Summer Of 39;42 Book Pdf
Piperion Giles
Summer of '42 is a 1971 American coming-of-age film directed by Robert Mulligan, and starring Jennifer O'Neill, Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser, and Christopher Norris. Based on the memoirs of screenwriter Herman "Hermie" Raucher, it follows a teenage boy who, during the summer of 1942 on Nantucket Island, 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 a commercial and critical success and was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning for Best Original Score for Michel Legrand.
Raucher's novelization of his screenplay of the same name was released prior to the film and became a runaway bestseller, to the point that audiences lost sight of the fact that the book was an adaptation of 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 an off Broadway adaptation in 2001 brought it back into the public light and prompted Barnes & Noble to acquire the publishing rights to the book. The film was followed by a sequel, Class of '44, also written by Raucher, with lead actors Grimes, Houser, and Conant reprising their roles.
They continue spending afternoons on the beach, where their thoughts turn to sex. All of them are virgins: Oscy is obsessed with the act of sex, while Hermie develops romantic interest in the bride, whose husband he spots leaving the island on a water taxi one morning. Later that day, Hermie sees her outside the market struggling with grocery bags. He offers to aid her in carrying the bags home, which she accepts, and in this way, gets to meet her.
Meanwhile, Oscy and Hermie become convinced they know everything necessary to lose their virginity. They test this by going to the cinema and picking up a trio of high-school girls. Oscy stakes out Miriam, "giving" Hermie her less attractive friend, Aggie, and leaving Benjie with Gloria, a heavyset girl with dental braces. Frightened by the immediacy of sex, Benjie runs off. The other two girls initially refuse to go in without Benji's would-be date, but she says to go without her, then leaves herself. The war bride, who is also at the movies, sees Hermie in line and asks him if he can help her move some boxes that Thursday. During the film, Oscy attempts to put the moves on Miriam, eventually making out with her. Hermie succeeds with Aggie, who allows him to grope what he thinks is her breast; Oscy later points out that Hermie was fondling her arm.
On Thursday, Hermie helps the bride move boxes into her attic, and she thanks him with a kiss on the forehead. Later, in preparation for a marshmallow roast on the beach with Aggie and Miriam, Hermie goes to the drugstore and hilariously builds up the nerve to ask the druggist for condoms (or "rubbers," as they were known in the '40s). That night, Hermie roasts marshmallows with Aggie while Oscy has sex with Miriam behind the dune bushes. Oscy is doing so well, he comes up and asks Hermie for some of his condoms. Aggie, wondering what is going on, walks over to Oscy and Miriam, sees them having sex, and runs home, upset.
The next day, Hermie comes across the bride sitting outside her house, writing to her husband. Hermie offers to keep her company that night, and she accepts. Hermie says she never got her name, and she replies her name is Dorothy. Later, Hermie runs into Oscy, who relates that Miriam's appendix burst and she has been rushed to the mainland. When Oscy asks about Dorothy and makes crude comments, Hermie rebukes him for his crassness.
The next day, Hermie and Oscy reconcile, with Oscy informing Hermie that Miriam will recover. Hermie goes back to Dorothy's house only to learn she has left the island. She has left behind a letter for Hermie wherein she expresses her hopes that Hermie understands she must go home, assures him she will never forget him, and hopes he will be spared from life's senseless tragedies.
In voiceover, the adult Hermie recounts that he never saw Dorothy again, nor did he learn what became of her. He continues with the notion that kids were different back then, and it took a little longer for them to figure things out. We learn he has rejoined his two friends with a rundown of that summer's events: four raids on the Coast Guard station, five movies, and nine days of rain. He concludes with, "Benjie broke his watch, Oscy gave up the harmonica, and in a very special way, I lost Hermie. Forever."
Director Robert Mulligan provided uncredited voiceover narration as the older Hermie.[4] Maureen Stapleton provided the voice for Sophie, Hermie's mother,[4] and film stuntman Walter Scott appears uncredited as Dorothy's husband.
