In The Heat Of The Night - John Ball

 IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT - JOHN BALL

The book upon which the film starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger was based of course, and it's good - very good, in fact. But then could it be otherwise? The premise of the story, particularly for America in 1965 when it was first published was a pertinent and provocative one. A man is found dead in the road late one night in a small town in South Carolina. He's been murdered, and on heading down to the train station to check that the murderer isn't trying to escape by train, police find a black man there on the platform who is immediately arrested on suspicion of murder. It turns out he's a policeman himself, a detective just passing through the town on his way home to California.

Racism and segregation in the town are engrained, everyday facts of life that are suddenly confronted by the presence of this well-heeled, educated black man whose detective skills are second to none and who turns out to the chagrin of some to be the town's only hope in catching the killer.

1965 was the year in which Malcolm X was assassinated and the year of the Watts Riots. It was the year in which the subject of civil rights in America had come to the fore, and so come the publication of In The Heat Of The Night it was immediately put into a bracket of being culturally and politically significant. Apparently, author John Ball had to deal with considerable pressure from his editor when Ball insisted his detective be a black man, which just goes to show how deep racism ran back then. His editor's point of view was no doubt based on his belief that it wouldn't be commercially viable but he was of course proved wrong. And there's a lesson in that. Perhaps a few years prior to Ball writing his book the editor might have been right but by 1965 the times they were-a-changing and in its own small way In The Heat Of The Night aligned itself with and abetted that change.

The character of the detective, going by the name of Virgil Tibbs, is an interesting one and in many ways reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's laconic Man With No Name. He's very cool, calm, and collected, displaying an obvious self-confidence. It's very apparent as soon as he enters the storyline in fact that he is far smarter, better educated, and a far better person than every other person in the town including the chief of police (as played by Rod Steiger in the movie). On coming into contact with the detective, whether they like it or not everyone realises this as well. Because of his skin colour, however, it's the detective who is discriminated against be it through blatant prejudice on the part of the locals, through segregation and being barred from whites only places and areas, and through sheer ignorance. 

The similarity between the Tibbs character and the characters Clint Eastwood became world-famous for playing is actually almost too close to be a coincidence and begs the questions of influence and even plagiarism. Did Clint Eastwood ever read In The Heat Of The Night? The way the Man With No Name character is played you might think so but even more so with Eastwood's later film Coogan's Bluff, where he plays a Texan detective transposed to New York City where he is suddenly - like Virgil Tibbs - the stranger in a strange land.

There is also the question of the power and impact of one-liners that Eastwood, of course, became a master of. In The Heat Of The Night contains a classic and near-iconic one where the chief of police asks the detective about his name: '"Incidentally, Virgil is a pretty fancy name for a black boy like you. What do they call you around home where you come from?"

"They call me Mr. Tibbs," Virgil answered.'

Classic stuff indeed. A classic movie and even more so, a classic book.

John Serpico