Stirling Silliphant: The Fingers of God (28 page)
Read Stirling Silliphant: The Fingers of God Online
Authors: Nat Segaloff
“She went in, and believe me — even I quailed before the fury of her assault. My nerves jangled in resonance to her anguish, all her frustrations, all her shattered dreams — at the hands of people like these. Well, unfortunately, she went over the edge — she lost it — she started weeping inconsolably and then went running out of the office. The Suits and the casting guy from Paramount sat, stunned, not knowing whether to look at their fingernails or at their shoes. The secretary of the casting director burst into the office. How dare you do that to the girl? she said. You should be ashamed. Then, weeping, she ran out. I took after the girl and caught up with her in the parking lot. I’m sorry, I told her. I should have written the dialogue for you, but I can’t write that well, that truly. You went too far. I know, she said. I’m sorry I failed you. Well, I said, let’s see — maybe they’ll sort it out and see that what happened in there could be dynamite on film. But, of course, they never saw it that way — and, in any event, CBS decided not to go ahead with the shoot.” When the plug was pulled on
Sunset Boulevard,
Silliphant hit back in the trades by damning “development deals” as hurting creative ability. “Who the hell are the TV people to do this?” he said, no doubt thinking of the actress who got carried away.
[330]
The Surrogate
(1975). About American sex clinics, but from a woman’s point of view. Silliphant admitted to having done some research on his own. The project was developed with Dr. Aaron Stern, the psychiatrist whose credentials had originally been used by the Motion Picture Association of America to legitimize their movie rating system.
[331]
A mutual friend — an industry insider whom Silliphant wouldn’t name — suggested the partnership. “For a period of two or three months, three times a week, I would visit with Dr. Stern while he strode back and forth dictating into a tape machine… I felt more and more ill-at-ease in the presence of Dr. Stern, so I simply removed myself and never went back, and, in the process, alienated my important and powerful industry friend. But that’s life on the couch for you — and who in hell cares?”
Three Seals.
In the early 1970s Charles W. “Chuck” Fries, the Screen Gems VP with whom Silliphant and Bert Leonard had worked on
Route 66,
was asked by President Richard Nixon to come to Washington, DC. “They were looking for a series to be developed to depict drug use in a negative fashion,” Fries said. “
Three Seals
was a combination of the Treasury Department, an Alcohol Abuse Department and a third one that escapes me. Stirling and I worked together on developing the presentation and I made the contacts with Washington to get the cooperation of the various agencies in Washington. One of the interesting things was that, when we went to Washington to meet with Nixon, all of the characters that ended up in the Watergate affair [were three] like John Mitchell, H. R. Haldemann, John Ehrlichman and John Dean, all of whom participated in the seminar with those of us that attended from the Creative Community in Hollywood in New York. Unfortunately, when we showed up at CBS to pitch the project and had the cooperation of the Treasury Department and the others, Bob Wood, President of the CBS Television network at the time, stood up and said he can’t believe it, we just bought a series with David Janssen called
O’Hara, U.S. Treasury.
I explained to him that Government Departments did not give exclusive rights to any producer, that their cooperation was conditioned on active development and production, and if
O’Hara
went forward at CBS, they would get that cooperation, but probably not exclusively. We moved around town to two other networks but we found no takers.”
[332]
Untitled original.
February 20, 1986. Characters and outline. “A film in the genre of
48 HRS
and the French movie
Diva,
that is, a film of suspense and of action, yet, more importantly, a film about a unique and crackling relationship between two very special human beings: an investigator from the south side of Chicago and a rebellious heiress, as together they set out to find the missing younger sister of the heiress.” Twenty-three pages.
Vietnam, Inc.
Treatment written July 7, 1972.
Voice on the Wind
(Paramount, 1965). Original Silliphant story, which he and Steve Alexander (producer of
The Slender Thread
) would produce and which would costar Elizabeth Ashley and Sidney Poitier. No doubt abandoned after Ashley was separated from what became the Anne Bancroft role in
Thread.
We Fly Anything
(1956). Series pilot written for producers Frank Cooper and Irving Pincus.
The Weather Wars
(Carl Foreman, 1978). Rewrite of a 133-page main character and outline treatment for a group jeopardy picture that takes place during a global meteorological catastrophe now known as global warming. Written for producer Carl Foreman. “He was wonderful to work with. But Carl passed away and the script was never produced.”
