WHERE DO YOU BEGIN?
Love Story, 1970
Cheaply produced, poorly shot, and badly edited, Love Storyās plot stumbles along so devoid of pace or grace you canāt help suspecting that Yale classics professor-turned-screenwriter Erich Segal pitched his novel of doomed young love to Paramount Pictures executives using flash cards written in Magic Marker. Compared to the sparkling banter between the magnetic screen couplings of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy or Doris Day and Rock Hudson, the initial flirtations between trust-fund hockey jock Oliver Barrett IV and poor but headstrong Jenny Cavilleri are so hampered by chips on every shoulder and defensive sarcasm masquerading as wit you canāt imagine these two kids taking a stroll across campus, let alone giving up everything to be together.
Then why and how did Love Story leave millions of moviegoers eagerly sobbing hysterically into a puddle of soaked tissues? Made for a mere two million dollars, the film earned fifty times that to become the highest-grossing film of 1971, its tear-stained success due to the rare alignment of brilliant marketing, fortuitous timing, savvy casting, a reassuring return to overlooked attire, a single rhapsodic production element, and one rapturous plug from a famous fan.
Courtesy Everett Collection.
Courtesy Everett Collection.
Though first conceived as a screenplay, Segalās agent suggested he publish a novelization of an actual romance he had heard about as an undergrad at Harvard. The slender 132-page book with its eye-catching red, green, and blue cover graphic proclaiming its all-capitalized title, LOVE STORY (a riff on pop artist Robert Indianaās LOVE sculpture) was published on Valentineās Day 1970. That morning, on televisionās most popular rise-and-shine program, Today, cohost Barbara Walters announced, āI was up most of the night reading a book I couldnāt put down, and when I finished it, I was sobbing. I cried and cried.ā Later, she introduced the unknown author by anointing his ātender, romantic, and lovelyā novel as the book of the year. Segal, who had earned a reputation at Yale for his effusively theatrical lectures, responded with a charming balance of blushing self-satisfaction and āthis is my best sideā showmanship. By dayās end, heart-shaped boxes of candy were the fallback gift if you couldnāt procure one of the first printingās seventy-five hundred now-sold-out copies. Within several months, the personable author had appeared on every noteworthy national radio and talk show (Johnny Carson had him on The Tonight Show four times in one month); the novel that Kurt Vonnegut called āas hard to put down as a chocolate Ć©clairā was cemented onto the bestseller list, where it remained for forty-one weeks; and on a trajectory to sell nearly twenty-one million copies in hardcover and paperback in more than twenty languages. According to a Gallup poll, one in five Americans had read Love Story. The movie was released that same year, one week before Christmas.
Love Story begins with a piano gently plinking out the movieās now immediately recognizable theme. In fact, Francis Laiās Oscar-winning score may have been the filmās single most successful marketing tool. The constant ramping of its inescapable melody from plaintive to full orchestral anguish was so effective in generating tears, whether you heard it in the theater, your car, the elevator, or everywhere else it seemed to play in 1970 that film footage seemed almost unnecessary.
That is, until you saw them. Heralded by harpsichords and violins and initially framed against snow-blanketed backdrops, it is physiologically impossible not to marvel at the frosty-cheeked, genetically blessed loveliness of Ali MacGraw and Ryan OāNeal. MacGrawās striking looks had already been confirmed by both her career as a successful teen cover girl and her notable screen debut as the shiksa goddess in the film version of Philip Rothās Goodbye, Columbus. She had recently married Paramountās executive vice president Robert Evans. Friends with Segal for more than a decade, MacGraw championed the script, and Evans wanted to make his new wife happy.
OāNeal also came with preordained golden-boy status thanks to six years of playing Rodney Harrington, the tousle-haired heartthrob on televisionās first primetime soap opera, Peyton Place, adapted from Grace Metaliousās once scandalous novel. OāNealās tumbling golden locks, crooked smile, woefully earnest gaze, and varsity-jock gait made his handsomeness appear accessible to women yet unthreatening to men. To be honest, both actors give performances that offer less depth than an angora sweater. However, it didnāt matter. Audiences had already committed Segalās clunky dialogue to memory. You couldnāt find two more perfectly realized vessels to deliver the words.
Another reason for its popular embrace is Love Storyās release during the ascendency of the collective consciousness known as Woodstock Nation. Its headbanded participants regarded their bleached bell-bottoms, Indian-inspired embroidered tunics, Moroccan-inspired flowing djellabas, Jamaican-inspired beaded necklaces, and Asian-inspired water buffalo sandals as standard daywear, whether attending class or antiwar rallies. In addition, fashion was still riding the final waves of the British Invasion and its reliance on the neon hues and angular silhouettes of pop and op art. After all, Jenny loved the Beatles almost as much as she loved Ollie.
