Stirling Silliphant: The Fingers of God (29 page)

78.
Stephen Bowie,
The Classic TV History Blog,
June 12, 2012.

79.
“A Chat with Kirk Hallam,” January 17, 2008, by Ron Warnick,
www.route66news.com
.

80.
Shout! Factory press release, November 7, 2011,
www.tvshowsondvd.com/news

81.
“More details about Route 66: DVD release August 4, 2007” by Ron Warnick, posted on
www.route66news.com
,
August 4, 2007.

82.
And they were an estimable procession that included Robert Altman, James Goldstone, William A. Graham, Tom Gries, Jeffrey Hayden, Arthur Hiller,

83.
Philip Leacock, Robert Ellis Miller, George Sherman, Elliott Silverstein, Sam Peckinpah, and David Lowell Rich.

84.
There is controversy among collectors that the available versions of this episode have been shortened from the original running time. The copy viewed for this book ran 52:30.

In the end, he gives the $100,000 bribe to the convent anyway, “as a wedding present” for Bonnie. No mention is made that the money is tainted.

85.
According to Altman’s biographer, Patrick McGilligan, Altman and Wynn did some rewriting on location when they weren’t drunk. Even though the results were effective, Bert Leonard vowed never to hire Altman again
(Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989).

86.
Deal memo, Silliphant family papers.

87.
A British army officer, citing other blond birth epidemics, points to a map and says, “In the Communist world there were two time-outs similar to the one at Midwich. One at Irkutsk, here, and the borders of Outer Mongolia. A grim affair. The men killed the children and their mothers.”

88.
Earlier sources reported that the outspoken Ashley dropped out of the project in a contract dispute.

89.
Sidney Poitier,
The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography
(San Francisco, California: HarperCollins, 2000).

90.
Daily Variety,
December 22, 1965.

91.
Signed deal memo dated November 17, 1965 and received September 16, 1966, Silliphant family archive.

92.
Among their credits:
The Magnificent Seven, West Side Story, The Great Escape, The Apartment, The Russians Are Coming, The Pink Panther,
and many other successes.

93.
Source: Walter Mirish,
We Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History
(WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008). Jewison says $1.5 million in his autobiography. Today it would easily cost $100 million.

94.
Jewison’s signing was announced August 15, 1966
(Hollywood Reporter
).

95.
Norman Jewison,
This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me
(Toronto, Canada: Key Porter Books, 2004)

96.
Walter Mirisch Collection, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

97.
Author’s Note: Silliphant’s human rights credentials were impeccable. Here he was writing in the characters’ biased voices.

98.
January 7, 1966, treatment, AMPAS.

99.
Poitier interview with Author, November 16, 2012.

100.
Trevor Hogg, “Daring Ideas: Haskell Wexler Talks About In the Heat of the Night & Medium Cool,”
www.FlickeringMyth.com
,
September 12, 2012.

101.
Carol Munday and Robert N. Zagone,
Fade Out: The Erosion of Black Images in the Media
; Nguzo Saba Films, WNET-TV, New York, 1984
.

102.
ibid./p>

103.
Jewison,
op cit.

104.
Interview in William Froug,
The Screenwriter Looks At the Screenwriter.

105.
At one point Wood becomes a suspect, allowing Gillespie to tell Tibbs, who insists the cop is innocent, another oft-quoted line of dialogue: “What do you mean I’m holding the wrong man? I got the motive, which is money, and the body, which is dead.”

106.
At 15:26.

107.
Mirisch, op cit. There is no record of the play being produced.

108.
December 22, 1965.

109.
Jewison, op cit. Also
Hollywood Reporter,
August 12, 1966.

110.
Mirisch, op cit

111.
“Annual Report of the Committee on Un-American Activities for the Year 1952” (Washington, DC: Committee on Un-American Activities, U.S. House of Representatives, 1952).

112.
Daily Variety,
November 8, 1966.

113.
Daily Variety,
November 14, 1966

114.
Sidney Poitier,
This Life
(NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980). He would have an equally intense acting lesson on his next film,
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,
opposite Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

115.
The line occurs at the bottom of page 24 on Silliphant’s July 1, 1966, Revised First Draft.

116.
Wexler interview with the author.

117.
Marilyn and Alan Bergman wrote the lyrics without credit.

118.
Poitier interview, ibid.

119.
In 1999, Jewison was voted the Irving G. Thalberg Award by the Academy’s Board of Governors.

120.
Interviewed by Bill Collins, “Bill Collins Showbiz,” August 19, 1979, Seven Network, NSW (Australia).

121.
Daily Variety,
January 23, 1969.

122.
It was presented to him by a contrite Academy the year before he died.

123.
A partial list includes
Marathon Man, All the President’s Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,
Misery,
and
The Princess Bride.

124.
Goldman says he started each chapter on a new page to pad the book’s length. It was made into a film starring Rod Steiger, George Segal, and Lee Remmick in 1968.

125.
William Goldman,
Adventures in the Screen Trade,
New York: Warner Books, 1983.

126.
Cliff Robertson interview courtesy of the Archive of American Television, interviewed by Stephen J. Abramson on March 1, 2005. (http://emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/cliff-robertson)

127.
Goldman, op cit./p>

128.
Abramson, op cit/p>

129.
Punctuate this: That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is. (Answer: That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is that it? It is.)/p>

130.
…which Robertson was unable to collect in person because he was in the Philippines shooting
Too Late the Hero
with Michael Caine and couldn’t travel to Los Angeles.

