Love Story (1970)

I finally watched this tonight. Ali MacGraw is so beautiful, but she is just awful as an actor, and Ryan O'Neal is almost as bad.

I can't believe this movie was so popular given how awful the screenplay is and how unpleasant their characters are. They're both supposed to be brilliant and talented, and of course both actors are stunning, but they're both so nasty. She's always derisively addressing him as "Preppie," and he's always angry.

Also the cinematography is so terrible. It makes Radcliffe and Harvard (separate in those days) both look so ugly.

I love that when he graduates from law school they go directly from their horrible walk-up in Somerville to a fabulous multi-room apartment (in a building right in downtown Boston with a doorman) that's completely decorated. They just drive from one to the other.

It’s where I learned love means never having to say you’re sorry.

R1, They move from Cambridge, MA to NYC.

I was a freshman in college when the movie came out. It took three attempts to see it, the lines were so long at each showing. It became the obligatory date movie, many saw it multiple times.

Ali, Ryan and the movie all received Oscar nominations.

If there is a worse movie than this, I am unaware of it.

I saw it a few months back for the first time, I liked it. It's held up after 50 years.

When Ray Milland's character says "I'm sorry at the end," and his son Ryan O'Neal plays says, "Love means never having to say you're sorry," is O'Neal 's character

1) chastising his father (i.e. "If you really loved me, you wouldn't have to say you're sorry"),

2) or is he saying he finally accepts that his father truly loves him (i.e. "You love me, so you don't need to say you're sorry"),

3) or is he just idiotically parroting the stupid thing Ali MacGraw's character told him earlier in the movie?

Oh, definitely #1. It was the era of "Don't trust anyone over 30".

What did she die from exactly?

[quote] What did she die from exactly?

In Mad Magazine, they said she died from "Old Movie Disease, which makes you all the more beautiful as you die."

The book was OK, the movie awful, and the theme song ubiquitous for YEARS.

[quote]What did she die from exactly?

Terminal fibromyalgia

The book was written about his ex girlfriend, who never had cancer. It was a stab in her back killing her off.

If you think the movie is bad, try sitting through the musical. Yah, there’s a musical.

This and Brian's Song, god awful.

"Love means never having to say you're sorry" is the worst moral of any story, ever. It belongs in a handbook titled "Things to say when you're an abusive asshole."

I know the book was enormously successful but I remember being disappointed when I saw the movie.

"This and Brian's Song, god awful."

Don't compare this shit to "Brian's Song." "Brian's Song" was critically acclaimed; the acting was great. the script was great. It in no way is in the same class as "Love Story", which is dreck..

"Love Story" was panned by critics by an enormously popular movie. It was shit but people loved it. It was one of those bad movies that for some reason a certain type of audience loves.

Oh please, what a joke! Love means having to say you're sorry all the time!!

Her acting has been eternally atrocious. One dim light was Goodbye Columbus.

"Lovely Story," the obligatory [italic]Carol Burnett Show[/italic] parody

Ali MacGraw was so unbelievably terrible....Her only two looks were snotty and mischievous....On this a career--sort of--was made.

Has anyone yet mentioned this movie made popular the line "Love means never having to say you're sorry"?

R21, And "Just Tell Me What You Want".

That movie is a piece of sentimental crap.

Wasn’t MacGraw seriously considered the front runner for Best Actress for this awful performance? (Maybe just among the future homos in my 8th grade class.) I remember being shocked that Glenda Jackson won, though her performance in “Women in Love” had won precursors (and was a great embodiment of all that is both thrilling and misogynist in Lawrence). Gene Sisley used to do a yearly Oscar contest, “Beat Siskel,” in the Ttib (I grew up in Chicago and this was before he and Ebert started their TV show). I believe he predicted MacGrsw for the win, not because he thought she deserved it, but because the film was such a phenom and he didn’t think the Academy would give the Actress Award to two British actresses in s row (Maggie Smith had won for Jean Brodie the year before). For once the Academy showed good taste.

