Stirling Silliphant

01 / The Detroit story

The Detroit story

Stirling Silliphant was born in Detroit in 1918, but his family moved to Glendale, California, when he and his brother were young, so his Detroit tie is his birthplace. He studied at the University of Southern California and worked in studio publicity before turning to writing in the 1950s. Television made his name: he wrote dozens of episodes of the gritty New York police drama Naked City, which he considered some of his best work, and created Route 66 (1960–1964), the series about two young men crossing America in a Corvette. His screenplay for In the Heat of the Night (1967), with Sidney Poitier as a Philadelphia detective confronting racism in Mississippi, won the Academy Award. In the 1970s he wrote the disaster blockbusters The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. A student and friend of Bruce Lee, he wrote Lee into several projects. He spent his last years in Thailand and died in Bangkok in 1996.

Highlights

1. Academy Award for the screenplay of In the Heat of the Night (1967)
2. Created the TV series Route 66 (1960–1964)
3. Wrote many episodes of Naked City
4. Wrote The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974)