The film (and subsequent novel) were memoirs written by Herman Raucher; they detailed the events in his life over the course of the summer he spent on Nantucket Island in 1942 when he was fourteen years old.[5] Originally, the film was meant to be a tribute to his friend Oscar "Oscy" Seltzer, an Army medic killed in the Korean War.[5][6] Seltzer was shot dead on a battlefield in Korea while tending to a wounded man; this happened on Raucher's birthday, and consequently, Raucher has not celebrated a birthday since. While writing the screenplay, Raucher realized that despite growing up with Oscy and having bonded with him through their formative years, the two had never really had any meaningful conversations or known one another on a more personal level.[5]
Instead, Raucher decided to focus on the first major adult experience of his life, that of falling in love for the first time. The woman (named Dorothy, like her screen counterpart) was a fellow vacationer on the island whom the 14-year-old Raucher had befriended one day when he helped her carry groceries home; he became a friend of her and her husband and helped her with chores after her husband was called to fight in World War II. On the night memorialized in the film, Raucher randomly came to visit her, unaware his arrival was just minutes after she received notification of her husband's death. She was confused and upset, had been drinking heavily, and repeatedly called Raucher by her husband's name. Although both ultimately disrobed, contrary to popular perception, sexual intercourse did not occur. Raucher admitted this in a 2002 interview, saying it was mostly holding, but in the movie "We let you think what you want."[5]
The next morning, Raucher discovered that she had left the island, leaving behind a note for him (which is read at the end of the film and reproduced in the book). He never saw her again; his last "encounter" with her, recounted on an episode of The Mike Douglas Show, came after the film's release in 1971, when she was one of over a dozen women who wrote letters to Raucher claiming to be "his" Dorothy.[7] Raucher recognized the "real" Dorothy's handwriting, and she confirmed her identity by making references to certain events only she could have known about.[7] She told Raucher that she had lived for years with the guilt that she had potentially traumatized him and ruined his life. She told Raucher that she was glad he turned out all right, and that they had best not re-visit the past.[5][7]
In a 2002 Scripps Treasure Coast Publishing interview, Raucher lamented never hearing from her again and expressed his hope that she was still alive.[5] Raucher's novelization of the screenplay, with the dedication, "To those I love, past and present," serves more as the tribute to Seltzer that he had intended the film to be, with the focus of the book being more on the two boys' relationship than Raucher's relationship with Dorothy. Consequently, the book also mentions Seltzer's death, which is absent from the film adaptation.[8]
An error in both the book and film centers on the movie Now, Voyager. They go to a movie theater to see the movie in the "summer of '42". However, the film was released nationally in the U.S. on October 31, 1942, with an October 22 premiere in New York City, so it would have been impossible to see the movie that summer.
Raucher wrote the film script in the 1950s during his tenure as a television writer, but "couldn't give it away."[5] In the 1960s, he met Robert Mulligan, best known for directing To Kill a Mockingbird. Raucher showed Mulligan the script, and Mulligan took it to Warner Bros., where Mulligan argued the film could be shot for the relatively low price of $1 million, and Warner approved it.[5] They had so little faith in the film becoming a box-office success, though, they shied from paying Raucher outright for the script, instead promising him ten percent of the gross.[5]
When casting for the role of Dorothy, Warner Bros. declined to audition any actresses younger than the age of 30; Jennifer O'Neill's agent, who had developed a fondness for the script, convinced the studio to audition his client, who was only 22 at the time. O'Neill auditioned for the role, albeit hesitantly, not wanting to perform any nude scenes. O'Neill got the role and Mulligan agreed to find a way to make the film work without blatant nudity.[9]
Though set on the east coast, Summer of '42 was filmed in Northern California, largely in Fort Bragg and Mendocino.[10] Shooting took place over eight weeks, during which O'Neill was sequestered from the three boys cast as "The Terrible Trio," in order to ensure that they did not become close and ruin the sense of awkwardness and distance that their characters felt towards Dorothy. Production ran smoothly, finishing on schedule.[5]
After production, Warner Bros., still wary about the film only being a minor success, asked Raucher to adapt his script into a book.[5] Raucher wrote it in three weeks, and Warner Bros. released it prior to the film to build interest in the story.[5] The book quickly became a national bestseller, so that when trailers premiered in theaters, the film was billed as being "based on the national bestseller," despite the film having been completed first.[5][8] Ultimately, the book became one of the best-selling novels of the first half of the 1970s, requiring 23 reprints between 1971 and 1974 to keep up with customer demand.[8]
c80f0f1006