Summer of '42

The film flashes back to a day that then 15-year-old Hermie (Gary Grimes) and his friends – jock Oscy (Jerry Houser) and introverted nerd Benjie (Oliver Conant) – spent running and playing on the beach. Though a pop culture phenomenon in the first half of the 1970s, the novelization went out of print and slipped into obscurity throughout the next two decades until a Broadway adaptation in 2001 brought it back into the public light and prompted Barnes & Noble to acquire the publishing rights to the book.

He eventually does so, after purchasing some ice cream, telling the pharmacist that the condoms are for his brother and he thinks that they are, in fact, a type of water balloon. That night, during the marshmallow roast, Hermie finds himself unable to put the moves on Aggie, although Oscy is successful in having sex with Miriam between some sand dunes; he is so successful, in fact, he eventually sneaks over to where Hermie and Aggie are roasting marshmallows and asks Hermie to give him some condoms, having run out of his own. The film was directed by Robert Mulligan, and starred Gary Grimes as Hermie, Jerry Houser as his best friend Oscy, Oliver Conant as their nerdy young friend Benjie, Jennifer O Neill as Hermie s mysterious love interest, and Katherine Allentuck and Christopher Norris as a pair of girls whom Hermie and Oscy attempt to seduce.

Of the principal four cast members of Summer of 42, only Jerry Houser and Gary Grimes returned for prominent roles. All that remains is an envelope tacked to her front door with Hermie s name on it.

She moves to the record player and turns on an album and invites Hermie to dance with her. Oscy and Hermie convince the reluctant Benjie to steal the book; upon reading it, Oscy and Hermie become convinced they now know everything necessary to lose their virginity and become great lovers.

Raucher went to bed with her one night when he came to visit her, arriving only minutes after she received notification of her husband s death. In a 2002 interview, Raucher lamented never hearing from her again and expressed his hope that she was still alive. Herman Raucher wrote the film script in the 1950s during his tenure as a television writer, but couldn t give it away. When casting for the role of Dorothy, Warner Bros. Near the end of the song, Dorothy kisses Hermie and the two embrace, slowly moving to the bedroom, where she makes love with him.

To those she loved, she exuded strength, life, laughter and light, and to me, also sorrow for circumstance that had bound her to my best friend through whom we met in the warmth and serenity of her home. It went on to be nominated for over a dozen awards, including Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Director , and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay .

2 (alternately titled Summer of 4 2 ) was largely a parody of Summer of 42. has attempted to buy back Raucher s ten-percent of the film as well as his rights to the story so it could be remade; Raucher has consistently declined. In 2001, Raucher consented to the film being made into an off Broadway musical play.

Government, with a time stamp of just an hour prior, saying that Dorothy s husband is dead, his plane having been shot down over France. Nothing from the first day I saw her and no one that has happened to me since, has ever been as frightning and as confusing, for no person I ve ever known has ever done more to make me feel more sure, more insecure, more important and less significant. Later in that episode, he admits that he ripped off most of the essay from Summer of 42. In the ensuing years since the film s release, Warner Bros.

Hermie leaves, his last image of Dorothy being that of her leaning against the railing, as she smokes a cigarette and stares off into the night sky. Hermie spends the entire night roaming the island in a state of shock. Hermie, too, sees the act, although he is more mesmerized than anything. The next day, Hermie comes across the young bride sitting outside her house, writing a letter to her husband.

Mulligan also has an uncredited role as the voice of the adult Hermie. Summer of 42 is a 1971 American coming-of-age drama film based on the memoirs of screenwriter Herman Raucher.

Jennifer O Neill did not appear in the film at all, nor was the character of Dorothy mentioned. It amalgamated scenes from another early 70s coming-of-age film, American Graffiti (both acknowledged in the DVD commentary for the episode). There are also similarities between Summer of 42 and Malèna, another coming-of-age film set in the context of World War II, and starring Monica Bellucci and Giuseppe Sulfaro. An episode of the 1970s sitcom Happy Days was loosely based upon Summer of 42, with Richie Cunningham befriending a Korean War widow. In Family Guy episode Play It Again, Brian , Brian wins an award for his essay and reads an excerpt: She was Grace, in name and in essence.

