LOVE STORY CREATOR DIES

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Erich Segal author of best selling Love Story that became a movie blockbuster gone at 72.

His daughter Francesca Segal confirmed that  her father died Sunday at his home in London. She said he had suffered from Parkinson’s Disease -a neurological condition that affects movement – for 25 years.

A small private funeral was held in London.

Segal was a Yale classic professor who shocked the publishing world with his slim paperback weeper Love Story about a young Harvard couple who fall in love, marry and discover she is dying of cancer.

The film version was a blockbuster starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw, then at the top of their game.

The film 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 (O’Neal and MacGraw.)

It won one Oscar, for best music with its haunting theme by Frances Lai.

A followup book and film Oliver’s Story transformed schmaltz to drek.

"It takes the average person an hour and a half to read the book,” Segal told The New York Times in December 1970.

“The movie lasts longer.”

POP FYI: The charceter of Oliver was based on Tommy Lee Jones then a Harvard student Segal knew . His family’s delineation  is based on Al Gore‘s.