LONDON — Erich Segal, the Ivy League professor who attained mainstream fame and made millions sob as writer of the novel and movie “Love Story,” died Sunday of a heart attack at his home in London, his daughter said Tuesday. He was 72.
Segal was a Yale classics professor and screenplay writer when he turned a proposed movie about two college students — preppy Oliver and smart- mouthed Jenny — into a novel. Published in 1970, “Love Story” was a weeper about a young couple who fall in love, marry and discover she is dying of cancer. It was a million-seller guaranteed to make readers cry and critics scream.
A much bigger audience caught up with the film version, which starred Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw. Directed by Arthur Hiller, with a plaintive, Henry Mancini-composed theme song that wouldn’t quit, “Love Story” gained seven Oscar nominations — including one for Segal for writing the screenplay, as well as for best picture, best director, and best actor and actress. It won one Oscar, for best music.
Segal also wrote a sequel, “Oliver’s Story,” published in 1977, and made into a film, with O’Neal again in the lead male role.
A rabbi’s son, born in New York City in 1937, Segal also had a long, distinguished academic career in classics, gaining a doctorate at Harvard and teaching at Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth.