When in Rome
(1980). Original romantic comedy written for Warner Bros. that never made the production schedule.
When Worlds Collide
(Universal-Zanuck/Brown, 1977). “Not sure about this title, but it was a gigantic project I wrote in the mid-Seventies for Zanuck/ Brown. Still a marvelous script but much too costly to make.”
Winchell and Runyon.
Full screen treatment about the New York newspapermen written for Warner Bros. Never developed.
Windward Passage.
(Date not available). Stirling Silliphant-Bruce Bilson Production. 147 page treatment for seafaring adventure.
Zero Option
(1987). 113-page screenplay for thriller.
The Zimbardo Experiment
(ABC-TV). 90-minute
ABC Theatre
teleplay by Mark Silliphant based on the 1971 Stanford Prison experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo in which twenty-four white, middle-class students pretended to be prisoners and guards and, before long, each set adapted all too well to their enforced roles.
Silliphant’s personal files contain numerous additional projects for which intriguing titles, notes, snippets, or full treatments and screenplays exist, including:
A Way of Life, Ansel McCutcheon, Barnstormers, Bookin’, Camp Survival, The Empty Copper Sea, Escapade, Herzog
(adaptation of Saul Bellow novel),
Kickback, The Long Lavender Look, Louisiana Story
(not the Flaherty docu-drama),
The Man In-Between, Mayday, Of My Bones Are Coral Made, The Osmonds, The President’s Man, The Rattlewatch, Reunion, Saigon, The Sequestering, The Seventh Secret, Sojourners, Solitaire (a.k.a. Five Minutes of Silence), Spartan Project, The Spy Who Loved Me
(James Bond movie pitch),
Summer Reel, Take Three, Tri Makai/Trident, Tuff Enuff, Windward Passage.
Ball, John,
In the Heat of the Night.
New York: Bantam Books, 1967.
Brooks, Tim and Earle Marsh,
The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present, Sixth Ed.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1995
Froug, William,
The Screenwriter Looks At the Screenwriter.
New York: Mac-Millan & Company, 1972.
Goldman, William,
Adventures in the Screen Trade.
New York: Warner Books, 1983.
Harris, Mark,
Pictures at a Revolution.
New York: The Penguin Press, 2008.
Hirschhorn, Clive,
The Universal Story.
London, England: Octopus Books, 1983.
Hopkins, Jerry,
Bangkok Babylon: The Real-Life Exploits of Bangkok’s Legendary Expatriates are often Stranger than Fiction.
Singapore: Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., 2005.
Jewison, Norman,
This Terrible Business Has Been Good To Me.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Key Porter Books, Ltd., 2004.
Kermode, Mark,
Fire in the Sky, Hell Under Water.
Produced by Andrew Abbott and Russell Leven. London, England: Nobles Gate for Channel 4, 2003.
McGilligan, Patrick,
Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.
McGilligan, Patrick,
Clint: The Life and Legend.
London, England: Harper-Collins, 1999.
Mirisch, Walter,
We Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History.
Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008.
Nogueira, Nui, “Wendell Mayes: The Jobs Poured Over Me,”
Backstory 3,
Patrick McGilligan, ed. Berkeley, California: The University of California Press, 1997.
Orlean, Susan.
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012.
Poitier, Sidney,
The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography.
San Francisco, California: HarperCollins, 2000.
Smith, Dave,
Disney A to Z.
New York: Hyperion Press, 1996.
Wiley, Mason & Damien Bona,
Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards.
New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.
This page is an extension of the Copyright page.
Stirling Silliphant Papers, 1950-1985. (Collections 134 and 1079). Performing Arts Library Special Collections, Young Research Library, University of California at Los Angeles. The appearance in this work of previously unpublished non-interview material by Stirling Silliphant constitutes their first publication, and copyright is hereby claimed: ©2013 The Estate of Stirling Silliphant.
“OSCAR®,” “OSCARS®,” “ACADEMY AWARD®,” “ACADEMY AWARDS®,” “OSCAR NIGHT®,” “A.M.P.A.S.®” and the federally registered “Oscar” design mark are registered and copyrighted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Cliff Robertson interview courtesy of the Archive of American Television, interviewed by Stephen J. Abramson on March 1, 2005. EMMY® is the trademark property of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences/National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Visit
http://www.emmytvlegends.org
for more information.
