The Post’s Lou Lumenick, at age 20, with Ali MacGraw on the set of “Love Story” on the CCNY campus. (Bruce J Haber)
In early 1970, I was witness to a historical moment on my college campus.
No, I wasn’t at Kent State University when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on students. I was at the City College of New York when Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal shot a scene for “Love Story” in the Great Hall. And I have a photo of myself with MacGraw to prove it.
At that point, nobody could imagine the grip “Love Story” would have on American culture during an era of social unrest. Even today, 40 years later, it remains one of Hollywood’s most famous romantic tragedies.
Erich Segal’s schmaltzy novel, about a conceited Harvard jock and his doomed musician girlfriend, opens, like the movie, with the immortal lines: “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?”
This was a $2 million movie (not much, even in those days) being shot by Paramount Pictures, literally on the verge of being closed by its conglomerate owners as moviegoing plummeted to its lowest ebb since the medium’s earliest days.
Studio chief Robert Evans cast his new wife, former model Ali MacGraw, as the female lead, Jenny Cohen. Because the WASP actress had made her screen breakthrough playing Jewish-American Princess Brenda Patimkin in “Goodbye Columbus” the year before, her character became the Italian-American Jenny Cavalleri to prevent MacGraw from being typecast.
No established screen actors wanted to play the rich preppy Oliver Barrett III, due to the high cheese factor of the script.According to Evans’ memoir, Jon Voight, Michael Douglas, Michael York, Jeff Bridges and his brother Beau all turned the script down — even when they were offered 10 percent of the gross.
Arthur Hiller, a journeyman director who agreed to take on “Love Story” as a “filler” between other assignments as a favor to Evans, liked an unknown stage actor he tested for Oliver — Christopher Walken. Evans preferred Ryan O’Neal, then best-known for the TV soap “Peyton Place,” who very reluctantly accepted.
The cast also includes John Marley — who would memorably wake up with a horse’s head in his bed as the producer Jack Woltz in “The Godfather” a couple of years later — as Jenny’s father, and “Tom” Lee Jones (Harvard ’69) in his screen debut as Oliver’s roommate.
Most of “Love Story” was shot in the winter of 1969-’70 in Cambridge, Mass. At some point, Harvard officials withdrew permission, reportedly because artificial snow used during the shoot damaged trees on campus. So, after filming moved to NYC — there were major scenes shot along Fifth Avenue and at the Wollman rink in Central Park (where a tiny set representing a rink-side cafe was constructed) — buildings at Fordham University in The Bronx stood in for Harvard in one scene.
Interiors for Oliver’s commencement were shot at CCNY — a sequence that runs about 45 seconds in the film. That’s where I met with Ali MacGraw when I was 20.
It was CCNY photographer Bruce Haber’s idea for me to pose with her. I have to admit, I was more than a little nervous standing so close to her.
She was the first celebrity I ever met. I’ll never forget it. She was so beautiful and cute, I was tongue-tied. I could do very little besides introducing myself.
By that point, Evans claims, “Love Story” had exhausted its official, bare-bones budget, and he was personally paying a skeleton crew.
But Segal’s novel — based on his screenplay and written while the film was in production — soared to the top of the best-seller list when it was released on Valentine’s Day, 1970.
Eleven months later, “Love Story” became the year’s top-grossing film, returning $104 million in North America alone and assuring Paramount’s survival. It popularized the term “preppy” and turned MacGraw, with her bohemian-chic camel coats, black tights and knit hats, into a style icon.
The film nabbed seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and Francis Lai’s score won. The movie’s most famous line — “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” — is ranked No. 13 by the American Film Institute, though it became a punch line in another movie just two years later.
When Barbra Streisand utters the line in “What’s Up Doc,” leading man O’Neal replies: “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
Desire was real, at least for O’Neal
The only public acknowledgment of the movie’s 40th anniversary came in October, when it was the subject of a hourlong episode of “Oprah.”
O’Neal admitted for the first time that he had an unrequited crush on MacGraw, who was married at the time to studio chief Robert Evans.
“We had all these scenes together, and they always seemed to play themselves, you know?” he said.
“When the cameras were on or off, [there was] intensity, my intensity. I guess it was — I just adored her. I walked into walls.”
Says Lumenick, “If I could reach out to her today, I’d say: ‘Sorry, Ali. I’m married now, but we’ll always have CCNY.’”