Love Story: The Movie that Brought America to Tears

By Kater Leatherman

It’s the movie that gave away the ending in the opening line. 

On Dec. 25, 1970, Love Story was widely released to become the number one box office film of that year, going on to gross $130 million (equivalent to almost one billion dollars today), and picking up seven Oscar nominations. With the ongoing fight over civil rights and the Vietnam War, the country seemed desperate for an entertaining story about two beautiful lovestruck Ivy League students.

Originally, Love Story was a screenplay written by Erich Segal that failed to get published. When Paramount bought it, they suggested making it into a book to hype the film. Written in one month, Segal was a 30-year-old classics professor at Yale. When it was released on Valentine’s Day in 1970, it was an instant success and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for one year, selling 21 million copies. 

After a career in modeling and only one movie role under her belt with Goodbye, Columbus, the Love Story script found its way to Ali MacGraw. It was her emotional reaction to the simple, yet tragic love story that made her want to do the movie. Robert Evans, who was head of production at Paramount, thought the story “overly sentimental” but took it because he had fallen in love with MacGraw (they married in October of 1969).

While MacGraw had the lead to play Jenny Cavalleri, the smartass working class Radcliffe girl, casting the role of Oliver Barrett, IV would take more time. Michael Douglas, Jon Voigt, and Peter Fonda were all considered but turned it down despite being offered 10% of the gross. MacGraw recalls auditioning opposite David Birney and Christopher Walken. While they looked at 1,000 actors, no one compared to Ryan O’Neal. MacGraw, in an interview, said that when he walked onto the set, everyone knew he was the one to play the sensitive, legacy rich Harvard student. He was the last one to audition.

Arthur Hiller (The Out of Towners and Plaza Suite) was hired to direct what would become his best known work. By all accounts, he was a joy to work with and knew exactly what he wanted. Of the movie’s success, he would later say, “We had been going through a period of individuality in the 1960s, what I call the ‘biker’ films, like Easy Rider (1969). If Love Story [had come] out a few years earlier, it would have been run over by motorcycles. A few years after, it would be lost to special effects. Movies have their time of why they work and why they don’t.”

The music was as memorable as the main characters. According to O’Neal, Hiller threw a phone against the wall after he received Jimmy Webb’s score. Francis Lai was brought in, winning the academy award for Best Music, Original Score. Recordings of his theme song, Where Do I Begin?, was a Top 10 hit for Andy Williams in 1971. 

Also memorable is one of the greatest movie quotes of all time: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” No one really knew what it meant. MacGraw would say, “If you’ve done something frightful to someone you love, you don’t just say you’re sorry; you change your behavior.” To this day, she hopes to be able to get through an interview without being asked about it. 

Lesser known facts include Oliver’s father, played by then 63-year-old film star Ray Milland who, for the first time since his acting career began in 1929, was seen on screen without his hairpiece. Never before had Harvard granted a movie studio permission to film on its campus. Unfortunately, some of the trees were injured or killed because they used fake snow for the charmingly playful interaction between Jenny and Oliver. Tommy Lee Jones appeared in his acting debut as a friend of Oliver’s roommate. In real life, Jones entered Harvard in 1965, played football, and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1969. 

Reviews, in general, were positive. Negative comments included “contrived, Camille with bullshit, high-style kitsch, thoroughly resistible.” One critic claimed that it never moved him once. Roger Ebert, who gave the movie four out of four stars, felt that Arthur Hiller deserved our emotional response because of the way it was directed. 

After its release, MacGraw and O’Neal experienced unfathomable fame overnight. O’Neal, who played Rodney Harrington in Peyton Place from 1964 – 1969, was catapulted to stardom. MacGraw recalled that it was like a cyclone hit. “I had never been around that level of being looked at, copied … of people wanting to know where I got my hat.”

Throughout most of the film, it was easy to forget the spoiler alert in the opening line: “What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?” 

Although it wasn’t made clear in the film, the book revealed that it was leukemia that took Jenny’s life, something that one in five Americans already knew because they had read the 125-page bestseller.

Looking back, O’Neal admitted that filming Love Story was the most fun he’s ever had on a movie set. Out of his shared experience with MacGraw came a deep affection and the pair would go on to maintain a lifelong friendship until his death in 2023. 

Kater can be reached at [email protected]