In 1967, it was not only unusual to have a non-white actor in a leading role of a Hollywood film; it was nearly unheard of. In The Heat of the Night's gamble paid off, though, when the film brought home Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Film Editing and Best Screenplay. The story of a big-city Black detective stumbling into a murder case in a sleepy Southern town brought together an unusually rich collection of talent. Rod Steiger was a graduate of New York's Actors Studio and one of the earliest students of Method acting, while Sidney Poitier had broken ground with roles that no African-American actor had been given before. The chemistry between the two onscreen was sharp and complex, while still confined to the framework of a mystery/police procedural.
John Ball's novel “In the Heat of the Night” (1965) was the first of seven to depict the exploits of Pasadena police detective Virgil Tibbs. Set in Wells, South Carolina, it follows his uneasy alliance with local police chief Bill Gillespie in the investigation of a murder for which he originally was arrested simply for being Black. Ball got the idea for the novel in 1933, but didn't get it written until 1960. Then it took him five years to get it published. Independent producer Walter Mirisch bought the screen rights to the novel in 1966 but initially had trouble convincing his usual studio, United Artists, to back the film for fear it would be banned in Southern states. By using some fancy accounting tricks, he finally convinced them that if he kept the budget down it would turn a profit even if it never played down South.
As the first African-American actor to win the Oscar for Best Actor and the only African-American considered to be a marquee name, Sidney Poitier was the only choice to play Virgil Tibbs. Mirisch's first choice to adapt the novel was television writer Robert Alan Aurthur, whose teleplay A Man Is Ten Feet Tall had been such a big success on The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse in 1955 it was filmed as Edge of the City two years later. Poitier had starred in both versions. Unfortunately, Aurthur’s initial attempts at a screenplay for In the Heat of the Night did not meet Mirisch's approval, and he was let go.
Poitier's agent, Martin Baum, then suggested Stirling Silliphant, a prolific television writer often hailed as the next Paddy Chayefsky. Silliphant's TV commitments were so great that he had only had time to write two films, Village of the Damned (1960) and The Slender Thread (1965). The latter had starred Poitier, and though it had failed at the box office, the star was sufficiently impressed with Silliphant's work to want him for this new film. In translating the novel to the screen, Silliphant transformed Tibbs from the polite, friendly Californian originally created into a hard-nosed, proud Northern Black from Philadelphia. Part of that was a concession to Poitier's screen image. The actor had risen in popularity because of his ability to capture characters smoldering under the weight of racism.
By contrast, the original Tibbs simply accepted racism on the rare occasions it occurred in the novel, in which the sheriff and his men and even the town boss, Endicott, are all open-minded individuals who treat him as an equal. Gillespie, a minor character in the novel and originally an open-minded newcomer to his job, was transformed into a major character, a veteran officer struggling to reconcile his own racism with the need to work with the Black detective. He also transformed the novel's murder victim from a concert promoter to an industrialist trying to bring a factory to the small town, which would rejuvenate it economically. Filling the supporting cast with racists, particularly Endicott, completed the story's transformation from standard detective fiction to civil-rights parable.
Norman Jewison had started his career directing variety shows for television, most notably “The Judy Garland Show.” He broke into film as a comedy director with pictures like 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962), with Tony Curtis, and The Thrill of It All (1963), with Doris Day. After stepping in at the last minute to take over The Cincinnati Kid (1965) when Sam Peckinpah was fired after only four days of shooting, he landed a two-film deal with Mirisch. Their first film together, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), may have marked a return to comedy, but it also satirized the Cold War. Hoping to establish himself as a more serious director, however, he began campaigning to direct In the Heat of the Night. At first, Mirisch tried to talk him out of it, arguing that the low-budget film would be a comedown for him. When Jewison agreed to shoot it at the Goldwyn Studio in Hollywood, he won the job.
