Before Rose and Jack, there was Jenny and Ollie.
Played by Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal, the two were star-crossed lovers, innocent dreamers, and downright doomed from the start.
Love Story, directed by Arthur Hiller, was adapted for the screen from the novel of the same name by Erich Segal, who according to NPR, wrote the tearjerker at the age of 30 as a professor at Yale. Taking a bit of artistic license, Hiller’s telling strays only slightly from the book’s narrative, following a wealthy Harvard law student and the romance he strikes up with the working-class music student his father despises.
"It was cliché, but it worked," MacGraw said to NPR about the film’s plot. "And everybody was completely flabbergasted when it had the reception that it had, which was right away."
Nominated for seven Academy Awards and snagging one (for Best Original Score, no doubt), the film was a massive critical and commercial success. In fact, on this day in March 1971, Love Story was the No. 1 film at the box office, holding steady since its original wide release into theaters on Christmas Day the year before.
In mid-February 1971, Herbert Ross' rom-com starring Barbra Streisand, The Owl and the Pussycat, bumped Hiller's romance from its pinnacle spot, but MacGraw and O’Neal quickly returned to the peak the following week.
Overall, Love Story spent a total of 15 weeks at the top, per Variety’s “50 Top-Grossing Films” archives, and collected an impressive $106,550,690 worldwide. Moviegoers simply could not get enough of MacGraw and O’Neal, who TIME magazine said gave “the character of the neon scion a warmth and vulnerability entirely missing from the bestseller.”
The film itself even got the thumbs up from late famed critic Roger Ebert, who said at the time, “The film of Love Story is infinitely better than the book.”
In 1970 and 1971, with country was grappling with war abroad and continuing the fight for civil rights at home, leading to audiences welcoming a simple, sentimental film that believed in the power of love.
“It was genuine and earnest and I think it just struck a chord," writer Francesca Segal, the daughter of Erich, told NPR, while celebrating the 50th anniversary edition of her father’s novel.
More than half a century later, Love Story still ranks among cinema’s greatest romance tales -- and gave the world one of its most famous non-apologies: “Love means never having to say your sorry.”
The line, often ridiculed, parodied, and dissected, was a mystery to MacGraw when she first said it. NPR shared that the model/actress had no clue at the time what Segal meant by it, but finds meaning in it years later.
"Saying sorry isn't what it's about. It's about really feeling badly for the hurt ... and then absolutely trying never to do it again," she said. "So there's a lot of work more than, 'Gee, I'm sorry,' and then scooting outside to get on your bike and ride into the fall leaves or whatever."
Love also means never having to say your sorry for watching a sappy tearjerker in the middle of the day. So why not skipTitanic for the 100th time and queue up this 1970 classic instead?
Love Story is streaming for free right now at PlutoTV.
Related: 1968 Masterpiece Named ‘Best Movie of All Time’ Was Initially Walk-Out Bad
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