History Film / LoveStory

* SoapOperaDisease: So vague and mysterious [[RogerEbert]] called this trope 'the {{Ali MacGraw}} Disease' after this movie.

* SoapOperaDisease: So vague and mysterious {{Roger Ebert}} called this trope 'the Ali MacGraw Disease' after this movie.

* SoapOperaDisease

->'''Oliver:''' Do you have ''The Waning of the Middle Ages?''\\

* PowerfulPeopleAreSubs: A non-BDSM variation. Oliver is a successful lawyer, and Jenny is a housewife - and yet, he is the usual target of [[DeadpanSnarker her sarcastic quips]]. Moreover, when he finds out that Jenny is terminally ill, it is ''she'' who comforts ''him'' and not the other way round.

Oliver Barrett IV (Creator/RyanONeal) is a Harvard pre-law student and varsity hockey player from an old money [[WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant WASP]] family. When he needs to borrow a law book from the Radcliffe College library, he meets Radcliffe music major Jenny Cavalleri (Ali [=MacGraw=]), who is from a working-class Italian Catholic background and is employed by the library in a work study capacity. She initially needles Oliver for being a child of privilege and refuses to let him have the book unless he takes her out for coffee. The ice between them thaws very quickly, and they begin a romantic relationship. However, their romance does not sit well with Oliver's father (Creator/RayMilland), who cuts off his financial support when Oliver and Jenny announce their plans to marry after graduation. They go ahead with the wedding, after which Jenny has to take a job as a private school teacher to pay Oliver's tuition to Harvard Law School. He graduates third in his class and gets a job at a prestigious New York law firm; she resists his suggestion that she audition for the Juilliard School in favour of trying to have a child. But when they struggle to conceive and seek medical advice, they receive a devastating diagnosis: Jenny is terminally ill.

''Love Story'' is a 1970 feature film based on the novel of the same name by Creator/ErichSegal. Directed by Creator/ArthurHiller, it is considered a classic romance film, as well as the mother of all {{Tear Jerker}}s. Producer Robert Evans bragged that more babies were born than any time because of this film: [[GladToBeAliveSex "It was an aphrodisiac!"]]

* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Taken to such an extreme level during Jenny's terminal illness that it made Creator/RogerEbert coin the term "Ali [=MacGraw=] Disease": a "movie illness in which the only symptom is that the sufferer grows more beautiful as death approaches." {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in the Magazine/{{MAD}} parody "Lover's Story," in which the doctor describes this to Oliver as an actual symptom of her illness. By the time she's lying on her deathbed, smiling radiantly, she's too beautiful for anyone to look directly at her.

* RomanticRibbing: Jenny ironically calls Oliver "Preppie", and constantly teases him with sarcastic quips. He soon stars doing the same, but she still outmatches him every time:

''Love Story'' is a 1970 feature film based on the novel of the same name by Erich Segal. Directed by Creator/ArthurHiller, it is considered a classic romance film, as well as the mother of all {{Tear Jerker}}s. Producer Robert Evans bragged that more babies were born than any time because of this film: [[GladToBeAliveSex "It was an aphrodisiac!"]]

Oliver Barrett IV (Creator/RyanONeal) is a Harvard pre-law student and varsity hockey player from an old money [[WhiteAngloSaxonProtestant WASP]] family. When he needs to borrow a law book from the Radcliffe College library, he meets Radcliffe music major Jenny Cavalleri (Ali [=MacGraw=]), who is from a working-class Italian Catholic background and is employed by the library in a work study capacity. She initially needles Oliver for being a child of privilege and refuses to let him have the book unless he takes her out for coffee. The ice between them thaws very quickly, and they begin a romantic relationship. However, their romance does not sit well with Oliver's father, who cuts off his financial support when Oliver and Jenny announce their plans to marry after graduation. They go ahead with the wedding, after which Jenny has to take a job as a private school teacher to pay Oliver's tuition to Harvard Law School. He graduates third in his class and gets a job at a prestigious New York law firm; she resists his suggestion that she audition for the Juilliard School in favour of trying to have a child. But when they struggle to conceive and seek medical advice, they receive a devastating diagnosis: Jenny is terminally ill.

Oliver Barrett IV (Creator/RyanONeal) is a Harvard pre-law student and varsity hockey player from an old money WASP family. When he needs to borrow a law book from the Radcliffe College library, he meets Radcliffe music major Jenny Cavalleri (Ali [=MacGraw=]), who is from a working-class Italian Catholic background and is employed by the library in a work study capacity. She initially needles Oliver for being a child of privilege and refuses to let him have the book unless he takes her out for coffee. The ice between them thaws very quickly, and they begin a romantic relationship. However, their romance does not sit well with Oliver's father, who cuts off his financial support when Oliver and Jenny announce their plans to marry after graduation. They go ahead with the wedding, after which Jenny has to take a job as a private school teacher to pay Oliver's tuition to Harvard Law School. He graduates third in his class and gets a job at a prestigious New York law firm; she resists his suggestion that she audition for the Juilliard School in favour of trying to have a child. But when they struggle to conceive and seek medical advice, they receive a devastating diagnosis: Jenny is terminally ill.

* LoonyLibrarian: Jenny, who has a part-time work as a Radcliffe library assistant; overlaps with HotLibrarian. When Oliver asks her for a book, she flatly refuses and instead answers to his request with sarcastic quips; in the end, to get the book, he has to take her on a date, and this is how their romance starts. Part of it can be attributed to her BelligerentSexualTension with Oliver, but given her DeadpanSnarker personality, it's more than likely that it was her usual mode of behavior with library patrons.

'''Jenny:'''I'm not talking legality, Preppie, I'm talking ethics. You guys have five million books. We have a few lousy thousand.\\