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

Herman Raucher, the best-selling author and screenwriter who earned an Oscar nomination for the coming-of-age classic Summer of ’42 and wrote the script for the thought-provoking Watermelon Man, has died. He was 95.

Raucher died Thursday of natural causes at Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Connecticut, his daughter Jenny Raucher told The Hollywood Reporter.

Raucher, who started out in live television, penned the screenplays for two Anthony Newley-starring films: Sweet November (1968), directed by Robert Ellis Miller and also featuring Sandy Dennis, and Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969), featuring Joan Collins.

He also was given inspiration from Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 hit song to write the script for Ode to Billy Joe (1976), a love story that starred Robby Benson and Glynnis O’Connor and was helmed by Max Baer Jr.

With the Robert Mulligan-directed Summer of ’42 (1971) in postproduction, someone came up with the idea of Raucher writing a book to help publicize the Warner Bros. picture that starred Jennifer O’Neill, Gary Grimes and Jerry Houser.

It took Raucher about three or four weeks in a “stream of consciousness” to complete the book, which became a national best-seller before the film hit theaters. Both the movie and book are based on incidents that happened to him one summer in Nantucket when he was 14.

“There were no cars. There were ferryboats,” he recalled in a 2002 interview. “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 got people’s attention with the groundbreaking, racially charged Watermelon Man (1970), directed by Melvin Van Peebles in his only studio film. Godfrey Cambridge stars as a white bigot who wakes up one morning in his suburban home as a Black man.

Born on April 13, 1928, Raucher grew up in Brooklyn and graduated from Erasmus High School and NYU. He began his writing career crafting original one-hour dramas for such esteemed network anthology shows as Studio One, Goodyear Playhouse and The Alcoa Hour.

Meanwhile, he was serving as an advertising copy director for Walt Disney, whose company was expanding from animated films into live-action productions. The opening of Disneyland in 1955, and all the excitement that came with it, also got him work.

Raucher continued as creative director and board member of several New York advertising agencies before deciding to focus on his writing, which included the 1962 Broadway comedy Harold, starring Anthony Perkins and Don Adams, and six novels, including A Glimpse of Tiger, There Should Have Been Castles and Maynard’s House.

For Hollywood, he also wrote the Summer of ’42 sequel Class of ’44 (1973), which brought back Grimes and Houser, and co-wrote Sidney Sheldon’s The Other Side of Midnight (1977).

Similar to Summer of ’42, he penned a novelization for Ode to Billy Joe after finishing the screenplay.

“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 daughter noted.

Survivors include another daughter, Jacqueline, and his granddaughters, Samantha and Jamie. His wife of 42 years, Mary Kathryn, a student of the School of American Ballet with George Balanchine and a dancer on Broadway, died in 2002.

Donations in his name can be made to the Michael J. Fox Foundation.