Her note closes with the hope that Hermie may be spared the senseless tragedies of life. In the film s final scene, Hermie is seen looking at Dorothy s old house and the ocean and remembering the day that he, Oscy, and Benjie first saw her, as the adult Herman Raucher sadly recounts that in the ensuing years he has never seen Dorothy again or learned what became of her. The film (and subsequent novel) were memoirs written by Herman Raucher; they detailed the events in his life over the course of the summer he spent on Nantucket Island in 1942 when he was fourteen years old. Instead, Raucher decided to focus on the first major adult experience of his life, that of falling in love for the first time. Hermie offers to come keep her company that night and she says she looks forward to seeing him, finally revealing that her name is Dorothy.

The boys are all struck by her beauty, especially Hermie, who finds himself unable to get her out of his mind. The next several days on the island find the boys continuing to spend their afternoons on the beach, where, in the midst of young, scantily-clad teenage girls, their thoughts invariably turn to sex; all of them are virgins, the height of their experience being when Oscy and Hermie touched a girl s breasts when they were twelve. Bryan Adams has, however, credited the film as being a partial inspiration for his 1985 hit Summer of 69 . The Simpsons episode Summer of 4 Ft.

Dorothy comes out of her bedroom, crying, and Hermie comforts her. to audition his client, who was only twenty-two at the time. Though the film took place on Nantucket, by the 1970s the island was too far modernized to be convincingly transformed to resemble a 1940s resort, so production was taken to the West Coast of the United States. After production, Warner Bros., still wary about the film only being a minor success, asked Raucher to adapt his script into a book. The film s soundtrack consists almost entirely of compositions by Michel Legrand, many of which are variants upon The Summer Knows , the film s theme.

Hermie, meanwhile, finds himself getting unexpected success with Aggie, who allows him to grope her breast for almost twelve minutes; it isn t until after the show Oscy points out to Hermie the reason for Aggie s passivity was that Hermie was in fact fondling her elbow. The following morning, Hermie helps the young bride move boxes into her attic, and when he turns down her offer of monetary compensation, she thanks him for his honesty and friendship and gives him a kiss on the forehead. Later that day, Hermie spots her trying to carry numerous bags of groceries by herself, and helps her get them back to her house.

After the stills finish, we hear Raucher speaking in the present day (1971 according to the book), recalling the summer he spent on the island (fictionalized in the novel as Packett Island ) in 1942. He approaches her on the porch, where she can only say good night to him.

declined to audition any actresses younger than the age of thirty; Jennifer O Neill s agent, who had developed a fondness for the script, convinced Warner Bros. At dawn he meets Oscy and the two share a silent moment of reconciliation, broken only by Oscy s informing Hermie that Miriam survived her appendix bursting but will remain hospitalized until autumn.

Today, the book remains in-print. The film opens with a series of grainy, color-warped still photographs appearing over melancholy piano music, representing the abstract memories of the unseen Herman Raucher (Robert Mulligan narrating in voiceover), a middle-aged man from Brooklyn. Sensing that something traumatic has occurred between Hermie and Dorothy, Oscy, in an uncharacteristic act of sensitivity, lets Hermie be by himself, departing with the words, Sometimes life is just one big pain in the ass. Hermie goes back to Dorothy s house to try to sort out what has happened; he finds it abandoned, Dorothy having fled the island in the night.

Frightened by the reality of the concept of sex, Benjie runs away into the night, and is not seen by Hermie or Oscy again the whole summer. Hermie, now convinced he is at the brink of adulthood because of his relationship with Dorothy, brushes Oscy off and the two get into a fight.

Academy Award-winning actress Maureen Stapleton (Allentuck s real life mother) also appears in a small, uncredited voice role (calling after Hermie as he leaves the house in an early scene). Raucher s novelization of his screenplay was released prior to the film s release and became a runaway bestseller, to the point that audiences lost sight of the fact that the book was based on the film and not vice-versa. Gloria, thinking that her appearance repulsed Benjie, likewise walks away.

While Oscy is more interested in sex with gorgeous girls, however, Hermie finds himself developing genuine romantic interest in the young bride, whose husband he spots leaving the island on a military transport boat one morning. The film met with poor critical reviews; the only three reviews available at rottentomatoes.com are resoundingly negative, Legrand s theme song for the film, The Summer Knows , has since become a pop standard, being recorded by such artists as Peter Nero (who had a charting hit with his 1971 version), Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, and Barbra Streisand. The 1973 song Summer (The First Time) by Bobby Goldsboro has almost exactly the same subject and apparent setting, although there is no direct credited link.