You have to understand the film in context.

It came out at the height of the unkempt hippy era. Woodstock. The height of the Vietnam war.

The talk was all about gritty films like Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider

And the new crop of actors had odd looking faces like Dustin Hoffman, Eliot Gould, Barbra Streisand, Goldie Hawn etc.

So along comes this big romantic tear jerker with two genuinely beautiful clean-cut leads.

The country was just so ready for a film like Love Story.

Remember too that Romeo & Juliet had been a surprise hit two years earlier. Love Story sort of played on that theme but in a setting that was more relatable...it even had a very similar theme song.

I adore the film. It's kitschy. Maudlin. The acting is pretty bad. But it gets to me all the same.

Well there was a reason she was called Ali MacGrawful.

It's fucking awful. One of the most disappointing experiences in movie viewing ever. Hates every second of it. Wanted them all to die at the end.

My parents took me to see this when it was first released. I loved Ali. I didn’t see bad acting I just thought she was Jenny. But I was 12 at the time.

This movie is like the Jennifer Aniston of movies: only super successful and iconic because of the good hair.

Also love the cameo by a young Tommy Lee Jones

R1, that's like in the movie TED.

Characters went around Boston and they'd turn a corner and be in another neighborhood.

You only notice that shit if you're from there.

As for the acting, yes, she AND O'Neal were bad. Soaps get a bad rap for hiring only only good looking people, but I can think of tons of actors from daytime who'd have done a better job as Jenny and Oliver.

Maybe Julianne Moore as Jenny and Kevin Bacon as Oliver (yeah, I know they became movie stars.)

[quote]Don't compare this shit to "Brian's Song." "Brian's Song" was critically acclaimed; the acting was great. the script was great. It in no way is in the same class as "Love Story", which is dreck.... "Love Story" was panned by critics by an enormously popular movie. It was shit but people loved it. It was one of those bad movies that for some reason a certain type of audience loves.

'It wasn't panned by critics. It was nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, Actress and Director, winning Best Score. It won The Golden Globe for Best Picture. It opened in Dec of '70 in NY and was here still playing first run theaters and starting a summer Drive in run on Long Island six months later. It played in theaters for over a year.

They were lined up in the streets of Boston to see this shit.

"Wasn’t MacGraw seriously considered the front runner for Best Actress for this awful performance?"

ABSOLUTELY NOT. It was considered sort of a joke that she got a nomination. That a mediocre popular movie got so many nominations al all was considered silly too. I will say that Ryan did pretty well, he just continued his Peyton Place act.

She leaves the convent in the end.

I keep hoping Ali gives Ryan a gold serpent ring at the end of the movie - which he can never remove - as part of The Legacy.

Unfortunately, this movie does not feature Ms Ross and Sam Elliott. Instead, we get a child fucker and Ali. Yay.

30 playing 20. Strains reality to the breaking point.

"It wasn't panned by critics. It was nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, Actress and Director, winning Best Score. It won The Golden Globe for Best Picture. It opened in Dec of '70 in NY and was here still playing first run theaters and starting a summer Drive in run on Long Island six months later. It played in theaters for over a year."

It was POPULAR. But critically acclaimed it was not. This is from Wikipedia:

Newsweek, however, felt the film was contrived and film critic Judith Crist called Love Story "Camille with bullshit." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "I can't remember any movie of such comparable high-style kitsch since Leo McCarey's 'Love Affair' (1939) and his 1957 remake, 'An Affair to Remember.' The only really depressing thing about 'Love Story' is the thought of all the terrible imitations that will inevitably follow it." Gene Siskel gave the film two stars out of four and wrote that "whereas the novel has a built-in excuse for being spare (it is told strictly as the boy's reminiscence), the film does not. Seeing the characters in the movie ... makes us want to know something about them. We get precious little, and love by fiat doesn't work well in film." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote, "I found this one of the most thoroughly resistible sentimental movies I've ever seen. There is scarcely a character or situation or line in the story that rings true, that suggests real simplicity or generosity of feeling, a sentiment or emotion honestly experienced and expressed." Writer Harlan Ellison wrote in The Other Glass Teat, his book of collected criticism, that it was "shit." John Simon wrote that Love Story was so bad that it never once moved him.[

"Father, you don't know the time of day!"

