Show Business: Ali MacGraw: A Return to Basics

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her husband could see it. Recalls Evans: "When Ali read Love Story and cried, I thought, 'Fine, it's an emotional story, she responds to it, and maybe some small segment of the public will. Maybe some middle-aged people. Maybe some kids, some Ali MacGraws. I hated all those Now pictures—including some of our own. I thought it would be a good, small, profitable trend bucker. But a phenomenon? No way.' "

Other People's Convictions

Nevertheless, Evans treated Love Story as if it were something more than a home movie. On location Evans started doing his cinemogulimitation. "The picture became an obsession with him," recalls Evans' assistant Peter Bart. "He went on location. Lived with the crew. He was with it every night. He edited it, mixed the music, took over the promotion. It was like old Hollywood all over again." So were the previews, the whispered anxieties, the scrutinizing of key faces: "I saw Edward G. Robinson cry." "Eddie Robinson's 73 years old, for God's sake." "The kids like it, I saw tears." "Those are yawns." "Those are tears, I tell you . . ."

They were tears. And the kids have bought it. On Christmas weekend —largely from young couples and families—Love Story grossed more than any film in history: $2,463,916. It has only begun to bring in the money, but it has already altered the "new" Hollywood beyond ready recognition. The place where executives put away their cigars and grew sideburns overnight, the industry that was welcoming kids from U.C.L.A. with a Bolex and a two-page outline—suddenly, it is in show business again. Says Evans: "At Paramount we learned a long, four-year, expensive lesson. From now on we make our kind of pictures. No directors who have final cut. We have final cut. Paul Newman may be one of our best actors, but he will not be allowed to make more WUSAs to salve his liberal conscience. From now on, there will be no concessions to swingers or to stars over here. The story is the star."

The story all over Hollywood, unless the business is careful, may turn out to be Love Story in disguise. MGM Production Chief Herb Solow is dead set against imitation, but adds: "We have a couple of romantic projects we developed over the years. We've taken them out again for a fresh look in the light of the success of Ryan's Daughter and Love Story."1 American International Pictures, which likes to exhibit the courage of other people's convictions, is at the head of the line. From the company that gave you Beach Blanket Bingo and I Was a Teen Age Werewolf will soon come—Wuthering Heights. "We were among the first to get into the youth-rebellion market," says Samuel Arkoff, A.I.P. chairman. "But we began to sense that that vein was pretty well mined. We felt there was going to be an abrupt shift to love stories."

Edd Henry, vice president of MCA, concurs: "The old film styles will be popular again. There will be warm, pleasant love stories—if they can find the people to play them. One of the problems in doing love stories is that there are no Tyrone Powers and Ava Gardners. There is a need to get some nicer-looking people."

For a start they might try Ali MacGraw, but there are a whole flock of CAMERA 5 young