Summer of '42

Summer of '42
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Robert Mulligan
Written by	Herman Raucher
Produced by	Richard A. Roth
Starring	Jennifer O'Neill Gary Grimes Jerry Houser Oliver Conant
Narrated by	Robert Mulligan
Cinematography	Robert Surtees
Edited by	Folmar Blangsted
Music by	Michel Legrand
Production company	Mulligan-Roth Productions
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	April 18, 1971 (1971-04-18)
Running time	104 minutes[1]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1 million[2]
Box office	$32.1 million[3]

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, 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.