Excerpts from “Up Close and Personal with Stirling Silliphant” by John Corcoran,
Kick
Magazine, July-November, 1980; Hollywood, California: CFW Enterprises. © John Corcoran. Used by permission.
Excerpts from
If I Was a Highway
and “Letters at 3AM: Stirling at Road’s End” by Michael Ventura ©Michael Ventura. Used by permission.
Silliphant’s IMDb credits used by permission of
Internet Movie Database.
Those interested in learning more about Bruce Lee should consult the website created by his daughter, Shannon, who runs the
Bruce Lee Foundation.
Every effort has been made to trace the provenance of photographs used in this book. The publisher will remove them or correct omissions upon presentation of certified ownership by a different party than that which is credited.
Finally, a note to journalists who interview celebrities: send your work to the people you cover. Only because a handful of interviewers had the courtesy to mail copies of their articles and TV interviews to Stirling Silliphant are they represented in this book. Now that the Internet has made history ephemeral, don’t count on Google to save your stuff. When you interview someone, send a copy afterward. And be sure to label it.
1.
WGA rates for 1985 were $29,320 for a screenplay for a high-budget film and $42,000 for treatment and screenplay. Silliphant usually managed to wangle a treatment first.
2.
Conversation with the author.
3.
Time,
August 9, 1963. The other four fingers were Paul Henning
(The Beverly Hillbillies),
Nat Hiken
(Car 54, Where Are You?),
Rod Serling
(The Twilight Zone),
and Reginald Rose
(The Defenders).
Time
reported that Silliphant’s “manages to hold his salary down to $145,000” for tax reasons. The producer’s name was not given.
4.
Cool Hand Luke:
Donn Pearce (from his novel) and Frank R. Pierson;
The Graduate:
Buck Henry;
In Cold Blood:
Richard Brooks;
Ulysses:
Joseph Strick and Fred Haines.
5.
See Mark Harris’s meticulous
Pictures at a Revolution
(New York: The Penguin Press, 2008), to which acknowledgment is hereby given.
6.
Scholars will note that Will H. Hays, Valenti’s distant predecessor, introduced “The Formula” in 1924 that was refined into what became known as The Production Code of Self-Regulation in 1930.
7.
An inside joke making the rounds at the time had a producer rejecting a script by telling the writer, “Your characters are too complex for a budget this big.”
8.
Unless otherwise cited, Silliphant’s quotes are drawn from the faxed correspondence with the author for
Backstory 3
(Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1997) and subsequent conversations.
9.
Per the Academy’s official transcript: “I really have no speech. The Writers Guild doesn’t permit us to do any speculative writing. I’m deeply grateful and very touched. Thank you, Rod, Norman, Walter, Sidney, everyone. Thank you.”
10.
Interviewed by Bill Collins, “Bill Collins Showbiz,” August 19, 1979, Seven Network, NSW (Australia).
11.
Interviewed by Reed Farrell, c. 1977. Archive video, not further identified, from Silliphant Estate.
12.
Allan Silliphant interview, February 14, 2013.
13.
By 1940 he had changed the spelling of his name to
Stirling
to honor his father’s brother, Stirling. He also cringed at the middle name
Dale.
14.
In interviews, Silliphant insisted that he was born on Pingree Street (“I wasn’t actually born
on
the street, you understand, but in a
house
on Pingree”), but his birth certificate lists High Street, which is a Metamora address.
15.
Stirling Silliphant, “What is a Nice Movie Writer Like You Doing Out Here in the Middle of This Nasty Ocean, Anyway?”
The Pennant,
September, 1973.
16.
He was on the air when the Long Beach earthquake struck on March 10, 1933.
17.
Allan Silliphant, ibid.
18.
John Corcoran, “Up Close and Personal with Stirling Silliphant,”
Kick
magazine, July, 1980 (Hollywood, California: CFW Enterprises).
19.
The story is cited in his prepared biography as “The Enchanted Lantern” but is corrected in his hand to “Little Whisperers.” (UCLA).
20.
To reduce confusion from now on, the father Lemuel Lee Silliphant will continue to be called
Lee
; his second son will be called
Leigh
; Stirling will be called
Stirling
or
Silliphant.
