling Silliphant | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Stirling Dale Silliphant January 16, 1918 Detroit, Michigan, U.S. |
| Died | April 26, 1996 (aged 78) Bangkok, Thailand |
| Cause of death | prostate cancer |
| Alma mater | University of Southern California (B.A., 1938) |
| Occupation | Screenwriter; producer |
| Known for | Naked City and In the Heat of the Night |
| Home town | Glendale, California, U.S. |
| Spouse(s) | Tiana Alexandra Du Long (1974-1996; his death) |
| Children | Stirling and Dayle, Son, Lauren(deceased 1968 Mother was actress Patricia Wymore) |
| Parent(s) | Leigh Silliphant (father) Ethel Silliphant (mother) |
Stirling Dale Silliphant (January 16, 1918 – April 26, 1996) was an American screenwriter and producer. His father, Sterling Silliphant, was a Canadian who immigrated to the United States in 1911, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1916. His mother was Ethel M. Silliphant. He had one brother, Leigh, who was three years younger.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, his family moved to Glendale, California when he was a child. He graduated from Hoover High School, and was educated at the University of Southern California. He may be best known for his screenplay for In the Heat of the Night, for which he won an Academy Award in 1967, and for creating the television series Naked City and Route 66.
Other features as screenwriter include the Irwin Allen productions The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, adapting both films from previously published novels. In the case of The Towering Inferno, he was tasked with blending two separate novels, The Tower, by Richard Martin Stern, and The Glass Inferno, by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson, into a single screenplay.
He was a close friend of Bruce Lee, under whom he studied martial arts. Lee was featured in the Silliphant-penned detective movie Marlowe and four episodes of the series Longstreet. Silliphant reportedly recommended Lee for action choreography work. They had been working on a philosophical martial arts script, The Silent Flute (later known as Circle of Iron), which was to star Lee and James Coburn, and the pre-production even went to the extent of all three going to India on a location hunt. (A reliable source for this story is Bruce Thomas's book Bruce Lee: Fighting Spirit, pp 129-130. The reason for the India trip was because Warner Brothers could not repatriate money their films made in India because of foreign exchange regulations. They green-lit the project on the condition that the film Siliphant, Coburn and Lee made would be shot in India to use up the money lying unused in Warner Bros's accounts).
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