Ali won the best drama actress globe for it. In fact she won in 1969 for best female newcomer also, so she did have some momentum. But the Academy voted for critics darling Glenda Jackson for the win. I’ve always wondered how close Ali came to pulling off an Oscar win.

R41 No one cared about what the critics had to say. Especially in the 1960s.

The film was smash hit.

As bad as it is, and I think I last saw it some time in the 1970s, there are parts of it that stay with me. I love O'Neal's face when the woman gives him a dime tip when he's selling Christmas trees. Also, McGraw's face when she's making sly fun of him is winning. She also looked great in that blue t-shirt/white slacks combo. I loved the Harvard Square uniform of opaque stockings and heavy shoes.

The all-time greatest thing that you could put into a time capsule, though, is the doctor telling *him* what is wrong with [bold]her[/bold] while he's smoking a cigarette. Just amazing.

I saw this when it came out. MacGraw character was so snotty. But Ryan was just beautiful in this.

The Academy sometimes likes to throw a bone to popular favorites. Despite Glenn's performance, I think Fatal Attraction got 6 noms (including Best Picture) for being a cultural phenomenon, not because critics were so blown away by it. Many hated the test-marketed slasher film ending.

I saw it when it came out and loved it. I cried. I thought Ryan O'Neal was so beautiful and sensitive in his role. I also thought that Ali MacGraw was a lousy actress but I didn't care. I agree with what the poster above said about needing something about a couple of preppies after the Manson murders and films like Easy Rider, etc,

The one who most likely would have won that year had she been willing to play the game was Carrie Snodgress. She got excellent reviews and became very popular for Mad Housewife, but became uncomfortable with all of the attention once she had been nominated for an Oscar and refused to do any more promotion or interviews.

Hers was also deemed a star in the making performance but unlike McGraw, she could act.

Carrie won the globe for comedy actress, and even attended the show, but I think it was always between Ali and Glenda for the Oscar win, even if Carrie would’ve happily gone along with the promotion. Probably only a small fraction of voters actually saw DOAMH vs. Women In Love and Love Story.

MacGraw's character was not a "snotty preppy". She was a working-class Italian from the wrong side of the tracks. Her abrasiveness toward O'Neal is supposed to be endearing in a "plucky underdog" sort of way.

[quote]Her abrasiveness toward O'Neal is supposed to be endearing in a "plucky underdog" sort of way.

Didn't work for me. I was the only one applauding when she started dragging her foot in the snow.

Love Story made $136 million internationally, yet O'Neal was paid $25K and MacGraw 20K. O'Neal was Erich Segal's friend and had made $125K on his last pic (The Big Bounce). He told Rubin to accept the offer and get him enough of a per diem to live in NYC for 12 weeks of shooting.

Film critic Vincent Canby wrote that audiences were crying throughout the film because "they are crying for themselves, for all the blessed things -- represented by the unblemished love of Jenny and Ollie -- they themselves have been deprived of. Before the film was released Segal turned his screenplay into a quick and dirty novel, which made a fortune, selling over four hundred thousand hardcover copies by the time of the film's release and eventually reaching paperback sales of over four million copies!

This movie made the detestable Ryan O'Neal a star, which is reason in itself to hate it.

Supposedly Robert La Tourneaux, the Cowboy hustler in "The Boys In The Band" was considered for the role of Oliver. Not THAT I would have loved to see. But he said his role in TBITB ruined his acting career. That might have been true. What a shame. I think he really would be been something in "Love Story."

The book was as bad as the movie.

