STIRLING SILLIPHANT

Stirling Silliphant was born Sterling Dale Silliphant, Jr. (note the different spelling) in Detroit, Michigan in 1918, and while you may not recognize the name, I think there is very little chance you have not seen much of his work, especially if you are over 50! There have been top dramatic screenwriters who specialize in writing for TV, those who write mostly smaller "personal" movies, those who concentrate on blockbuster films, and those who tire of seeing their work altered by others and retreat into writing novels, but Silliphant managed to do all of the above superbly (and in huge volume), and most amazingly, he didn't start as a writer until he was in his mid thirties! His parents were Canadians who had moved to Detroit, and they moved again to California when he was a toddler. He got a job in Disney's animation department while still a teenager. then served in WWII, and after worked as publicity director for Fox in New York until 1953, when he moved back to California, and became an independent producer (of two movies). He heard about Disney's new show for kids, The Mickey Mouse Club, and he created and wrote a segment for it called "What I Went to Be", which aired in the first five shows. But the concept was too adult for most kids, and Disney wanted Silliphant to "dumb it down", which he refused to do, and he was fired, which proved to be the best the best thing that ever happened to him! Silliphant had caught the writing bug in a big way, and he started writing scripts for just about every major TV show of that time, including 11 for Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He was a co-creator of, and wrote 39 of the scripts for Naked City, the first great New York City cop show, and 74 scripts for Route 66. In between this mass of TV writing he managed to write the screenplay for Village of the Damned, remembered as one of the absolutely best and most literate of the science fiction (sci-fi) movies of that time. In 1967 he wrote the screenplay for the classic In the Heat of the Night, which won him an Oscar. He wrote the screenplays for the two best big budget disaster movies, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. In spite of the massive volume of work Silliphant produced during his extraordinary career (he also wrote over 50 novels!), he is as well remembered for the two great projects he worked on that never came to be. He had been a close friend of Bruce Lee from the start of his career (writing Marlowe, where Lee had a small part, and getting Lee a role on his TV show Longstreet). Silliphant wrote a movie specifically for Lee called The Silent Flute, which was to co-star James Coburn, but Lee died before filming began, and the movie was shelved, being finally made four years later as Circle of Iron, with David Carradine in Lee's role. One can only wonder how starring in this "A" movie might have affected Lee's already great career! The other project that never was is even more frustrating! Most people in Hollywood consider Ayn Rand's massive novel Atlas Shrugged virtually unfilmable as a movie, because it is filled with long speeches and little action. However, after Roots and the rise of TV mini-series, Rand saw the potential for one based on Atlas Shrugged, and Silliphant was hired to write the screenplay, and he created an 8 hour version in 1978 (which was approved by Rand), but at the last minute it was shelved by NBC, never to be seen again! He passed away in 1996 at the of of 78 from prostate cancer.