Summer of '42

Summer of '42
original one-sheet poster
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRobert Mulligan
Written byHerman Raucher
Produced byRichard A. Roth
StarringJennifer O'Neill
Gary Grimes
Jerry Houser
Oliver Conant
Narrated byRobert Mulligan
CinematographyRobert Surtees
Edited byFolmar Blangsted
Music byMichel Legrand
Production
company
Mulligan-Roth Productions
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release date
  • April 18, 1971 (1971-04-18)
Running time
104 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
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.

  1. ^ "Summer of '42 (15)". British Board of Film Classification. April 15, 1971. Archived from the original on February 14, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
  2. ^ Trust, Richard (June 16, 2016). "Summer of '42: From Film to Book". yesterdaysisland.com. Retrieved October 7, 2023.
  3. ^ "Summer of '42, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Archived from the original on May 28, 2014. Retrieved January 12, 2012.