Oscar nominated screenwriter Herman Raucher passes away

Best selling author and screenwriter Herman Raucher, who received an Oscar nomination for his work on the coming of age drama Summer of '42 , has died, as per the Hollywood Reporter . He was 95. Raucher died of natural causes on Thursday at Stamford Hospital in Stamford, Connecticut, according to his daughter, Jenny Raucher.

Raucher, who began his career in live television, wrote screenplays for two Anthony Newley films: Sweet November (1968), directed by Robert Ellis Miller and starring Sandy Dennis, and Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? (1969), which also starred Joan Collins. He was inspired by Bobbie Gentry's 1967 hit song when writing the script for Ode to Billy Joe (1976), a love drama starring Robby Benson and Glynis O'Connor and directed by Max Baer Jr.While the Robert Mulligan directed Summer of '42 (1971) was still in postproduction, someone suggested Raucher write a book to help publicise the Warner Bros.

film, which featured Jennifer O'Neill, Gary Grimes, and Jerry Houser. It took Raucher three or four weeks in a "stream of consciousness" to finish the book, which became a national best seller before the film was shown in theatres. Both the film and the book are based on events that occurred to him when he was 14 years old during a summer in Nantucket." Raucher made a name for himself with the revolutionary, racially heated Watermelon Man (1970), directed by Melvin Van Peebles, his sole studio feature.

Godfrey Cambridge plays a white bigot who wakes up in his suburban house one morning as a black guy. Raucher, who was born on April 13, 1928, grew up in Brooklyn and attended Erasmus High School and NYU. He began his writing career with one hour dramas for prestigious network anthology series including Studio One , Goodyear Playhouse , and The Alcoa Hour .

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