Herman Raucher
| Herman Raucher | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 13, 1928 Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Author, screenwriter, playwright |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | NYU |
| Genre | Fiction, film, theatre |
| Website | |
| hermanraucher |
|
Herman Raucher (born April 13, 1928) is an American author and screenwriter. He is best known for writing the autobiographical screenplay and novel Summer of '42, which became one of the highest grossing films and one of the best selling novels of the 1970s, respectively. He began his writing career during the Golden Age of Television, when he moonlighted as a scriptwriter while working for a Madison Avenue advertising agency. He effectively retired from writing in the 1980s after a number of projects failed to come to fruition, though his books remain in print and a remake of one of his films, Sweet November, was produced in 2001.
Raucher was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a World War I veteran whom Raucher recalled as having a bayonet wound across his forehead. The family's financial situation fluctuated according to the success of the elder Raucher's career. During more profitable years, the family vacationed on Nantucket. During one such trip, when he was fourteen, Raucher developed a friendship with an older woman he identified as "Dorothy," a war bride whose husband was fighting in Europe. Upon learning of her husband's death, a drunken Dorothy initiated a sexual encounter with Raucher, an event which formed the basis for Summer of '42. During this time, Raucher's best friend was a boy named Oscar "Oscy" Seltzer, who would later go on to become a United States Army medic who died during the Korean War while tending to a wounded soldier.
After graduating high school, Raucher attended NYU, where he studied advertising and worked as a cartoonist for $38 a week, drawing comic strips. After graduating he became an office boy at 20th Century Fox and eventually worked his way into advertising; Raucher was known for his hobby of writing plays, which several ad executives believed to be the mark of a creative genius. Raucher proved successful as an ad man, and was part of the advertising team that developed the ad campaign for the opening of Disneyland.
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