Love Story (1970 film)
Love Story is a 1970 American romantic drama film written by Erich Segal, who was also the author of the best-selling 1970 novel of the same name. It was produced by Howard G. Minsky,[4] and directed by Arthur Hiller, starring Ali MacGraw, Ryan O'Neal, John Marley, Ray Milland and Tommy Lee Jones in his film debut.
Love Story
Love Story
by Erich Segal
Richard Kratina
Love Story Company
Paramount Pictures
- December 16, 1970
101 minutes[1]
United States
English
$2.2 million[2]
$173.4 million[3]
The film is considered one of the most romantic by the American Film Institute (No. 9 on the list) and is one of the highest-grossing films of all time adjusted for inflation.[5] It was followed by a sequel, Oliver's Story (1978), starring O'Neal with Candice Bergen.
Plot[edit]
Oliver Barrett IV, heir of an old money East Coast White Anglo-Saxon Protestant family, attends Harvard College where he plays ice hockey. He meets Jennifer "Jenny" Cavilleri, a quick-witted, working-class Radcliffe College student of classical music; they fall in love despite their differences. Oliver's father drives a long distance to Ithaca, New York, to see his son's hockey game vs. Cornell for the All-Ivy title. Barrett is suspended from the game for fighting and Harvard loses to Cornell, 4–3. Oliver turns down his father's offer of a steak dinner and help in getting into Harvard Law School.
Jenny reveals that she has a scholarship in Paris arranged for after her Radcliffe graduation. Oliver is upset that he does not figure in Jenny's plans and proposes marriage. She accepts his proposal and he takes her to the Barrett mansion to meet his parents, who are uncomfortable with her Italian-American and blue-collar background. Oliver's father says he will cut him off financially if he marries Jenny.
They visit her father, Phil, a widowed baker in Cranston, Rhode Island, who wants Oliver to get along with his father. Phil wants a Catholic wedding but Oliver and Jenny marry themselves with him reciting "Song of the Open Road" by Walt Whitman and her reciting "Sonnett 22" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Jenny works as a teacher but without his father's financial support the couple struggles to pay Oliver's way through Harvard Law School. Oliver graduates third in his class and takes a position at a high-powered New York City law firm. They are ready to start a family but fail to conceive. After Jenny undergoes three blood tests, Oliver is told that she is terminally ill.
Oliver attempts to continue as normal without telling Jenny of her condition, but she confronts her doctor and finds out the truth. Oliver buys tickets to Paris, but she declines to go, wanting only to spend time with him. Oliver seeks money from his estranged father to pay for Jenny's medical care. His father asks if he has "gotten a girl in trouble". Oliver says yes, and his father writes a check.
From her hospital bed, Jenny makes arrangements with her father for a Catholic funeral. She tells Oliver to not blame himself, insisting that he never held her back from music and Paris and it was worth it for the love they shared. Jenny's last wish is for Oliver to embrace her tightly as she dies.
A grief-stricken Oliver leaves the hospital and he sees his father outside, who has rushed to New York City from Massachusetts to offer his help after learning about Jenny's condition. Oliver tells him, "Jenny's dead," and his father says "I'm sorry," to which Oliver responds, "Love – Love means never having to say you're sorry", something that Jenny had said to him earlier. Oliver walks alone to the open air ice rink, where Jenny had watched him skate the day she was hospitalized.
Development[edit]
Erich Segal was an academic who had branched into screenwriting with films such as Yellow Submarine and The Games. He wanted to do a "story out of a 1940s movie" updated to the present day, "based on what I have observed among my students, living as I do right on campus. It deals with today’s personal commitment of one to one and the quest for a permanent relationship which begins much younger than it used to. The old, mindless football game dating is gone. The question of sexual morality is irrelevant, but there is much less ‘swinging’ among young people now than in the old days.”[6]
The movie was originally written as a screenplay but Erich Segal was unable to sell it. Howard Minsky, who was head of the motion picture division on the east coast for the William Morris Agency, who represented Segal, believed in the project. According to Arthur Hiller, "He gave up his job and made an arrangement with Erich Segal because he had such faith in that project. He mothered it all the way through. If it hadn't been for him, it would never have been a film."[7]
Minksy says he had Segal rewrite the script seven times. The changes included altering the female lead from being Jewish to Italian-American, deleting the character of the girl's mother, and minimising swearing and nudity.[8] [9]
The script was read by Ali MacGraw, who wanted to make it. She had just made Goodbye Columbus for Paramount Pictures, then under Robert Evans. Paramount had signed MacGraw to a three picture deal and agreed to make the film as a vehicle for MacGraw.[7] In May 1969, Evans announced that he wanted a "sensitive young actor" like Beau Bridges or Jon Voight for the lead and Larry Peerce, who had made Goodbye Columbus, would direct.[10] Evans later said Peerce took the job because he "desperately needed a gig" but the director was always unhappy working on the project and pulled out after a month.[11] He was replaced by Anthony Harvey, who had made Lion in Winter, but Harvey quit the project after collaborating with Segal. Eventually Arthur Hiller, who was making two films at Paramount (The Out of Towners and Plaza Suite) agreed to direct.[12]
In September 1969 it was announced Hiller would direct and that Harper and Row would publish a novelised version of the script in February of the following year.[13] According to Evans, Paramount had suggested Segal adapt the screenplay into a novel to help promote the film. Minsky says he was the one who suggested this.[8] Peter Bart, then an executive at Paramount, claims he suggested it. Segal says that he wrote the novel at the same time as the screenplay with considerable input from Gene Young of Harpers who was editor.[6] The book was published in time for Valentine's Day in 1970, and became a best seller.[14] [8][9]
Casting[edit]
According to press reports, the lead role of Oliver Barrett IV was refused by Jeff Bridges, Michael Douglas, Beau Bridges, Michael York and Jon Voight.[12] Evans says that Michael Sarrazin, Peter Fonda and Keith Carradine also turned it down.[15] MacGraw recalls auditioning opposite Christopher Walken, Ken Howard and David Birney.
