Herman Raucher, ‘Summer of ’42’ and ‘Watermelon Man’ Screenwriter, Dies at 95

Herman Raucher, the very popular writer and screenwriter that made an Oscar election for the coming-of- age traditional Summertime of ’42 and composed the manuscript for the provocative Watermelon Guy, has actually passed away. He was 95.

Raucher passed away Thursday of all-natural reasons at Stamford Health Center in Stamford, Connecticut, his little girl Jenny Raucher informed The Hollywood Press reporter.

Raucher, that started in real-time tv, penciled the movie scripts for 2 Anthony Newley-starring movies: Dessert November (1968 ), guided by Robert Ellis Miller and additionally including Sandy Dennis, and Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Before Fail To Remember Grace Humppe and Locate Real Joy? (1969 ), including Joan Collins.

He additionally was provided ideas from Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 hit track to create the manuscript for Ode to Billy Joe (1976 ), a romance that starred Robby Benson and Glynnis O’Connor and was helmed by Max Baer Jr.

With the Robert Mulligan-directed Summertime of ’42 (1971) in postproduction, somebody created the concept of Raucher composing a publication to assist advertise the Detector Bros. photo that starred Jennifer O’Neill, Gary Grimes and Jerry Houser.

It took Raucher concerning 3 or 4 weeks in a “stream of consciousness” to finish guide, which came to be a nationwide hot seller prior to the movie struck movie theaters. Both the film and publication are based upon events that took place to him one summertime in Nantucket when he was 14.

“There were no cars. There were ferryboats,” he remembered in a 2002 meeting.“People usually left wagons and such at the ferryboats, so that when they got off, they could put whatever they wanted on it. Or they could take it to the grocery and take it to their homes. And [an older woman he would meet] had no wagon. And I just — carried her bags. And we became friendly.”

Raucher obtained individuals’s focus with the groundbreaking, racially billed Watermelon Guy (1970 ), guided by Melvin Van Peebles in his only workshop movie. Godfrey Cambridge stars as a white chauvinist that gets up one early morning in the residential areas as a Black male.

Born upon April 13, 1928, Raucher matured in Brooklyn and finished from Erasmus Secondary school and NYU. He started his composing job crafting initial one-hour dramatization for such prestigious network compilation reveals as Workshop One, Goodyear Play House and The Alcoa Hour.

At the same time, he was working as an advertising and marketing duplicate supervisor for Walt Disney, whose firm was broadening from computer animated movies right into live-action manufacturings. The opening of Disneyland in 1955, and all the exhilaration that included it, additionally obtained him function.

Raucher proceeded as innovative supervisor and board participant of numerous New york city ad agency prior to making a decision to concentrate on his writing, that included the 1962 Broadway funny Harold, starring Anthony Perkins and Don Adams, and 6 stories, consisting of A Glance of Tiger, There Must Have Been Castles and Maynard’s Home.

For Hollywood, he additionally composed the Summertime of ’42 follow up Course of ’44 (1973 ), which restored Grimes and Houser, and co-wrote Sidney Sheldon’s The Opposite of Twelve O’clock At Night (1977 ).

Comparable to Summertime of ’42, he penciled a novelization for Ode to Billy Joe after ending up the movie script.

“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,” his little girl kept in mind.

Survivors consist of one more little girl, Jacqueline, and his granddaughters, Samantha and Jamie. His other half of 42 years, Mary Kathryn, a pupil of the College of American Dancing with George Balanchine and a professional dancer on Broadway, passed away in 2002.

Contributions in his name can be made to the Michael J. Fox Structure.