Stirling Silliphant
Stirling Silliphant was a notable American writer recognized for his extensive contributions to film and television. Born in 1918 in Detroit, Michigan, he graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California and began his career in publicity at Walt Disney Studios before transitioning to screenwriting. Silliphant created two influential television series, "The Naked City" and "Route 66," and was among the first writers for Disney's "Mickey Mouse Club." His screenwriting was characterized by a focus on diverse, often marginalized characters, reflecting themes of oppression and discrimination in works like "In the Heat of the Night" and "Charly." Throughout his career, he received several accolades, including Golden Globe Awards for his films. Later in life, Silliphant married Vietnamese director and actress Tianna, and they moved to Bangkok, where he passed away in 1996 due to prostate cancer. His legacy continues to resonate in discussions of narrative representation and social issues in media.
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Subject Terms
Stirling Silliphant
Writer
- Born: January 16, 1918
- Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan
- Died: April 26, 1996
- Place of death: Bangkok, Thailand
Biography
Stirling Dale Silliphant was a prolific and resourceful writer, publishing numerous screenplays and novels. He also was a television writer and created two long-running, highly successful television series, The Naked City, aired by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) from 1958 until 1963, and Route 66, aired by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) from 1960 until 1964. In addition, Silliphant was one of the earliest writers for Walt Disney Studios’ Mickey Mouse Club, writing scripts for that television program between 1955 and 1959.
Silliphant was born in 1918 in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Leigh Lemuel Silliphant and Ethel May Noaker Silliphant. He studied filmmaking at the University of Southern California, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1938. He worked briefly as a journalist before becoming a publicist at Walt Disney Studios. He left that job in 1942 to work in the East Coast publicity unit of Twentieth Century Fox studios, but he soon left to serve in the navy. At the end of World War II, he returned to Twentieth Century Fox to work as publicity director, a job he held until 1953. In 1955, the year he joined Disney as a writer for Mickey Mouse Club, his novel, Maracaibo was published. It was adapted for film in 1958, but Silliphant did not write the screenplay.
At this time, Silliphant also wrote screenplays. His first screenplay, Five Against the House, was produced in 1955. It demonstrated his signature technique of isolating a mixed group of people in a tense situation that forces them to work toward saving themselves. He was to return to this theme successfully in such films as The Slender Thread, The Poseidon Adventure, and The Towering Inferno. The production of The Slender Thread in 1965 marked Silliphant’s return to Hollywood after an absence of about five years, during which time he worked almost exclusively on television productions.
Silliphant had a profound interest in the plight of the oppressed, especially the handicapped and people of color. He used several of his films to explore topics related to various sorts of discrimination. In the Heat of the Night explores the relationship between a black man, who turns out to be a police detective from the North, and the Southern sheriff who suspects him of murder largely because of his color. Silliphant also examined racial relations in The Liberation of L. B. Jones.
In Charly, adapted from Daniel Keyes’s short story, “Flowers for Algernon,” the focus is on a retarded man whose retardation is reversed and on the man’s difficulty in adjusting to a society from which his lack of emotional maturity has alienated him. Silliphant won a Golden Globe Award for Charly, just as he had for In the Heat of the Night, which received Academy Awards for Best Motion Picture and Best Screenplay.
Toward the end of his life, Silliphant married his fourth wife, a Vietnamese director and actress, Tianna, who used the professional name Thi Thanh Nga. Deeply interested in Buddhism, the couple moved to Bangkok, Thailand, in 1995. Silliphant, suffering from prostate cancer, died in Bangkok on April 26, 1996.