He is best remembered for his screenplay for In the Heat of the Night, for which he won an Academy Award in 1967, and for creating the television series Naked City, Perry Mason, and Route 66.
[citation needed] Production manager Sam Manners called him from the road unit of Route 66 from El Paso, Texas.
[citation needed] During World War II, Silliphant served as a lieutenant in the United States Army.
Upon his discharge in 1946 in the earlier part of his career, he was publicity director for Walt Disney, and was lead writer on the stories incorporated into The Mickey Mouse Club.
One of his later series creations was Longstreet, which featured a blind detective played by James Franciscus, who had also starred in the first season of Naked City.
[citation needed] Silliphant wrote or co-wrote 47 feature films, including Maracaibo (produced and directed by and starring Cornel Wilde); the Jacques Tourneur noir Nightfall; Village of the Damned; the Charles Bronson spy thriller Telefon; The Liberation of L.B.
Jones (director William Wyler's final film); The Killer Elite (directed by Sam Peckinpah); the Dirty Harry crime drama The Enforcer; The Towering Inferno, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture (1974); and the arm wrestling story Over the Top (the latter with its star Sylvester Stallone).
They had been working on a philosophical martial arts script, The Silent Flute (later known as Circle of Iron), which was to star Lee and James Coburn, and the pre-production even went to the extent of all three going to India on an unsuccessful location hunt.
In 1974, Silliphant married Tiana Alexandra Du Long,[1] with whom he had a son, Stirling, and step daughter, Melissa.
[6][7] Silliphant became interested in Lee's specialties, and with fellow actor James Coburn they worked on developing The Silent Flute.
He played Li Tsung, a Jeet Kune Do instructor who teaches it to the main character in the TV show Longstreet (1971).