R56 That can't be true. Wasn't La Tourneaux already a hustler when he did Boys off-bway?

Btw, I'm not saying you're lying, I just bet he was either delusional or he made it up... OR ... some gay producer made him think he was up for it just so he could have sex with him. THAT is probably what happened.

Al Gore invented Love Story

That's a whole lot of camel going on in OP's photo

"This movie made the detestable Ryan O'Neal a star, which is reason in itself to hate it."

The movie made Ryan a MOVIE star, he was already a famous TV star and a darling of the movie magazines and tabloids. I know he's rotten, but Ryan is, at least to me, hot and endlessly appealing on screen in several of his movies including this one.

Detestable Jon Voight was seriously considered for the role of Oliver Barrett in Love Story. Voight is a much better actor than O'Neal, but too odd looking imho. And a really good actor with such a lame amateur as Ali Mac Graw would have been jarring.

Ali MacGraw was a model, not an actress. That's why she was so terrible. I have no idea why she was nominated for awards for her dismal performance. Because the movie made a lot of money, I guess.

MacGraw getting cast in "Love Story" reminds me of another model chosen for the lead in a major movie. Millie Perkins, a teenage model, was chosen to play Anne in the film version of the play "The Diary of Anne Frank." Not only was she no actress she was also too old (she looked at least 18; Anne aged from 13 to 15 during her time in hiding) and too model pretty to play Anne. But the film was praised and nominated for Oscars. My guess is that it was considered above criticism; I mean, how can you criticize a movie about a girl and her family hiding from the Nazis?

Ali MacGraw was a model, R62, but she had already starred in another movie - Goodbye Columbus in 1969 - before Love Story. Ali played a spoiled, superficial, snotty JAP. Other than the JAP part, she must have been playing herself since she was quite good, and very convincing. I saw Goodbye Columbus when it came out. I never dreamed that she was so limited until I saw Love Story. I was rooting for her in several other films, but never was there even the slightest glimmer of good acting in her portrayals. You'd think she'd get better with more experience. She didn't.

She stank in Goodbye Columbus, too.

While my peers were reading 𝘓𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 and 𝘑𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘓𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘦𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘭, I was reading 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘶𝘢𝘵𝘦 and 𝘔𝘺𝘳𝘢 𝘉𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘨𝘦.

Was the shot of Ray Milland driving off in a roadster supposed to be funny?

[quote]Also the cinematography is so terrible. It makes Radcliffe and Harvard (separate in those days) both look so ugly.

Yes, the main square bit of scrappy grass in front. I totally agree.

I never found her AT ALL attractive.

[quote]Her acting has been eternally atrocious. One dim light was Goodbye Columbus.

I think you need to re-watch. They hate each other as well. They just like fucking.

R67 I just watched this last night and I noticed exactly that. I thought christ can't they afford decent landscaping?

R69 your post is a non-sequitur.

Don't get the hoopla about her looks. She has straight low eyebrows like a man, flared nostrils and a very square face with short neck.

^^Don't forget her annoying crooked front tooth.

Ali McG’s memoir, Moving Pictures, is excellent. She harbors no illusions.

There were large posters in the subway. Someone with a thick Red marker changed "Never Have To Say You're Sorry" to "Always."

R72, it was THE SEVENTIES.

[quote]Her acting has been eternally atrocious. One dim light was Goodbye Columbus.

[quote]I saw Goodbye Columbus when it came out. I never dreamed that she was so limited until I saw Love Story.

[quote]She stank in Goodbye Columbus, too

I’ve only seen her in Goodbye Columbus, Love Story and The Getaway, she was awful in all three but The Getaway was the best of the bunch.

The Getaway? Well, I loved seeing Steve McQueen belt her...

Oldster here. The summer between junior and senior year in high school I worked at a drive in theater where Love Story played most of the summer. When the movie finished, there would be a lag while all the teary people fried their eyes and then the would hit the food like crazy. Our snack bar had much more than popcorn; we had fast food Like burgers, fries, pizzas (frozen) etc etc. People were ravenous. Then they would settle in for the second film on the bill, Tell Me that Yiu Love Me, Junie Moon. with Liza with a Z in one of her first film roles. Good times.