For the millions unseduced by and uncomfortable with such obvious flamboyance, there was cozy reassurance in gazing at MacGraw walking on a protest-free campus in a black turtleneck with a yellow tartan plaid skirt and matching scarf, going to a hockey game in a navy peacoat, and walking arm in arm with Ollie in her camel-hair wrap coat with red turtleneck or a smashing white wool trenchānot bad for a girl on financial aid. As for Ollie, he was as unequivocally āpreppyā as Jenny claimed, wearing Harris Tweed blazers over Shetland sweaters, blue oxford cloth shirts with the collars out, and a shearling coat. If his odious father didnāt keep bringing up his familyās wealth, you might surmise that Oliver had been raised by the sales staff at Brooks Brothers. Looking at Ollie and Jenny together you canāt help but come to the conclusion that as long as there are private schools, the New England coastline, Palm Beach, and people who want unassailable assurance of the appropriateness of their wardrobe, preppiness is now and forever. Abercrombie & Fitch, Tommy Hilfiger, J.Crew, and Ralph Lauren may serve as the shrines of this perpetually appropriate style, but its patron saints should be Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Barrett IV.
Courtesy Everett Collection.
In the movie, we never learn what actual disease was killing Jenny, which could be why MacGraw looks no worse at her demise than someone who has just tolerated an overly aggressive cleanse. But did we really want to see MacGraw wasting away from leukemia? Love Storyās enduring success is the promise that love lost can be remembered as gloriously as love in bloom, and if you believe in this reality, you will never really be alone.
But as for love meaning never having to say youāre sorry, thatās pure fantasy. . . .
Marc Jacobs would be the first to admit he didnāt create the āgrungeā trend or claim his clothes were the real thing. As he stated in my book 100 Unforgettable Dresses, āI was adjusting these beautiful silk plaids I had woven in factories in Lake Como whose patterns were copied from shirts I had bought for three dollars on Saint Markās Place.ā It was the fashion press that stamped Jacobsās formative spring/summer 1992 ready-to-wear collection for Perry Ellis āgrunge,ā both prodding its influence and ensuring his failure at the company. With most innovative fashion concepts, it takes several seasons for its signature elements to start bobbing into the retail mainstream, which is when the mall-shopping public either embraces or rejects it.
But the grunge staples of knit hats, plaid flannels, shapeless cardigans, dark striped T-shirts, and torn denim defied the natural order of merchandising. Casually adopted as the unofficial uniform of bands like Pearl Jam, Sonic Youth, and the Stone Temple Pilots, whose raw vocals, dissonant harmonies, jagged guitar riffs, and joy-free lyrics defined alternative music in the early 1990s, its source of origin were the clothing racks at Walmart, K-Mart, army-navy stores, and thrift shops. Jacobs was fired despite the reams of pressāgood and badāthat his collection generated. From a corporate point of view, the label couldnāt make any money on their collection when Generation Xers were well aware of how to put together the look at a fraction of the runway versionās price. āI know I was asking for it,ā said Jacobs. āBut the attitude was so awkward and imperfect and available. And I loved it.ā
Guzman for stocklandmartel.com.
The sound had its own kingdom, the Pacific Northwest, and the look its own fashion capitalāSeattle, Washington. And for the too-brief time they were a couple, the realmās reigning monarchs were Courtney Love, lead singer for the band Hole, and her husband, Kurt Cobain, front man of Nirvana and cowriter of what came to be Generation Xās anthem, āSmells Like Teen Spirit,ā a title taken from the name of a deodorant Cobain wore.
Though their union turned out to be similarly star-crossed and, depending on your musical tastes, nearly as memorable, Cobain and Loveās courtship played out a little differently than that of Romeo and Juliet. āWe were peers on the same festival circuit before Nirvana clicked,ā recalls Love. āAnd we enjoyed a sense of competition, you know, that my band will kick your bandās ass.ā Though Love was dating another alternative rocker (Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins), she āhad a crush on Kurt right away. He was so damn pretty, except he didnāt know it because he was small and thin and raised in a town [Grays Harbor, Washington] where the burly look of a longshoreman is what passed for handsome. So he was tentative around me for months. With us, it was more like me chasing him around the office, except our desks were stages in Amsterdam, London, and Seattle.ā
Initially, Loveās tepid response to Nirvanaās music made it easier for her to handle Cobainās reticence. āAt first, I thought they sucked,ā says Love. āThat was until I listened to their song āSliverā and then thought, āWow, this guy knows how to write a hook. Iām going to get him.āā So she walked up to Cobain and told him to ādump all those other bitchesā hanging out in the back of the Nirvana van. He didnāt argue. āYeah, I was pretty aggressive,ā she says, ābut I had the stuff to back it up.ā
Love also had a hell of a look that was hard to miss amid mosh pits filled with plaid shapelessness. In the early 1980s, Love had worked in the wardrobe department of Paramount Pictures und...
