that night. Her note closes with the hope that Hermie may be spared the senseless tragedies of life. In one of the final scenes, Hermie, suddenly approaching adulthood, is seen looking at Dorothy's old house and the ocean from a distance before he runs to catch up with his friends. The adult Raucher sadly recounts that he has never seen Dorothy again, nor has he learned what became of her. Raucher's narration continues with the notion that kids were different back then, and it took longer for them to figure out how they feel. The audience learns Hermie has rejoined his friends with a rundown of the summer's statistics: they raided the Coast Guard station four times, saw five movies, and had nine days of rain. Raucher concludes with, "Benjie broke his watch, Oscy gave up the harmonica, and in a very special way, I lost Hermie. Forever." Cast Jennifer O'Neill as Dorothy Gary Grimes as Hermie Jerry Houser as Oscy Oliver Conant as Benjie Katherine Allentuck as Aggie Christopher Norris as Miriam Lou Frizzell as druggist Director Robert Mulligan provides uncredited voiceover narration as the older Hermie. Maureen Stapleton has an uncredited cameo as Sophie, Hermie's mother, and film stuntman Walter Scott appears uncredited as Dorothy's husband. Production Herman Raucher wrote the film script in the 1950s during his tenure as a television writer, but "couldn't give it away." In the 1960s, he met Robert Mulligan, best known for directing To Kill a Mockingbird. Raucher showed Mulligan the script, and Mulligan took it to Warner Bros., where Mulligan argued the film could be shot for the relatively low price of $1 million, and Warner approved it. They had so little faith in the film becoming a box-office success, though, they shied from paying Raucher outright for the script, instead promising him ten percent of the gross. When casting for the role of Dorothy, Warner Bros. declined to audition any actresses younger than the age of 30; Jennifer O'Neill's agent, who had developed a fondness for the script, convinced the studio to audition his client, who was only 22 at the time. O'Neill auditioned for the role, albeit hesitantly, not wanting to perform any nude scenes. O'Neill got the role and Mulligan agreed to find a way to make the film work without blatant nudity. Nantucket Island was too far modernized in 1970 to be convincingly transformed to resemble an