Ali MacGraw looking beautiful in this 1965 commercial for the piece of shit Polaroid Swinger camera.

The novel was over-hyped and after reading it, most people wanted to see the movie. I agree, could not stand the actors and was sorry I wasted my money on both, the novel and the movie.

WHAT is a land camera? As apposed to a at sea camera?

R82 Land = photographer Edward Land. It's a proper name.

A Land camera is a camera that uses self developing film. Invented by Ed Land, marketed by Polaroid.

The real life Oliver Barrett was based on a composite of Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones, his roommate at Yale. The real Jenny was based on Barnard pianist Janet Sussman, whom Erich Segal pursued for many years unsuccessfully.

In that era, the idea of a hetero "date movie" made economic sense. Dating often centered on going out to a movie and this one was a kind of sacrifice that straight men would sit through in order to have sex afterwards. Much more conducive to romance than Midnight Cowboy or Easy Rider. The movie mirrored none of the social tensions of the day--pretty people having a Kodak-worthy romance cut off by a tragic, incomprehensible end punctuated by stupid piano crescendos.

[quote] It’s where I learned love means never having to say you’re sorry.

That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.

Roger Ebert gave Love Story 4 out of 4 stars. Gene Siskel gave it 2 out of 4.

I think that pretty well sums up their differences.

There was a very bad sequel called Oliver's Story. I seem to remember I saw it on a plane. Had the gurl from Upstairs Downstairs in it. That's all I remember and how boring it was.

got a ROYAL premiere in London. OMG!

how ali a star???? she acts/speaks in a retarded way.....weird

You have to admit Ryan is hot in R91 video.

Ali was not and aint HOT !!!!

R91 Ryan O'Neal is kind of an asshole in that clip but, man, is he gorgeous.

I think he's a bit bored and he's being jokey.

His golden coloring, skin+hair, was so beautiful.

The novel was over-hyped and after reading it, most people wanted to see the movie. I agree, could not stand the actors and was sorry I wasted my money on both, the novel and the movie.

R81 The script was written first. Paramount bought it and commissioned author Eric Segal to write a novel based on it. The hyping of the novel and the movie were part of an extremely clever publicity campaign engineered by Ali McGraw's husband at the time, Paramount chief Robert Evans.

OMg and that ghastly song - whose version was the most popular, crooner Andy Williams, I think.

I love "Where Do I Begin"

Here's Shirely Bassy giving it her usual fabulous over-the-top interpretation.

She can't help but make it sound like a Bond theme.

R91 I can’t help but love Ali in that clip and in general. She definitely had star quality. It’s just too bad she couldn’t get better at her craft and had better film roles after Love Story.

She was incapable of better at "a" craft and that's why she never had better film roles after Love Story.

Anybody see Ali in The Winds of War (1983)? OY.

[quote] And the new crop of actors had odd looking faces like Dustin Hoffman, Eliot Gould, Barbra Streisand, Goldie Hawn etc.

You mean Jew-face?

Do they still show this during freshman week at Harvard?

R104 I’ve seen worse actresses. For Jlaw it was basically on the job training when she won the SLP Oscar. And she was able to improve and become huge. LS was a smash. She was given a few opportunities, but her relationship with McQueen basically derailed her Love Story momentum. I think she admits as much in her autobiography.

"His golden coloring, skin+hair, was so beautiful."

I agree, but did you know his blondness came of a bottle? Both O'Neal and Robert Redford were freckled faced natural redheads turned blonde for movies.

I'd like to have seen this with an audience in a theater when it was originally released. When watched today, I wonder what the fuss was about. Was its popularity just a reaction to anti-establishment films like Easy Rider?

