Stirling Dale Silliphant was an American screenwriter and producer. 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 (1958-59), Perry Mason, and Route 66 (1960). Other features as a screenwriter include the Irwin Allen productions The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974).