Edited by Deepali Verma
Herman Raucher, the best-selling author and screenwriter, who received an Oscar nomination for his work on the coming-of-age drama ‘Summer of ’42’, has died, according to the claims of Hollywood Reporter. Before his demise, he was aged 95.
Raucher’s demise was due to natural causes on January 4 at Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Connecticut, as per his daughter, Jenny Raucher
The start of Raucher’s career was with live television. He wrote screenplays for two Anthony Newley films namely ‘Sweet November’ (1968), directed by Robert Ellis Miller and starring Sandy Dennis, and ‘Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?’ (1969), which also starred Joan Collins.
His inspiration for ‘Ode to Billy Joe’ (1976), a love drama starring Robby Benson and Glynis O’Connor and directed by Max Baer Jr, came from Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 hit song while writing the script. While the Robert Mulligan-directed ‘Summer of ’42’ (1971) was still in post production, Raucher took someone’s suggestion to write a book to help publicise the Warner Bros. film that featured Jennifer O’Neill, Gary Grimes and Jerry Houser.
Raucher spent three or four weeks in a “stream of consciousness” to finish the book, which proved to be a national best-seller before the film was released in the theatres. The film and the book have such events at centre that occurred to him when he was 14 years old during a summer in Nantucket. “There were no cars. There were ferry boats,” he recalled in a 2002 interview.
“People usually left wagons etc on the ferry boats so that when they got off, they could put whatever they wanted on them. Or they could carry it to the grocery store and take it to their homes. An older woman that I would meet had no wagon so I just carried her bags. And we became friendly.”
Raucher firmly established his name for himself with the revolutionary, racially heated ‘Watermelon Man’ (1970), directed by Melvin Van Peebles, his sole studio feature. Godfrey Cambridge plays the role of a white bigot who wakes up in his suburban house one morning as a black guy.
Raucher was born on April 13, 1928 and grew up in Brooklyn. He attended Erasmus High School and NYU and started his writing career with one-hour dramas for prestigious network anthology series including Studio One, Goodyear Playhouse and The Alcoa Hour.
Meanwhile, he also had work arrangements with Walt Disney, which was transitioning from animated pictures to live-action projects.
Raucher held the designation of a creative director and board member of several New York advertising agencies before he took the decision to concentrate on his writing, which included the 1962 Broadway comedy Harold, that starred Anthony Perkins and Don Adams, as well as six novels, including ‘A Glimpse of Tiger’, ‘There Should Have Been Castles’, and ‘Maynard’s House’.He further responsible for writing the ‘Summer of ’42’ sequel, ‘Class of ’44’, that reintroduced the Grimes and Houser, and co-wrote ‘The Other Side of Midnight’ with Sidney Sheldon.
“Despite his successes that included both the big and small screen as well as the stage, Raucher always felt most comfortable with novels as it was 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,” his daughter noted.
His grandchildren, Samantha and Jamie, as well as another daughter, Jacqueline, are among his survivors. His 42-year-old wife, Mary Kathryn, passed away in 2002, who was a Broadway dancer and a student of George Balanchine at the School of American Ballet.
