A Many-Splendored 'Love Story'

Movie filmed at Harvard 25 years ago helped to define a generation

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

Next Wednesday is Valentine's Day, and what better way to commemorate this holiday for lovers than by celebrating the 25th anniversary of a movie that for millions of viewers epitomized the theme of romantic love, and was filmed at Harvard to boot?

Love Story, the 1970 romance that immortalized the line, "Love means never having to say you're sorry," starred Ali MacGraw as Jennifer Cavilleri and Ryan O'Neal as Oliver Barrett IV -- Harvard students irresistibly drawn together despite coming from different sides of the tracks. In the film, love conquers all, including poverty and disapproving parents, until Jennie contracts incurable leukemia and dies in her lover's arms.

Large portions of the film were shot on the Harvard campus (something University policy would never permit today) as well as in and around Harvard Square. Specific locations include Emerson Hall (called Barrett Hall in the movie), Watson Rink (since renovated and renamed Alexander Bright Hockey Center -- Athletics Director William Cleary served as O'Neal's skating double in some of the hockey scenes), and the Weeks Footbridge (where Oliver proposes marriage).

The evocation of familiar scenes is such a strong element of Love Story that a showing of the film has become a time-honored feature of freshman orientation (accompanied by much shouted commentary and irreverent laughter).

The film has other links to Harvard as well. Erich Segal, who wrote the book and screenplay, earned several degrees from Harvard -- AB '58, AM '59, and PhD '65, and taught here in the Classics Department. Tommy Lee Jones '69 has a small role as one of Ryan O'Neal's roommates.

(The movie was profiled in a Dec. 14, 1995, Boston Globe article by freelance writer Lise Stern. Some of the information used in this piece comes from Stern's article.)

Renting in Outer Mongolia

The making of the film left an imprint on the memories of many who lived through the experience. Harvey Cox, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity, remembers the excitement that the Love Story production crew created when it moved into the Agassiz neighborhood to film several scenes.

The filmmakers used a house on Oxford Street near the corner of Prentiss as Oliver and Jennifer's first home. Many in the neighborhood were bemused that the house was meant to represent near-poverty living, a move downward for the wealthy Oliver after being disinherited by his father.

"Everybody thought this was very funny because housing here is not that cheap, but apparently to the eye of a Hollywood director it looked like the kind of a place somebody would move into when they were down on their luck," Cox said.

Cox remembers taking his young children to see the film and having to explain Jennifer's reaction when Oliver tells her how little they would be paying to rent the house: "Where is it, Outer Mongolia?"

"I had to explain to them where Mongolia was, and when I told them, they didn't like that one bit."

Nevertheless, people in the neighborhood were excited by the prospect of seeing landmarks like the spa and laundromat on Oxford Street and the Midget Restaurant on Mass. Ave. (now Changsho) serve as movie backdrops, and many went to see the film two or three times, Cox said. The owners of Jennifer and Oliver's low-rent love-nest later hung out a sign identifying it as the house from Love Story and complaining that their compensation for the use of the building had been too small.

A Grim Subtext

In addition to the thrill of seeing Hollywood stars act out a drama in a familiar setting, Cox said that he found a special meaning in the film's portrayal of Jennifer's terminal illness. "The thing that struck me was that it was a rather moving account of young people trying to cope with a desperate situation with virtually no resources. They didn't seem to have a circle of friends, their parents -- at least his parents -- had rejected them, they didn't seem to have any religious or spiritual resources. They were really kind of out there on their own."

Cox saw the film as an indication that the Age of Aquarius was over, that the exuberance of the 1960s had given way to something far more grim and pessimistic.

"I felt that it was saying, 'Look, here we are, and horrible things can happen to you, and you'd better have some networks to fall back on when those sorts of things happen.' It didn't say that blatantly, but that was sort of a subtext."

Cox found the movie's most famous line, "Love means never having to say you're sorry," very much out of tune with reality.

"I can't imagine how that got into circulation because it seems so utterly vacuous. I think it was indicative of the times. You don't have to say you're sorry because love is all. Love makes the world go round, and this was the Love Generation. If you were in love, then everything would be OK. You've reached the supreme goal, so even something like saying you're sorry was unnecessary."

Cox thinks that today's young people are much more concerned with establishing connections and networks and maintaining some sort of familial traditions, "even if they do it in their own way. Their rebellions are a little bit more conditioned by their recognition that you don't want to burn all your bridges."

Cox also believes that the wide-eyed faith in love's overriding power, exemplified by Jennifer and Oliver's rebellious plunge into commitment and marriage, has been replaced with a far less idealistic attitude.

"There's a lot less innocence about what love can do. Maybe it's even gone too far into premature cynicism, that you really have to be terribly careful and not get burned, and not put all your eggs in one basket. It's certainly swung the other way."