Stirling Silliphant: The Fingers of God

During the 1950s and 1960s it seemed that every TV show was written by Stirling Silliphant. His scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Tightrope, Alcoa-Goodyear Theatre, Perry Mason, and, of course, Naked City and Route 66, made him Hollywood’s most produced writer. Later he dominated the disaster film cycle with The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, brought martial arts phenomenon Bruce Lee to screen prominence with Marlowe and Longstreet, won an Oscar® for In the Heat of the Night, and helped create the TV mini-series. He lived the life of a movie star, not a movie writer, attending A-list parties, sailing his yacht around the world, driving posh cars, and turning out one hit after another.

But it came at a price: Four marriages, estranged children, a son’s death, and, ultimately, expatriation. Stirling Silliphant: The Fingers of God intimately explores the life and creative process of the man behind Charly, Pearl, The Grass Harp, Village of the Damned, and other big and small screen events. Drawn from exhaustive interviews conducted by author Nat Segaloff in the years before Silliphant’s 1996 death and augmented by material from his private files, what emerges is a complex portrait of a larger-than-life figure who rose to the top of a larger-than-life industry.