In Silliphant's first draft, Gillespie was a tall, good-looking man introduced by stepping out of his shower. Through rewrites, he was changed to a heavyweight, aging man more in keeping with the images of Southern sheriffs playing out on news reports about the Civil Rights Movement. Jewison's first choice to play Gillespie was George C. Scott. When the actor was tied up with work on The Flim-Flam Man (1967), the director considered Lawrence Tierney but eventually turned to Rod Steiger. Poitier signed to make the film for $200,000. Steiger received $100,000.
When The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming became a big hit, Jewison used his new clout to convince Mirisch to let him film In the Heat of the Night on location. Originally, he wanted to shoot it in Mississippi. Poitier, however, had almost been killed by the Ku Klux Klan while visiting that state with Harry Belafonte, so he insisted they shoot in the North. Location scouts found the town of Sparta, IL, and writer Silliphant changed the film's location from Wells to Sparta, so they would not have to change local signs. The film was shot in the small towns of Dyersburg, Tennessee and Freeburg, Belleville, and Sparta, Illinois, giving the film the perfect atmosphere of a stifling rural town in the South, the type of place where every newcomer is eyed with suspicion. Quincy Jones' rootsy, innovative score mingled elements of country blues, bluegrass and rock to evoke the languid tension of the town.
The decision to use Sparta's name in the film was mainly financial. Jewison planned the production to keep costs down as much as possible. That included using lesser-known actors in the supporting cast. Jewison was ready to offer a contract to former child actor Robert Blake to play Harvey Oberst, the chief suspect in the case, when the casting director brought in Scott Wilson, who had never made a film before. Several other players had worked with casting director Lynn Stalmaster in television, including William Schallert, Anthony James and Warren Oates. The best-known supporting player at the time was Lee Grant, cast as the victim's wife. She had recently won an Emmy for her performance on “Peyton Place,” her first major role since being blacklisted a decade earlier. Jewison insisted on casting her because her career had been stalled for so long by the blacklist. It was her first Hollywood film since Middle of the Night (1959).
In his autobiography, “My Life,” Poitier recalls his experience with Steiger playing Police Chief Bill Gillespie; "On weekends when we ventured out to a movie or dinner, he would remain completely immersed in the character of the Southern sheriff – he spoke with the same accent and walked with the same gait, on and off camera. I was astonished at the intensity of his involvement with the character."
In the Heat Of The Night fit in well with the canons of screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, director Norman Jewison and cinematographer Haskell Wexler. Silliphant went on to pen the poignant Charly (1968) and another racially-tinged drama, The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970). Wexler brought a harsh, realistic look to films like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?(1966) and documentaries like No Nukes (1980), later working on such socially-conscious fare as Coming Home (1978) and Matewan (1987). With In The Heat of the Night's performances and screenplay drawing so much of the viewer's attention, Wexler's camera work almost takes a backseat, but his shot compositions and angles complement the movie's mood seamlessly.
Tibbs posed several problems to the locals, not only as an outsider and a Black man; his knowledge of police work and forensics threatened to embarrass the local police and make them look like backwoods hicks. It would have been easy to make Gillespie's character a stereotypical, loudmouthed Southern bigot, but screenwriter Silliphant imbued him with much more depth than that. By the same turn, Tibbs is shown to be a flawed man as well, with his own pride and cleverness often getting in his way. As the film unfolds, Gillespie and Tibbs slowly come to the realization that they have more in common than they'd like to admit and even begin to develop a grudging respect for each other. Thus, a movie that could easily have become obvious and heavy-handed is instead a subtle, character-driven gem.
Producer: Walter Mirisch
Director: Norman Jewison
Screenplay: Stirling Silliphant
Cinematography: Haskell Wexler
Costume Design: Alan Levine
Film Editing: Hal Ashby
Original Music: Quincy Jones
Principal Cast: Sidney Poitier (Virgil Tibbs), Rod Steiger (Police Chief Bill Gillespie), Warren Oates (Deputy Sam Wood), Lee Grant (Mrs. Leslie Colbert), Larry Gates (Eric Endicott), James Patterson (Mr. Purdy), William Schallert (Mayor Schubert), Beah Richards (Mama Caleba), Matt Clark (Packy).
C-110m. Letterboxed. Closed captioning.