131.
Boston filmmaking crews report that some footage was shot.

132.
“The Reed Farrell Show,” courtesy Silliphant archive.

133.
Dayle, his daughter with Ednamarie, born 1955.

134.
Ethel Silliphant never remarried.

135.
Stirling Garff Rasmussen interview, February 14, 2013.

136.
Interviewed by Bill Collins, “Bill Collins Showbiz,” August 19, 1979. Seven Network, NSW (Australia).

137.
Newsweek,
January 31, 1972. Silliphant was saying that he originated
A Walk in the Spring Rain
rather than being hired by someone else to write their project.

138.
Somerset, Tennessee is ripe for scandal when the town’s dignified black undertaker Lord Byron (“L.B.”) Jones (Roscoe Lee Browne) hires an old-line white lawyer (Lee J. Cobb) to handle an uncontested divorce from Lola Falana, who is having an affair with a white policeman (Anthony Zerbe). Problems erupt when Falana unexpectedly fights the divorce and the white community pressures the usually docile Jones to back off. At last standing up for his dignity as a black man, Jones announces “to hell with the white man” — a decision that costs him his life.

139.
For a complete report see the author’s
Final Cuts: The Last Films of 50 Great Directors.

140.
Jan Herman,
A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood’s Most Acclaimed Director.
New York: Da Capo Press, 1997.

141.
Robert later wrote the motion pictures
The Creeping Terror
(1964),
The Beach Girls and the Monster
(1965),and the cult classic
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?
(1964). He died in 1999.

142.
Washington
Afro-American,
March 18, 1969.

143.
San Jose
Mercury News,
December 4, 1969.

144.
Los Angeles
Times,
December 18, 1969.

145.
San Jose
Mercury News,
December 4, 1969

146.
Brief, In re Johnson (1995) 35 Cal.App.4th 160, 41 Cal.Rptr.2d 449.

147.
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

148.
Lee’s other private students included James Coburn, James Garner, Lee Marvin, Roman Polanski, Joe Hyams, and Steve McQueen.

149.
Linda Lee and Tom Bleecker, “Bruce Lee Goes Hollywood,”
Black Belt
magazine, Burbank, California: Rainbow Publications, September, 1989.

150.
Silliphant estimated the date of their meeting as mid-1968. He would later achieve second cue green belt in Shotokan karate.

151.
John Corcoran, ”Up Close and Personal with Stirling Silliphant.”
Kick
Magazine, July-September, 1980. Hollywood, California: CFW Enterprises.

152.
“Bruce Lee: The Mandarin Superstar,”
The Pierre Berton Show,
Screen Gems Canada, September 12, 1971.

153.
Armchair psychiatrists can ponder whether the name
Lee,
common to both Bruce and Silliphant’s father, had a connection with this epiphany.

154.
Lee to Silliphant, Christmas, 1967; Silliphant to Lee, letter dated (incorrectly) January 3, 1968 (sic). Silliphant collection, UCLA.

155.
Philip Marlowe (James Garner) agrees to locate the missing brother (Roger Newman) of a movie starlet (Sharon Farrell) and stumbles into a blackmail plot, gangland-style ice-pick murders, and shady psychiatrists.

156.
Ironically, the scene involved the sort of exhibition karate — breaking boards and such — that Lee disdained.

157.
Los Angeles Times,
December 5, 1971.

158.
Broadcast September 16, 1971.

159.
He often joked, “If anyone wanted to get Longstreet, all they’d have to do is stand across the street with a high-powered rifle and, as the dummy comes out with the dog, blow his head off.”

160.
Berton, op cit.

161.
Berton, op cit.

162.
Warner Bros. has maintained that they were, by sheer coincidence, developing the same idea with writers Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander when Lee pitched it. Lee considered the loss of
Kung Fu
one of his greatest personal disappointments.

163.
Berton, op cit.

164.
An undated clipping from
Martial Arts Magazine
in Silliphant’s UCLA Collection 134 (Box 21, File 1) reports that Hong Kong GH company found an unfinished manuscript for
The Silent Flute
and asked Chinese director Ng See-Yuen, then a staff filmmaker at Shaw studios, to finish it. There were no other details. See-Yuen made
Bruce Lee: The Man, The Myth
(1976).

165.
Copied in the Silliphant collection, UCLA.

166.
New York Times,
March 28, 1971.

167.
Silliphant to Corcoran, op cit.

168.
In 1968, Silliphant and McQueen devised an idea called
Project Leng
for which they hired Mark Silliphant at $150 a week to find a published novel that would match their title. Nothing came of it. Silliphant also figures in Pingree Productions (q.v.).

169.
Receipts owed to Warner Bros. that the Indian government insisted they spend in the country rather than remove and risk collapsing the economy.

170.
Martial Arts Magazine,
Summer, 1978. UCLA Archives, no further identification.

171.
Letter, Coburn to Singh, January 13, 1971. Silliphant collection, UCLA.

172.
Silliphant papers, UCLA.

173.
Game
magazine, August, 1976. The official Bruce Lee website attributes his death to the pain meds.

174.
Corcoran, op cit.

175.
In 1969 Mark Silliphant and Bruce Lee were asked to assign their rights in the project to Silliphant. (Letter from Barry Hirsch’s office, September 16, 1969). Silliphant collection, UCLA.

176.
Conversation with producer Paul Maslansky, February 4, 2012.