Love Story
: the title is simple but had never appeared on a cover or a cinema poster before Erich Segal signed, in 1970, a novel that became a cult film.
History marked a generation.
Oliver Barrett IV, son of a rich banker, falls in love with Jenny Cavilleri, daughter of a modest pastry chef.
Despite the disagreement of his family, opposed to this relationship, Oliver marries Jenny.
They live happily, despite enormous financial worries.
Oliver finishes his studies when we discover that Jenny is doomed by medicine.
She suffers from leukemia.
Professor of classics at Harvard University in the United States, Erich Segal took advantage of his evenings to write a story born from an observation of the evolution of society, through the loves of his students.
At the end of the 1960s, although they advocated romanticism more than ever, many of them revolted against certain marriage traditions, starting with that of forced union or "yes" in church.
Defying the conventions of their parents, they do not want to receive orders from a priest.
The time has come for freedom, moral and sexual.
Segal remembers the tragedy experienced by a university friend Al Gore, future vice-president of the United States: his fiancée died of devastating leukemia.
Also read: Ryan O'Neal, actor from Love Story and Barry Lyndon, died at 82
From this ensemble a script was born that he sent to Paramount, without really believing in it.
The response is immediate and positive.
Erich Segal writes the dialogue while we work on the casting.
Ali MacGraw is immediately retained.
With Michael York and Michael Douglas declining the offer to become the male headliner, Ryan O'Neal inherits the role, by default.
He will never regret it.
On the eve of the start of filming, the producers asked the author to turn the script into a book.
They specify that the print run will be limited, since it is exclusively intended for the promotion of the feature film.
Enthusiastic about the manuscript, the publisher proposed wider distribution.
He gets a green light, without imagining for a single moment the excitement that this love drama will cause.
Several tens of millions of copies
Broadcast in around twenty languages,
Love Story
sold several tens of millions of copies, including three million in France, where, at the same time, six million cinema admissions were recorded.
An excellent deal for producers who had bet two million dollars on the project.
They won 150. Five times nominated for the Oscars, the film directed by Arthur Hiller allowed Francis Lai to receive the trophy for best music in Los Angeles.
The song from the soundtrack,
Une histoire d'amour
, created in France by Mireille Mathieu, has also become a classic.
Finally, at the microphone of France Inter, Jean-Pierre Cassel recorded, in his own way, excerpts of dialogue from the French version, which he evokes in an interview that Madelen invites you to discover or rediscover.
Half a century later, what remains of these loves?
Across the Atlantic, countless fifty-year-olds are called Jennifer.
For 15 years, this name was at the top of the list of those given to girls.
The text appears on the high school curriculum in many countries
.
“To love is to never have to say you are sorry”,
a line from this melodrama, has entered everyday language.
Erich Segal continued to teach in London, at Oxford University, and to write.
Oliver's Story was adapted for the screen in 1978, which was not the case for his last three novels published before his death on January 17, 2010, at the age of 72, following a heart attack.
While in Paris in the early 1970s, Segal, who spoke French perfectly, made another dream come true: this passionate marathon runner, went jogging in front of television cameras with his idol, Michel Jazy.
The vice Olympic champion, holder of nine world records, passed away last week.
He then said about the novelist:
“I have known many champions running faster than me, but I have never met anyone capable of riding, speaking faster than me!”