Ryan O’Neal’s death Friday at the age of 82 followed decades in which the actor was better known for his personal life (and struggles) than for his work. But few stars shone brighter in the 1970s, when O’Neal — originally known for his role on the prime-time soap opera “Peyton Place” — became one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, and proved himself equally adept at drama, comedy and action. Here are a few of his finest films from that period, and where to stream them.
‘Love Story’ (1970)
Rent or buy it on major streaming platforms.
Television-to-film crossovers were rare in the 1970s, and O’Neal only landed the role of Oliver Barrett IV, a Harvard blue-blood who falls in love with a working-class Radcliffe girl, after several bigger names had passed, and at the insistence of the screenwriter Erich Segal and O’Neal’s co-star, Ali MacGraw. It’s easy to see why she fought for him; their chemistry is sweet but potent, and carries this lightweight story of young romance and terminal illness above its corny, weepy components. It became the highest-grossing movie of 1970. Critics were mostly unimpressed but The Times’s Vincent Canby praised O’Neal as “an intense, sensitive young man whose handsomeness has a sort of crookedness to it.” That’s an apt summary of not only O’Neal’s performance here, but also his entire appeal.
After the smashing success of “Love Story,” O’Neal teamed up with the director Peter Bogdanovich (himself white-hot off the success of “The Last Picture Show”) for the first of three memorable collaborations. “What’s Up, Doc?” paired O’Neal with Barbra Streisand in a rollicking homage to the screwball comedies of the ’30s and ’40s — specifically the Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn team-up “Bringing Up Baby,” from which Bogdanovich lifted the central dynamic of, in his words, “an uptight professor and a screwy girl.” It was the perfect vehicle to showcase O’Neal’s range; his turn as the musicologist Dr. Howard Bannister was 180 degrees from Oliver Barrett IV, a study in frenetic farce that somehow never crosses the line from cartoony to caricature. His chemistry with Streisand was so potent that they reunited seven years later for the boxing rom-com “The Main Event,” and while its director Howard Zieff proved to be no Bogdanovich, the reunion affirmed that O’Neal’s skills as a light screen comedian were all but unmatched in the era.
‘Paper Moon’ (1973) / ‘Nickelodeon’ (1976)
Stream “Paper Moon” on Max. Rent or buy “Nickelodeon” on major streaming platforms.
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