Herman Raucher, Oscar-nominated screenwriter dies at 95

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Herman Raucher, a best-selling author and screenwriter who was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the coming-of-age drama “Summer of ’42,” has passed away. He was ninety-five. According to his daughter Jenny Raucher, Raucher passed away on Thursday at Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Connecticut, from natural causes. Screenwriter for two Anthony Newley films, Raucher started his career in live television. The first was Sweet November (1968), directed by Robert Ellis Miller and starring Sandy Dennis; the second was Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969), which also starred Joan Collins.

When he was writing the screenplay for Max Baer Jr.’s 1976 romantic drama Ode to Billy Joe, starring Robby Benson and Glynis O’Connor, he was influenced by Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 hit song. While Summer of ’42 (1971), starring Jennifer O’Neill, Gary Grimes, and Jerry Houser, was still in postproduction, Raucher was approached to write a book to promote the Warner Bros. picture. Before the movie opened in theatres, Raucher wrote the book in a “stream of consciousness” over the course of three or four weeks. The book quickly became a national best-seller. The events that happened to him during a summer in Nantucket when he was fourteen years old are the basis for both the book and the movie.

“There were no automobiles present. In an interview from 2002, he recalled that there were ferryboats. “On the ferryboats, people would typically leave waggons and other items so they could store anything they wanted on them after they got off. Alternatively, they could bring it home from the grocery store. Moreover, [an elderly lady he would encounter] lacked waggon. And all I did was carry her bags. And we warmed up to each other.” In 1970, Raucher gained notoriety for his one and only studio feature, the revolutionary and highly controversial film Watermelon Man, directed by Melvin Van Peebles. Godfrey Cambridge portrays a white bigot who awakens one morning as a black man in his suburban home.

Born on April 13, 1928, Raucher grew up in Brooklyn and went to NYU and Erasmus High School. Writing hour-long dramas for esteemed network anthology series like Studio One, Goodyear Playhouse, and The Alcoa Hour marked the beginning of his writing career. He was employed by Walt Disney, whose company was switching from producing animated films to live-action ones, in the meantime. The Hollywood Reporter claims that the excitement surrounding Disneyland’s 1955 opening helped him land a job.

Before deciding to focus on his writing, Raucher continued to serve as creative director and board member of multiple New York advertising agencies. His works included six novels (including A Glimpse of Tiger, There Should Have Been Castles, and Maynard’s House) and the 1962 Broadway comedy Harold, starring Anthony Perkins and Don Adams. In addition, he co-wrote The Other Side of Midnight with Sidney Sheldon and wrote the sequel to Summer of ’42, Class of ’44, which brought back Grimes and Houser. Following the completion of the screenplay for Ode to Billy Joe, he penned a novelization akin to Summer of ’42.

“Despite his successes on both the big and small screen as well as the stage, Raucher always felt most at home with novels, the one medium in which no one could change as much as a comma without his approval, a condition to which every writer aspires but very few achieve,” noted his daughter. Among the survivors are his other daughters, Jacqueline and Samantha, as well as his grandchildren, Jamie and Samantha. His wife Mary Kathryn, forty-two, died in 2002. She trained under George Balanchine at the School of American Ballet and performed as a dancer on Broadway.