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| -Obits- |
| "Love Story" author Erich Segal dies aged 72 |
| 2010-01-21 |
| [Dawn] "Love Story" author Erich Segal, whose popular romantic drama coined the phrase "Love means never having to say you're sorry", has died of a heart attack at the age of 72, his daughter said. Segal, who also wrote the screenplay for the Beatles' animated film "Yellow Submarine", died at his home in London on Sunday, his daughter Francesca Segal said. The author had been suffering from Parkinson's disease for many years, she said Tuesday. The US-born writer was a classics professor at Yale University when he wrote the book "Love Story", which was made into a 1970 hit film starting Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw. The movie, which won an Oscar and was nominated for six others, tells the story of a wealthy young man, Oliver, who becomes estranged from his father when he marries Jennifer, a woman from a less privileged background. But the tale takes a tragic twist when Jennifer develops leukemia and eventually dies. Oliver's father has a change of heart when he hears what has happened and races to see him, telling his son he is sorry to hear the sad news. This is when Oliver replies: "Loves means never having to say you are sorry." In a 2008 article for Granta magazine, the author's daughter said "Love Story", inspired by a true tale, captured her father's imagination and made him "a world-famous author". "His agent begged him to put it aside, convinced it would ruin his reputation as a writer of macho action screenplays," she said. "But it had poured from him in what felt like a single sitting and, although he could not have known to what extent, he knew it was worth fighting for." "The two monoliths that dominated my father's identity - the peak and the trough of his life - were 'Love Story' and Parkinson's disease," she added. Speaking at his funeral Tuesday, Francesca Segal paid tribute to her father's tenacity. "That he fought to breathe, fought to live, every second of the last 30 years of illness with such mind-blowing obduracy, is a testament to the core of who he was," she told mourners. Erich Segal was born in New York and was an honorary fellow of Wolfson College at Oxford University. He is survived by his wife, Karen James, and daughters Francesca, 29, and Miranda, 20. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #13 RIP Erich. Now re the movie--Ali McGraw is a mind blowingly horrible actress in Love Story. It can only be viewed as camp today (although I still like the Harvard-Cornell hockey game). |
| Posted by: JDB 2010-01-21 19:30 |
| #12 Never read the book or saw the movie. Never will. What trash. As far as AlBore goes, he can blow it out his *ss. Segal himself said the |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2010-01-21 19:24 |
| #11 Carl Burnett did the best send-up of that movie. Ever. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2010-01-21 19:04 |
| #10 Boston drivers prepared me for Paris. Love Story struck me as inane even as a teenager... even though I was a girl, and even though I read the book without ever watching the film. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-01-21 17:13 |
| #9 "Loves means never having to say you are sorry." Good God - more inane words were never spoken. Love means There, fixed it for you, Erich. |
| Posted by: GORT 2010-01-21 13:19 |
| #8 That movie had one of the best scenes ever for me. I saw it when I was 21. The scene was the car ride through Boston and over bridge where she is screaming about his driving and he answers "This is Boston, they all drive this way." Never having been to Boston I thought this a humerous line. I move there a year later to finish school and found out that the line wasn't humerous at all.......it was absolutely true, if somewhat understated. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2010-01-21 12:21 |
| #7 "Loves means never having to say you are sorry." No, that's sociopathy. |
| Posted by: ed 2010-01-21 11:13 |
| #6 Meh! |
| Posted by: Almost Anonymous 5839 2010-01-21 10:29 |
| #5 BEST movie and book evah! You brutes don't know good art! |
| Posted by: The Girls 2010-01-21 10:28 |
| #4 "Where do I begin..." |
| Posted by: Tom- Pa 2010-01-21 09:16 |
| #3 That damned movie indulged so many women who had feminine martyrdom complexes, who then about drove their husbands and boyfriends bonkers. To start with, as the expression goes, "All women marry beneath their station", *especially* if they marry above their station. This is one common fantasy to excuse their disappointment in their husband. Second, leukemia was not as well known back then. The movie first implies that the couple see a doctor because they are *infertile*. Being "barren" was a big psychological tweak back then, because of the social contortions of feminism. What is a housewife without children to do? She has no career, even though she is "educated". Third, it turns out that the reason she is infertile, is implied to be a "female problem", rather than blood cancer. Here's where the martyrdom thing comes in. She suffers and dies because "she is a woman", (and that is what women do.) Fourth, Ryan O'Neill did a world class job of suffering her loss, blowing tears and snot and being emotionally crushed. And *not* afraid to chew scenery to show it. No macho stoicism. No getting drunk and hitting on a bunch of coed cheerleader-bimbos. And no other girls waiting in the wings to marry the rich boy widower. You know that "He will never love again." Feh. "Lady porn". |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-01-21 09:14 |
| #2 "Loves means never having to say you are sorry." Pfeh. Worst definition of love EVER. Testament to those crappy times, I guess. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2010-01-21 08:03 |
| #1 according to AlGore, he and Tipper were the inspiration for the love story. I read it on his Interwebs |
| Posted by: Frank G 2010-01-21 08:00 |