I’ll always remember my mother saying “If she flares her nostrils ONE MORE TIME…”

Erich Segal should have been shot for writing this mess and its sequel, Oliver's Story.

Have all of you Ryan O'Neal fans seen his appearance on "Leave It To Beaver" (1961)?

Ali was supposed to play Daisy in The Great Gatsby, but after she left Robert Evans for Steve McQueen, Evans killed her career. No Daisy for Ali!

Say what you will about Mia Farrow, but THAT was a blessing, R113!

Mia Farrow was not the best choice for Daisy, but she had the marquee name and was OK in it. Ali M would have destroyed the movie.

Their was never a cast that could play The Great Gatsby. Go to any period in film history and try to cast the movie version. You can't.

R116, I think Jack Nicholson or Warren Beatty might have made an interesting Gatsby. Faye yearned to play Daisy and would probably be stronger than Mia. I wonder if Katharine Ross could have pulled it off. Jessica Lange around the time of Postman would have nailed it.

Blythe Danner would have been superb

The characters of Gatsby on the page are very real but brought to life in dramatic form they seem to remain elusive. There have been 4 film versions(I think) but I don't think any of them came close to satisfying people. There might have been a play as well in the 20s.

I assure R109 if you had been in one of those packed movie theaters when Love Story opened after waiting hours in line in fucking cold bitter winter weather you would have been just as baffled as to why all the people around you were blubbering.

I think what I liked most in the movie was Ali MacGraw's style. She had that certain look...plus the classic preppy clothes. I thought she was cool...though a shitty actress. She still looks great.

Isn't Ali MacGraw the first one to admit she is not a good actress? I seem to remember her having a good sense of humor about that at one point, but I could be mixing her up with someone else.

She debased herself for Steve McQueen but then who wouldn't?

Can you think of any roles Ali would have been good in during her hey day? Maybe The Stepford Wives?

I just watched this because it's on Amazon Prime. Ali MacGraw's performance is the worst to garner a best actress nomination until Julia Roberts scored one for Pretty Woman. Like Roberts, MacGraw is an attractive woman, but neither is capable of delivering a characterization They just spout out dialogue as if they're in a cold reading of the screenplay. Love Story does offer a memorable score and Ryan O'Neal is better than I expected. He takes a moment and delivers his lines in a believable manner.

[quote]In Mad Magazine, they said she died from "Old Movie Disease, which makes you all the more beautiful as you die."

Vincent Canby of the NYT said she seemed to be "suffering from some vaguely unpleasant Elizabeth Arden treatment."

Ali's best performance was as Lady Ashley on (old) Dynasty.

Kate Winslet would have made an ideal Daisy Buchanan back in the 1990s.

Gatsby is much harder to cast. You have to find someone who is decent looking but who can blend into a crowd believably (which was absolutely not Robert Redford in 1974) and who can be incredibly impulsive (which was neither Redford nor Di Caprio). I actually think Matt Damon would have been good once.

Warren Beatty or Jack Nicholson could have played Gatsby. I think Candy Bergen might have worked at Daisy in the 1974 version. I didn't love Carey Mulligan in the most recent adaptation. She wasn't appropriately ethereal.

[quote] This and Brian's Song, god awful.

Brian's Song was excellent, stop trying to "edge-lord".

In the subway there was a massive wall poster - "Love Means You Never Have to Say You're Sorry." Someone with thick Magic Marker changed "Never" to "Always."

Vincent Canby of the NYT was an anal self-hating homosexual with no taste!

[quote]Can you think of any roles Ali would have been good in during her hey day?

No.

She'd have been good in a cat food commercial.

Perhaps this belongs in the unpopular film opinion thread, but I thought Ali was wonderful. And I love Ryan in anything.

For me the real heartbreak of the story is the father-son relationship. When Ray Milland shows up at the end, trying to help, that’s when I cry.

R136, I agree. Good film. Good acting all around, including Ali. Love the soundtrack.

Perhaps the best film score ever.

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