Old television shows never die; they just get uploaded to the Internet. Recently Youtube introduced me to “All in the Family”, a brilliant if less-than-politically-correct sitcom from the 1970s. But even though I’d never watched the show before, the lead character just seemed so familiar. And that’s how, after a few episodes, I found myself digging through actor Carroll O’Connor’s career, and re-discovering where I’d already met the man: in Sparta, Mississippi, where he played the role of Sheriff Bill Gillespie.
But of course, we all know how these things go. Before “In the Heat of the Night” was a hit television series, with 142 episodes running from 1988 to 1995, it was a 1967 movie with Rod Steiger playing the role of Chief Gillespie.
But even before that, the world first received this unique story back in 1965, as a best-selling novel from author John Ball.
Ball’s classic police procedural is set in the town Wells, South Carolina. It’s a quiet place where the streets are normally rolled up after dark, so when a patrolman finds a dead body lying in the middle of the road one night, the department doesn’t know quite how to approach the case. Standard operating procedure calls for deputies to round up any suspicious characters, including strangers passing through town, which explains how a black man named Virgil Tibbs came to be detained. Tibbs claimed he was waiting on an early train out of town, but when he was discovered carrying a wallet full of cash, he was dragged down to jail with no opportunity to defend himself. Finally, once face-to-face with Sheriff Gillespie, Tibbs explains that he was heading back home to Philadelphia, after visiting family in Wells. Moreover, all of the money on his person was legally earned… through his job as a city homicide detective!
While a phone call to his police chief quickly clears up the “misunderstanding”, Detective Tibbs is shocked to learn that he’s officially been placed on temporary duty status in Sparta. After all, he is a homicide detective, and it’s clear that his local law enforcement colleagues could use a man of his expertise to lead the murder investigation. As Tibbs reluctantly works his way through the case— and through local society— both he and Sparta’s upstanding (read: white) townspeople experience a great deal of culture shock.
Ball’s work was so well received that he would go on to feature Detective Virgil Tibbs in a series of five books over the next two decades. The 1967 film that followed was an equally huge success, even if this spinoff did take a few liberties with the original text. Actor Sidney Poitier was chosen to play the role of Detective Tibbs at the height of his career, and he delivered one of the most memorable movie quotes of all time:
Later, when this story and its characters were revived for television, Howard Rollins stood in for the role of Virgil Tibbs, with my old friend Carroll O’Connor a natural as Sheriff Gillespie. And to be honest, that’s one of the things I appreciate most about a great story. No matter how it’s interpreted— through a book, a film, or even a television series— all of those different takes only serve to make it more appealing to a wider range of audiences.
But as far as John Ball’s novel goes, I suspect that some younger readers might not have gotten around to checking out this classic yet. “In the Heat of the Night” is a must-read for any fan of detective fiction, so be sure to ask if your local library has a copy.