The title, Love Story, appears at the beginning of the film. All other credits are presented at the end. The story begins with a voiceover by Ryan O’Neal’s character, “Oliver Barrett, IV”: “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart, and Bach, the Beatles, and me?”
       Robert Evans, Paramount Pictures’ worldwide production vice president, told the 7 May 1969 LAT that he bought Erich Segal’s screenplay, Love Story, with his current girl friend, Ali MacGraw, “in mind” for the leading role. Two weeks later, the 21 May 1969 Var remarked that the “racially versatile” MacGraw, a thirty-year-old former model “from a Scots-English background,” would follow her role as “a Jewish princess” in Goodbye, Columbus (1969, see entry) by portraying “a college student of Italian extraction.” According to film critic Vincent Canby in the 10 Jan 1971 NYT, however, Segal originally created “Jenny Cavilleri” as a poor Jewish girl from the Bronx, NY, but Paramount executives, “for reasons of their own,” changed her to an Italian girl from Cranston, RI. Robert Evans, who would marry MacGraw several weeks before production began, hoped to pair her with “a sensitive young actor like Beau Bridges or Jon Voight,” and wanted Larry Peerce, who directed MacGraw in Goodbye, Columbus, to helm the movie. French composer Charles Aznavour and American songwriter Jimmy Webb were separately signed to write the film’s theme and title song, according to the 24 Dec 1969 and 22 May 1970 issues of DV. However, none of these men were involved with the final production.
       Although Erich Segal wrote and sold Love Story as a screenplay, he later turned it into a short novel published by Harper & Row on 4 Feb 1969, as well as a short-story “condensation” in the Feb 1969 issue of Ladies Home Journal, the 10 Dec 1969 Var reported. A full-page advertisement in the 8 May 1970 DV proclaimed that the “motion picture adaptation” of the “National No. 1 Best Seller” would be in theaters by Christmas. According to the 19 Aug 1970 Var, the New American Library’s Signet imprint would print 3,500,000 paperback copies of Love Story a month before the film’s opening, but the 9 Dec 1970 Var noted that the printing had already exceeded five million copies.
       Principal photography began 18 Nov 1969 in Boston, MA, according to a production chart in the 19 Dec 1969 DV. Harvard University’s Donald C. Watson ice rink at 65 N. Harvard Street in Allston, MA, was used for several scenes, and students from several colleges filled the stands as background actors. Harvard ice hockey coach, Olympic skater William Cleary, stunt-doubled for Ryan O’Neal and served as one of the film’s technical advisors. The production also used Harvard Yard, the center of the Harvard campus in Cambridge, MA, and nearby Radcliff College. A Victorian boarding house at 119 Oxford Street in Cambridge was used as the lead characters’ first home following their marriage, and MacGraw sat on its front steps when she uttered the film’s iconic line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” The 17 Dec 1969 Var noted that production had moved to New York City, where filming was expected to last into Jan 1970. Paramount headquarters at 1501 Broadway was used as the offices of Harvard University’s “Dean’ Thompson” and “Oliver Barrett III.” Other New York City locations included Central Park, Mt. Sinai Medical Center’s Klingenstein Pavilion on Fifth Avenue, and Fordham University in the Bronx (where the exterior of the Harvard ice rink was shot). The Barrett mansion was filmed at an estate in Old Westbury, Long Island, New York. An item in the 5 Feb 1970 DV mentioned that producer Howard G. Minsky and director Arthur Hiller had returned to Hollywood from New York, having ostensibly finished shooting, but the 6 Mar 1970 DV reported that additional scenes were being filmed in Newport Beach, CA, which was “doubling Cape Cod,” MA. Adolph Zukor, Paramount’s ninety-seven-year-old founder, visited the production at Newport Beach on the final day of shooting, the 2 Apr 1970 LAT noted. According to the 30 Dec 1970 DV, the budget was $2.26 million.
       In a commentary track accompanying Paramount’s 2001 DVD release of Love Story, Hiller claimed he originally auditioned six actors for the Oliver Barrett, IV role, including Beau Bridges, Michael York, and Christopher Walken. When he settled on Ryan O’Neal, he rehearsed the actor and Ali MacGraw for ten days, because he wanted them to be friends before filming began. When he assembled his first cut of the film for Paramount executives, Hiller placed the doctor’s office scene in which Oliver learns about Jenny’s fatal disease at the beginning, but everyone felt the result was “flat” because nobody at that point cared about Jenny’s character. Moving the scene two-thirds of the way into the story solved the problem.
       Love Story was Tom (Tommy) Lee Jones’s first feature film. He graduated from Harvard University several months before filming began.
       The 17 Dec 1970 DV announced that Love Story premiered in New York City the night before. On the West Coast, it opened as “an exclusive engagement” in Westwood, CA, on Christmas Day. The 15 Jan 1971 LAT noted that the film was selected to be shown at that year’s Royal Command Performance, attended by Queen Elizabeth, in London, England. Ryan O’Neal and other stars from the film were also present. The 6 Jan 1971 Var summed up the film’s early success by predicting it “may join the ranks of those ‘dream’ grossers, judging by its initial record-breaking business.” In the first two weeks of release, Love Story “earned back its negative and print cost.” By Jul 1971, the film had made $50 million.
       Love Story was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture; Directing (Arthur Hiller); Actor (Ryan O’Neal); Actress (Ali MacGraw); Actor in a Supporting Role (John Marley); and Writing (Story and Screenplay—based on factual material or material not previously published or produced) (Erich Segal). Francis Lai won the film’s only Academy Award, for Music (Original Score).
       AFI ranked Love Story #9 on its “100 Years…100 Passions” list, and Ali MacGraw’s line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” was #13 on its “100 Years…100 Movie Quotes” list. The quote was so popular, and maligned, that director Peter Bogdanovich used it to set up the final punch line of his 1972 comedy, What’s Up, Doc? (see entry). In that film, Barbra Streisand’s “Jody Maxwell” tells Ryan O’Neal’s “Howard Bannister” that “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” and he answers, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”