Students, Cast Tensely Anticipate 'Love Story' Christmas Premiere

A little stage-frightened, the Harvard community grew measurably tenser this week as the month of the long-awaited movie premiere of "Love Story" finally arrived.

The New England premiere of the film will be Dec. 25 at the Circle Theater in Brookline. The world premiere will be Dec. 17 at the Loew State Theater in New York City.

The Harvard hockey team, which plays itself in the movie's hockey sequences, tentatively plans an opening-day party to which it will invite the leads. "When we can hold it is contingent upon the schedule of the stars," J. Maxwell Bleakie Jr. '71, varsity hockey manager, said yesterday.

In the movie, based on Erich Segal's number one bestseller, Ryan O'Neil, star of the TV series "Peyton Place," and Ali MacGraw, the Radcliffe girl in "Goodbye Columbus," enact a Harvard-Radcliffe love affair.

The pair, a wealthy preppie hockey player and a poor music major, meet in the Radcliffe library. Defying the theories of class conflict, they fall in love, marry and live happily ever after (which doesn't turn out to be very long- only until Ali MacGraw dies of leukemia.)

Ushering in the premiere festivities, Dennis F. Gillespie '70 glamorized the life of a "Love Story" extra for this month's Glamour- offering faithful readers a brief respite from "50 New Ideas for Holiday Hair, Makeup, and Fashion" and "What Goes on in His Head When You're Pregnant."

Gillespie admitted the crowd scenes filmed a year ago at Watson Rink didn't require much evidence of talent from the 125 student extras.

"Our acting was confined to base emotions: happy, sad, angry. Our lines were rudimentary, 'Yea' and 'Booooo!' We cheered for the same damn play over and over ... it was like watching Sisyphus do his labors," Gillespie said.