Stirling Garff Silliphant will generally be called
Stirling Garff,
and, later, Stirling Linh Silliphant will be called
Stirling Linh.
None is a Junior.
21.
Stirling Garff Silliphant interview, February 14, 2013.
22.
Zanuck and Skouras would trade places in 1962 when Zanuck was summoned by desperate stockholders to save the rapidly sinking studio in the wake of Skouras’s failed
Cleopatra
and Zanuck’s triumphant
The Longest Day.
23.
Stirling Garff Silliphant, op cit.
24.
Stirling Linh interview with the author, May 25, 2013.
25.
Silliphant interview (unsigned)
Sacramento Bee,
May 29, 1983. He told the story in somewhat more profane terms to William Froug,
The Screenwriter Looks at the Screenwriter
(New York: The MacMillan Company, 1972). Obviously Bogart did not anticipate today’s youth market that deems anybody over 30 an antique.
26.
Producer David Brown, who was in the studio’s story department at the time, enjoyed recalling how Zanuck summoned all his creative people to a meeting and announced, “We are no longer interested in stories with
depth.
We are only interested in stories with
width.
” (Conversation with Author)
27.
Much of Silliphant’s personal paperwork, including bound copies of his scripts, was destroyed in a home electrical fire in 1969 in a home where he lived in Appian Way in Los Angeles. This water-stained book survived.
28.
Bulletin of Screen Achievement, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, December 10, 1956. Hand corrections specify that screenplay came first, then the novel.
29.
Released May 21, 1958, by Paramount Pictures.
30.
Disneyland opened to the public on July 18, 1955. Dave Smith,
Disney A to Z: The Official Encyclopedia (
New York: Hyperion Books, 1996).
31.
Source: s
www.originalmmc.com
fan website for
The Mickey Mouse Club.
32.
It was also the title of a 1949 Alfred Hitchcock film set in Australia, which is located geographically under the Tropic of Capricorn.
33.
Time
magazine, August 9, 1963.
34.
Suspicion
was a one-season, hour-long series produced for NBC by MCA/Revue and Hitchcock’s Shamley Productions. Hitchcock was executive producer but did not appear, and directed only the premiere episode, “Four O’clock,” airing September 30, 1957.
35.
(“Nothing more.”) While Hitchcock was alive, Silliphant’s interviews stressed the director’s involvement, presumably out of respect for the filmmaker’s reputation. This interview occurred after Hitchcock died in 1980 when Silliphant owed no fealty to the legend.
36.
From John Kier Cross’s short story. In a twist on
Cyrano de Bergerac,
a woman falls in love with a brilliant ventriloquist only to discover that he’s the dummy and his dummy is the man who has been sending her love letters.
37.
Silliphant was mistaken about the episode’s flagship status. “Voice in the Night” aired March 24, 1958 and concerned shipwreck survivors who wash ashore on an island where a deadly fungus threatens them. The cast included James Coburn, who would later figure prominently in Silliphant’s life and in the legendary
The Silent Flute.
38.
By actual count, he wrote thirty-one half-hour
Naked City
episodes and six 60-minute episodes.
39.
“Take Off Your Hat When a Funeral Passes,” airdate September 27, 1961. The teleplay is credited to Howard Rodman and Anthony Spinner.
40.
Larry Siegel and Mort Drucker,
MAD Magazine
No. 60, January, 1961.
41.
At one point, Silliphant purchased a set of encyclopedias about mental illnesses and, when he was stuck for a plot, he would flip through them to find somebody to base a script on.
42.
Dassin would be named and blacklisted in 1952.
43.
The dog’s name was
Rin Tin Tin
but hyphens were added for TV.
44.
CBC mainstay Elwy Yost interview, posted on YouTube. Undated, but probably 1983 at the time of the publication of
Steel Tiger.
45.
Contracts in Silliphant family collection.
46.
New York: Dell Publishing Company, Inc., 1959.
47.
A similar theme is found in the hour-long
Naked City
episode “Prime of Life” (February 13, 1963) in which Paul Burke watches an execution in all its detail (except for the actual electrocution). Beside him in the witness box, incidentally, is Gene Hackman in an early role.
48.
Susan Orlean,
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012.
49.
