Love Story | 1970
- Locations |
- Boston, Massachusetts; New York
- DIRECTOR |
- Arthur Hiller
Rich kid Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O'Neal) gives up the family fortune to marry working class student Jennifer Cavalleri (Ali MacGraw), but it's a bad deal as she’s dying from one of those mysterious Hollywood diseases devoid of visible symptoms.
Oliver and Jennifer meet at Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where scenes were filmed at Harvard Yard and Tercentenary Theatre. Along with the sequel, Oliver’s Story, legal drama The Paper Chase and misfiring comedy Soul Man, it’s one of the few features actually filmed on the hallowed campus. Good Will Hunting features Harvard buildings, though most of the film was shot in Toronto. And, apart from a couple of establishing shots, the Harvard-set Legally Blonde was filmed in Los Angeles, mainly in Pasadena. Similarly, raucous comedies Road Trip and Old School incorporate second unit shots of the campus.
Harvard subway station is minutes away from Boston Downtown on the MBTA Red Line (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority).
The intimidatingly grand mansion belonging to Oliver Barrett III (Ray Milland), Oliver's unbending father, is the Phipps Estate House, Old Westbury Gardens, 71 Old Westbury Road on Long Island, a frequently used location seen in Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, Cruel Intentions, Hitch and Wolf among other movies.
After their DIY marriage, Oliver and Jennifer set up home in a modest woodframe house at 119 Oxford Street, Cambridge, near to the Harvard campus. It's on the doorstep here that Jennifer gets to utter the film's immortal tagline “Love means never having to say you're sorry”.
After graduation, the couple move to New York. The skating scene is at the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park. When Jennifer is taken ill, they catch a cab by Central Park opposite the Hotel Pierre.
