Sterling Silliphant

Screenwriter-producer Stirling Silliphant, who was born on January 16, 1918, in Detroit, Michigan, won two Golden Globe awards for Best Screenplay – Motion Picture. He won in 1968 for In the Heat of the Night and then again in 1969 for Charly.

He is also known for writing such films as The Towering Inferno (1974) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and creating the TV series Naked City, Perry Mason and Route 66.

Born to a Canadian immigrant father, Lemuel, and mother Ethel, Silliphant grew up in Glendale, California when the family moved there when he was young. He studied at Hoover High School and then proceeded to the University of Southern California.

A prolific writer, Silliphant wrote and co-wrote 47 feature films that included Maracaibo, Nightfall, Village of the Damned, Telefon, The Liberation of L.B. Jones, Dirty Harry, The Enforcer, The Killer Elite and Over the Top.

He also wrote three television miniseries that included Pearl, Space and Mussolini: The Untold Story.

A close friend of Bruce Lee with whom he studied martial arts, Silliphant featured Lee in the detective movie Marlowe (1969) and the series Longstreet (1971). Lee also choreographed the fight sequences for the film A Walk in the Spring Rain (1970).

Silliphant moved to Bangkok in 1988 where he died of prostate cancer on April 26, 1996, at the age of 78.