Love Story II Day of the Locust-Hahvud Style

SUMNER REDSTONE knew he mustn't let them think him flustered. Christ, he thought to himself, no wonder Pusey's throwing in the towel. For every time Sumner managed another sentence, the crowd before him roared with laughter. For the life of him, Sumner just couldn't understand it. Was this then what Harvard had come to? Sumner could feel himself beginning to sweat. If there were only some way of short-circuiting the laughter, of turning it against itself. But Sumner could see no way out, and just kept on plowing headlong through the introductory remarks that had been written for him.

"Tonight is the exciting climax of a magnificent entertainment." Scattered giggles.

"And I wonder if you feel the excitement I feel?" Growing guffaws.

"But then what can you say about the story of a 25-year-old girl that died?" Outright laughter, plain and simple.

YOU MIGHT suspect that even one of Paramount's Assistant Vice-Presidents in Charge of Marketing and Promotion could have foreseen the folly inherent in previewing Love Story before a specially-invited Harvard audience. But then, what with the phenomenal success of Erich Segal's literary afterthought of the same name as well as the almost certain success of the film, well, what the hell, with all that behind you, it was about time you took a few chances.

So, throwing abandon to the winds-as Segal himself might phrase it-Sumner Redstone, class of '44 and head of Boston's Redstone Showcase Theatres, announced that on the ever-after-to-be-memorable night of December 18 the Circle Theatre's usually scheduled performances of Catch-22 would be cancelled in order that Paramount could bring in a private screening of Love Story -opening December 25 at the same theatre, lest anyone forget. Accordingly, invitations went out to the Harvard hockey team, virtually everyone on the payroll of the Department of Athletics, as many of the Harvard extras as Paramount could recall, and even a Dean or two. What you might call a cross section of the entire academic community. Cirea 1955, of course.

Now Hollywood previews are hardly the big deals they would have you believe-out in Los Angeles they crank out two or three a week and even the daily smog alert generates more excitement. But here in Boston where the only matters of course seem to be 10" snowfalls and nurses discovered strangled in their Back Bay apartments, Hollywood-typed previews are not so easily dispatched with, By December 18, with Christmas vacation only hours away, most of the Harvard community had already departed for its geographically distributed homes, except for those lucky few ... after all, man, who'd be crazy enough to pass up a chance to see, in person to see, Ryan O'Neal and Ali McGraw and, yes, even Erich Segal. As well as attend a Champagne Reception. Why, I mean, the whole thing was so damn exciting that the University Gazette dropped its prevalent air of composure to feature great, big, suitable-for-framing pies of Ali and Ryan on page one of its December 11 issue. No doubt about it, Hollywood had come to Harvard.

Meanwhile, Sumner Redstone. loyal alumnus that he is, was getting ready to do his little bit as he once more rehearsed his speech, while his wife struggled into the purple velvet knickers in which she would greet all those personal friends, friends from Newton and Brookline and Needham Heights that had been thoughtfully given a chance to see Mr. Redstone at his absolutely finest hour.

AND OUTSIDE the Circle Theatre, a lonely kleig shot its searching blue light into the frozen New England sky. Two fans shivered under its heatless glare as they waited patiently, in hopes that celebrities would be there.

Fuck the celebrities, though, for inside the suburban elegance of the plastic-and-turquoise theatre, the team was already whooping it up. Admittedly, the hors d'oeuvres weren't much more than pasteboard decorations, but then the champagne had already begun to compensate for that. Around the refreshment counter, which had been entirely given over to dispensing the stuff-despite the disappointment of one girl who demanded to know "Where you can get a candy bar around there?"-the crowd was packed tighter than a bunch of high school girls trying to extract autographs from Bobby Orr. And that, you see, made all the difference. For out in Hollywood, no matter how bad the film being previewed, the booze comes after the flick.

But how was Sumner Redstone to know? After all, these were Harvard men, weren't they? And, having that speech on his mind, he could hardly be expected to notice the J-V gang that had collected up on the second level of the lobby where they were grabbing whole bottles of the stuff from under the eyes of the pleading hostesses.

Off to one corner, the publicity men and Boston's two and a half papparazzi were getting along with dear old Erich, the only "celebrity" who had actually made it to the bash, but, beside Erich, no one else seemed to care. Eventually the crowd drifted into the theatre proper, where everyone drifted around in search of seats like so many fish in this great, midnight blue aquarium. All about, little pops and minor explosions resounded as champagne glasses were dropped and trampled underfoot-and this would continue throughout the running of the film.

And then Sumner Redstone cleared his throat, only too aware of the Paramount brass awaiting their introductions and the present Harvard administrators and his wife's eager friends certainly having the time of their dreary old Bostonian lives, and Sumner began his speech, only, to his horror, to meet with drunken laughter and then suddenly all he could see was some kid in a back row waving an empty bottle in the air.

OF COURSE, given that Love Story has about as much to say about Harvard as, say, the President's response to the Report on Campus Unrest, the whole gimmick was bound to backfire sooner or later. Arthur Hiller, the film's director, met with the only sincere applause during the pre-film festivities that followed Redstone's speech, when he referred to the whole evening as a chance to watch yourself in your own home movies. But though everyone strained not to miss a single bit of background action, and though the hockey boys applauded themselves extravagantly, precious little of Harvard showed up in the final film. Functionally, Harvard was there simply to provide an excuse for connecting up terribly upper-class Ryan O'Neal with lower middle-class Ali McGraw, whom Hollywood seems to have slated to pick up all the ethnic roles than Anthony Quinn can no longer play. The screenplay could have been set on a cross-town bus during the recent New York taxi strike and it wouldn't have really made any difference.

Of course, from the very first, we had always treated Love Story as a great joke, albeit one that carried with it the possibility of getting terribly out of hand. And we continued to laugh: through Redstone's speech; through some guy telling us how Segal had written the screen play in just one weekend ("The Lost Weekend," someone yelled back): through another guy's apostrophe to this "pure and simple love story" (a premarital affair between a foul-mouthed Cliffie and an Oedipal jock is now by Hollywood's eyes pure and simple ?); through a third's attempt to thank Pusey sidekick Bentinck-Smith (although he kept mispronouncing it Benting ) for allowing the film crew on campus as "friendly trespassers." And when Segal concluded it all by referring to Harvard as "an institution for which everyone here has respect," he brought down the house.

And yet the laughter, blurred and distorted by champagne though it was, rang with not a little of plain old Harvard elitism and snobbery. And two hours later, when the film ended and the audience sobered up, it had turned into the sniffles and sobs to which Love Story reduces all its victims. For we could laugh at the Paramount corporate mind all we wanted, and yet still had to admit that Paramount had tricked us into seeing its film. And, luxuriating in the successful kitsch of it all, the makers of Love Story were hardly about to say they were sorry.