Hiller says "we tested eight or nine different actors and Ryan was the best. He didn't bowl us over at first. Then I saw some footage of a film he was just completing at 20th Century Fox and I thought it would be wonderful. He just had that empathy and feeling that was so necessary."[7] According to a contemporary account, O'Neal was tested on the recommendation of Erich Segal, who had worked with him on The Games; he was paid $25,000.[16] Evans later claimed he insisted O'Neal be cast because he made the best test, over the objections of Hiller who wanted Walken.[17]
In November 1969 Evans claimed "We looked at 1,000 actors and that's not an exaggeration. We tested 14 unknowns and none of them compared to O'Neal."[18]
Bill Cleary, former Harvard and 1960 U.S. Olympic hockey star (and later Harvard's hockey coach/athletic director), was Ryan O'Neal's hockey stand-in during key hockey scenes where skating and hockey-playing ability were required. Hockey scenes were filmed in three days at Harvard's former Watson Rink, which was rebuilt and is now known as Bright-Landry Hockey Center. Other hockey players in the film were played mostly by actual Harvard and Boston University hockey players, including Joe Cavanagh and Mike Hyndman.
O'Neal's younger brother, Kevin O'Neal (1945-2023), had a bit part in the film.[19]
Production[edit]
Filming started 18 November 1969 on location in Cambridge and Boston, and New York. It was the first time a film had gotten permission to film at Harvard.[8]
Filming Love Story on location resulted in damage to trees on campus. This experience, followed by a similar experience with the film A Small Circle of Friends (1980), caused the university administration to deny most subsequent requests for filming on location.[20]
The scenes where they lived as newlyweds in Cambridge were filmed in the Agassiz neighborhood. Oliver carries Jenny over the threshold at 119 Oxford Street.[21]
Jimmy Webb wrote a score for the film that was not used. Burt Bacharach was approached to do the score but pulled out when Robert Evans requested a score similar to that of Frances Lai. Eventually Lai was cast.[12]
The main song in the film, "(Where Do I Begin?) Love Story" was a major success, particularly the vocal rendition recorded by Andy Williams.
Arthur Hiller recalled, "We thought we were making a nice little movie. Well, all of us thought that except the producer who kept saying, "Arthur, believe me, this will be big." And I said, "Yes Howard, you're the producer, you have to feel that way." But he was totally right."[7]
Filming finished on 3 February 1970.[8]
Love Story: Music From The Original Soundtrack
Sequels and remake[edit]
O'Neal and Milland reprised their roles for a sequel, Oliver's Story, released in 1978. It was based on Segal's 1977 novel. The film begins with Jenny's funeral, then picks up 18 months later. Oliver is a successful, but unhappy, lawyer in New York. Although still mourning Jenny, he manages to find love with heiress Marcie Bonwit (Candice Bergen). Suffering from comparisons to the original, Oliver's Story did poorly with both critics and audiences.
NBC broadcast Love Story, a short-lived romantic anthology television series, in 1973–1974. Although it shared its name with the novel and movie and used the same theme song – "(Where Do I Begin) Love Story" – as the film, it otherwise was unrelated to them, with no characters or storylines in common with either the novel or the film.
In February 2021, remodeled ViacomCBS streaming service Paramount+ announced a remake of Love Story as a TV series, to be part of their new lineup of content. The series is to be produced by young adult stalwarts Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, made prominent due to young adult hits such as The O.C., Gossip Girl and Looking for Alaska. It is to be made for Schwartz and Savage's production house, Fake Empire, as a co-production between Paramount Television Studios and CBS Studios.[63]
Criticism[edit]
Jenny Cavilleri's disease being unspecified and her relatively good looks during the onset of her illness was met was criticism for its implausibility.[64] Vincent Canby wrote in his original New York Times review that it was "as if Jenny was suffering from some vaguely unpleasant Elizabeth Arden treatment".[27] Mad magazine ran a parody of the film ("Lover's Story") in its October 1971 issue, which depicted Ali MacGraw's character as stricken with "Old Movie Disease", an ailment that causes a dying patient to become "more beautiful by the minute".[65][66] In 1997, Roger Ebert defined "Ali MacGraw's Disease" as a movie illness in which "the only symptom is that the patient grows more beautiful until finally dying".[67]
In popular culture[edit]
In 1971, the 20th episode of the fourth season of The Carol Burnett Show featured a take-off of the film called "Lovely Story", with Carol Burnett in the MacGraw role and Harvey Korman in the O'Neal role.[68]
The film's female protagonist has been credited with the spike in the baby name Jennifer in North America in 1970, launching it to the number 1 feminine given name.[69] It would hold this position for 14 years.
At the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Canadian Pairs figure skaters Jamie Sale and David Pelletier skated their free skate to the film's theme, initially losing the gold medal in a now-infamous 2002 Winter Olympics figure skating scandal moment in sports history.
In 2020, the film's theme music was played during the funeral procession of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.[70]
In an interview at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, Taylor Swift cited Love Story as an inspiration for the autumnal set design of All Too Well: The Short Film.[71]