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Summer of ’42 movie storyline. Hermie (Gary Grimes) and two of his friends Oscy (Jerry Houser) and Benjie (15) were new summer dreamers who spent their vacations on the island of Nantucket in New England in the summer of 1942, the first summer after the United States joined World War II. The only problem they have is how to cope with their newly awakening sexual impulses. Hermie’s husband went to war with her lonely wife Dorothy (Jennifer O’ Neill) falls in love.
Summer of ’42 is a 1971 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film based on the memoirs of screenwriter Herman Raucher (b. 1928). It tells the story of how Raucher, in his early teens on his 1942 summer vacation on Nantucket Island (off the coast of Cape Cod), embarks on a one-sided romance with a young woman, Dorothy, whose husband has gone off to fight in World War II.
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 the mysterious woman with whom Hermie becomes involved, and Katherine Allentuck and Christopher Norris as a pair of girls whom Hermie and Oscy attempt to seduce. Mulligan also has an uncredited role as the voice of the adult Hermie. Maureen Stapleton (Allentuck’s mother) also appears in a small, uncredited voice role (calling after Hermie as he leaves the house in an early scene, and after he enters his room in a later scene).
Raucher’s novelization of his screenplay of the same name 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. 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.
It was Warner Bros.’ most surprising hit of 1971, a year that also found the studio upping the ante to the level of Dirty Harry, The Devils and A Clockwork Orange. Amid such menacing scenery, something like Vincente Minnelli’s Tea and Sympathy (1958) – the former standard bearer of such storylines – suddenly seemed quaint, if not ridiculous. A newer, more relevant model was called-for, a need apparently also noted by the makers of Carnal Knowledge and The Last Picture Show, two other pictures released that same year which covered similar ground though with more adult cynicism.
There was room at the table for all these varieties, but what made Summer of ’42 so popular was how it managed to be romantic enough to please teenage girls and raunchy enough to keep teenage boys amused and in their seats. These qualities were also masterfully filtered through a soft-focus yet heart-punching nostalgia, the magic ingredient that sold the picture to everyone who had survived their teenage years to settle down and have teenagers of their own.
Summer of ’42 (1971)
Directed by: Robert Mulligan
Starring: Jennifer O’Neill, Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser, Oliver Conant, Katherine Allentuck, Christopher Norris, Lou Frizzell
Screenplay by: Herman Raucher
Production Design by: Albert Brenner
Cinematography by: Robert Surtees
Film Editing by: Folmar Blangsted
Set Decoration by: Marvin March
Music by: Michel Legrand
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: April 18, 1971
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