An elated Hermie goes home and puts on a suit, saddle shoes, and a dress shirt, and heads back to Dorothy s house, running into Oscy on the way; Oscy relates Miriam s appendix burst that morning and she s been rushed to the mainland. The musical has since been performed across the country, at venues such as Kalliope Stage in Cleveland Heights, Ohio in 2004 (directed by Paul Gurgol) and Mill Mountain Theatre in Roanake, VA (directed by Jere Hodgin and choreographed by Bernard Monroe), and was subsequently recorded as a concert by the York Theatre Company in 2006. In 2002, Jennifer O Neill claimed to have obtained the rights to make a sequel to Summer of 42, based on a short story she wrote, which took place in an alternate reality in which Herman Raucher had a son and divorced his wife, went back to Nantucket in 1962 with a still-living Oscar Seltzer, and encountered Dorothy again and married her.

The next year, the film received a digitally remastered DVD release from Warner Bros. Afterwards, Dorothy puts on her bathrobe and retires to the porch while Hermie dresses alone in her bedroom.

Oliver Conant did appear in the film, albeit for less than five minutes of screen time. Hermie opens it; inside is a note from Dorothy, saying that she hopes he understands that she must go back home to arrange her husband s funeral and deal with familial obligations.

The woman (named Dorothy, like her screen counterpart) was a fellow vacationer on the island whom Raucher had befriended one day when he helped her carry groceries home; he became a friend of her and her husband and helped her with chores after her husband was called to fight in World War II. Later, in preparation for a marshmallow roast on the beach with Aggie and Miriam, Hermie and Oscy make carbon copies from the sex manual; then Hermie goes to the local drugstore, and in a protracted sequence attempts to build up the nerve to ask the pharmacist for condoms.

Sneaking in, he discovers an empty bottle of whiskey, several cigarette butts, and a telegram from the U.S. has not been realized, and it is unknown whether O Neill is still attempting to get it produced, or if Raucher (who technically has no say) consented to its production. .

Still, it counted among its fans Stanley Kubrick, who in a rare moment of pop-culture infusion into his films, had the film play on a television in a scene in The Shining. In 1973, the film was followed up with a sequel, Class of 44, a slice-of-life film made up of vignettes about Herman Raucher and Oscar Selzter s experiences in college prior to fighting in the Korean War. She assures Hermie that she will never forget him, and that she hopes one day he will come to terms with what happened that night.

In addition to Legrand s scoring, the film also features the song Hold Tight by The Andrews Sisters and the theme from Now, Voyager. Oscy threatens to tell everyone on the island that Hermie is a homosexual, and storms off. Hermie heads over to Dorothy s house, which he finds eerily quiet.

The two strike up a friendship and he agrees to return in the future to help her out with chores. Meanwhile, Benjie mentions that one of the books kept in the beach house his parents are renting is a sex manual. They decide to put this hypothesis to the test by going to the island film house and picking up a trio of girls; Oscy happens to find three high-school girls, and sets about staking out the most attractive one, Miriam (Christopher Norris), for himself, giving Hermie her wallflower friend, Aggie (Katherine Allentuck) and leaving Benjie with Gloria, a heavyset girl with braces.

Confused as to what s happening, Aggie follows Oscy back between the dunes, where she sees him having sex with Miriam and runs home crying. The only crew member left from Summer of 42 was Raucher himself, with a new director and composer being brought in to replace Mulligan and Legrand.

In the middle of their goofing off, the three boys spot a newlywed young soldier carrying his bride (Jennifer O Neill) into a house on the beach. It tells the story of Raucher as a boy, in his early teens on his 1942 summer vacation on Nantucket Island, off the coast of New England, who embarked on a one-sided romance with a woman, Dorothy, whose husband had gone off to fight in World War II.

Hermie and Oscy spend the entirety of the film (Now, Voyager - an anachronism, as that film wasn t released until October 1942) attempting to score with Miriam and Aggie, Oscy aggressively pursuing Miriam to the point that she strikes him, although Oscy soon learns that she is the island hussy and simply playing hard to get. Due to this lack of songs, when the soundtrack was released, it contained not only the score to Summer, but also Legrand s composition The Picasso Suite. In spite of this, many issues of the album are still labeled as exclusively being the soundtrack to Summer, while others contain the notation in small print on the album cover Also contains The Picasso Suite . The film became a blockbuster upon its release, grossing twenty-five million dollars, making it the fourth highest grossing film of 1971 and one of the most successful films in history, with an expense to profit ratio of 1:25; As well as being a commercial success, Summer of 42 also received rave critical reviews.