‘The Summer Knows . . .’

We indulged in some nostalgia the other evening, watching the movie The Summer of ’42. Well, at least I indulged; the Texas Gal had never seen the 1971 movie, and she wasn’t much impressed by the tale. That movie is – for those who have likewise never seen the film or have forgotten – the story of three teenage boys spending the summer on a (most likely) New England island. 

The three wander the island, obsess about girls (they all lack much experience) and generally act like boys trying to find their ways. And one of them – fifteen-year-old Hermie – develops first a crush and then a tentative friendship with a young woman living in a cottage on the end of the island whose husband has gone away to fight in World War II. 

As things play out, Hermie, pays an evening call on the young woman – Dorothy – just hours after she’s learned her husband has been killed in action. Numbed and seeking comfort, the grieving Dorothy takes Hermie to bed. When he returns in the morning, she is gone, having left a kind farewell note for him. The adult Hermie tells us in a voice-over that he never saw her again. 

There is so much that is cliché here: A boy’s first time. The woman who comes into a boy’s or man’s life for one moment of need or kindness and then leaves forever. The remote seaside cottage. The relentless teen obsession with sex and its mysteries (more so with Hermie’s friend Oscy than with Hermie himself). They pile upon each other narratively and visually. 

And yet, even as the adult in me recognized those flaws, flaws I’d noticed but could not name fifty-one years ago, the remnant in me of the seventeen-year-old I was in 1971 still found the film moving. I was a romantic then and I am so now. Leavened a little by experience, perhaps, but still a romantic.* 

But two things redeemed the film in 1971 and on Saturday evening: the luminous Jennifer O’Neill as Dorothy and the score by Michel LeGrand, highlighted by the main theme, “The Summer Knows.” 

I don’t recall ever seeing O’Neill in anything else. (None of her other fifty or so film and television credits at Wikipedia ring any bells.) And I’ll likely leave it that way, making her Dorothy my film equivalent of the aforementioned woman who enters and then leaves forever. As I remembered, her Dorothy was as lovely a woman as I can remember seeing on any screen. 

And the music. Even when I was seventeen, I paid attention to film’s scores. I recall being at my summer job at St. Cloud State the morning after I saw the movie in 1971, unboxing file cabinets with a bunch of other young men and trying to reconstruct in my head the melody and harmony of the movie’s haunting main theme. I could not do so, at least not in my head, and for some reason, I have never sought out the sheet music. I may do so this week. 

What I have done since early 2000, when I first began building a collection of digital music, is gather versions of the film’s main theme. I currently have twelve of them, including three from LeGrand: two from the film – the opening and closing titles – and a third from an album on which he revisited his major works. 

The other versions in my collection are from artists as varied as Maynard Ferguson, Barbra Streisand, Johnny Mathis, saxophonist Dave Koz, Ray Conniff and his chorus, and Irish trombonist Bobby Lamb. I also have the only two versions of the tune that have ever charted, one by Peter Nero (No. 21 pop and No. 2 on the Adult Contemporary chart in 1971) and a 1975 disco version by the Biddu Orchestra, headed by Bangalore native Biddu Appaiah (No. 57). 

My favorite version of the tune is seemingly not available: the version that plays as a 78 record as the grieving Dorothy clings to Hermie in a swaying numbed dance. (The LP released in 1971 as the soundtrack contains only two tracks from Summer of ’42, the opening and closing themes, along with work from a 1969 film titled The Picasso Summer. Later releases, if there are any, may have other tracks. I don’t know.) 

When I wrote about the song at my blog some years ago, Peter Nero left a comment, noting that he did not agree with my admiration of the lyrics written for the main theme by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. He said the lyrics were essentially unnecessary, that the haunting melody was all that a listener needed. Perhaps so. Anyway, here’s Nero’s version:

*Another concern raised its 2021 head as I watched. How would the scene of Dorothy and Hermie making love – not at all explicit but still intimate and romantic – play in today’s environment? Dorothy’s character was in her early twenties, and Hermie was fifteen. As carefully and touchingly presented as it was in 1971, it – and thus the entire film – would likely be left undone today.

– whiteray