One of which was
Village of the Damned
(q.v.).
50.
Film Daily,
December 23, 1965.
51.
Yost, op cit.
52.
Silliphant and Dassin tried to work together years later on a project called
The Khaki Mafia.
53.
Cecil Smith,
Los Angeles Times,
February 2, 1962.
54.
Concurrent with writing
Route 66,
Silliphant was also writing episodes for
Checkmate,
Mr. Lucky, G.E. Theatre,
and
Naked City.
55.
“Ed” from Ednamarie, then Mrs. Silliphant, and “ling” from Stirling.
56.
Silliphant may have first tried to buy
On the Road
from Jack Kerouac, who refused.
57.
Maharis had appeared in several
Naked City
episodes, including a nascent pilot for
Route 66,
“Four Sweet Corners.”
58.
An assumption is that Buz, Tod, and Linc are always able to find jobs in every town they visit. This was not questioned in the booming American economy of the early 1960s.
59.
William Froug,
The Screenwriter Looks at the Screenwriter.
New York: Mac-Millan and Company, 1972.
60.
Few viewers may have noticed, however; that same day, NASA astronaut Alan B. Shepard made his sub-orbital flight atop Friendship 7, inaugurating America’s manned space program and pre-empting most TV programming.
61.
Interview with Author, February 10, 2013. Tiana refers to the classic joke about the starlet who was so stupid that she slept with the screenwriter to get the part. (Added writer Richard Powell, “If you change the screenwriter to a director, the joke doesn’t work, but the starlet does.”)
62.
Froug, op cit.
63.
The
Route 66
season finale for 1961, not Silliphant’s 1981 series pilot.
64.
The episode is believed to be “Sheba” (January 6, 1961) and one of the rumored reasons was a contract dispute with Maharis.
65.
Contracts in Silliphant family collection.
66.
Blog post,
www.davidmorrell.net
67.
Michael Ventura, “A Swastika in the Snow” from
If I Was a Highway.
Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 2011.
68.
This episode was also the basis for a 1992 musical called
The Finders
by Peter Morley and David Walters.
69.
Los Angeles
Times,
August 14, 1964.
70.
Dayle had entered the Jesuit-run Santa Clara University but changed her mind while still a novitiate. She married twice, both times to Jewish men.
71.
Silliphant’s widow, Tiana, said that his skepticism of Dayle’s commitment came from her demand for a credit card on which she charged numerous un-nunlike expenses. He enjoyed telling how he visited her one day and she put on her habit so quickly that she accidentally stabbed her scalp with a hatpin. When he saw her white cornette spotted with red, he thought, thinking of stigmata, “She really
did
give herself to God!”
72.
In November 1962, Maharis pulled out, citing hepatitis, and was replaced by Glenn Corbett until the series ended in 1964. The Maharis episodes ran through March of 1963.
73.
Thomas J. Dodd (D-CT) had a distinguished career prosecuting the Nuremberg Trials before serving in the House from 1953 to 1957 and the Senate from 1959 to 1971. He and Senator Estes Kefauver (D-TN) held hearings in 1954, 1961, and 1964 into TV violence that produced a reactionary clamp-down. Dodd was censured by the Senate in 1967 for campaign finance irregularities. His son, Christopher, was also a Senator (D-CT) from 1981 to 2011, after which he was, perhaps ironically, hired as CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, which controls film content, while insisting it doesn’t, through its rating system.
74.
Froug, op cit.
75.
Including the author who, in preparing the
Backstory
interview, borrowed several and returned the favor by buying pro copies for the family when tapes turned up in used video bins.
76.
www.classictvhistory.wordpress.com
plus correspondence with Author. The chain-of-title itself could make a detective story.
77.
The author met briefly with Leonard toward the end of 1998 to negotiate a feature film deal for
Route 66,
ennobled partly by the wishes of the late Stirling Silliphant and his widow, and interest from a legitimate production company. After several phone calls, Bert and I met on Monday, December 7 at a post-production facility in Santa Monica, California where he said he was colorizing
Rin-Tin-Tin
episodes. I found the then-76-year-old Leonard alert and affable but unyielding in insisting on writing and directing the film himself, a decision I knew no studio would accept. We parted amicably. I tried reaching him a few times after that, just in case he had changed his mercurial mind, but never got a return call.