No one who has seen Love Story will ever forget Ryan O’Neal. He was the golden boy in the bright leather jacket, frolicking in the snow with the snippy Ali MacGraw, who suffered from not satisfying his strict father, who studied law and played ice hockey. And the building where he studied bore his family name.
“Love Story” was the most successful film of 1970. One can debate endlessly whether love means never having to ask for forgiveness. It is the most beautiful and saddest film in the world. And only one man could play it.
Ryan O’Neal was born in Los Angeles in 1941. His first television role was in 1960. From 1964 to 1969 he starred in Peyton Place, a family series starring Mia Farrow, a staple of the American household (and whom David Lynch loved so much that he was still talking about her decades later). . In “Peyton Place,” O’Neal was the All American Boy, which, strangely enough, he remained in his greatest role, in Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” (1975).
Podcast “Voluntary Film Control” about the cinema year 1070, with “Love Story”:
Barry Lyndon is a natural, a pure fool, a rogue. Kubrick shot only with natural light and candlelight. The film is a painting in motion. And only Ryan O’Neal could be Barry Lyndon. The slightly older Robert Redford was always skeptical. He had these narrow eyes. O’Neal beamed.
With Peter Bogdanovich, O’Neal starred in the screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” with Barbra Streisand (1972) and in “Paper Moon” (1973) with his daughter Tatum. She got an Oscar. Some say he couldn’t get over not getting the Oscar. As he got older and didn’t have everything going for him, O’Neal appeared in shallow films and jokes. The big directors didn’t want him. In “The Bridge of Arnhem” (1977) Redford plays the American hero. Ryan O’Neal is simply optimistic.
He then became a drunkard and an occasional actor. But even in a guest role on “Desperate Housewives” he has the dignity of an exceptionally beautiful man.
Yesterday Ryan O’Neal, the man in the light leather jacket, died in Los Angeles at the age of 82.