“Love is never having to say sorry” will remain Ryan O’Neal’s most famous line.
After all, it was a tearjerker love story It made O’Neal a star and earned him his only Oscar nomination. The actor died on Friday at the age of 82, leaving behind a mixed legacy that included the work of director Stanley Kubrick. barry lyndonstarring her daughter Tatum O’Neal paper moonand his notoriously troublesome relationship with his family, and tendency to make tabloid headlines.
But O’Neill’s best and most endearing work was his skill as a comedic leading man, particularly in Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 film. What’s wrong, Doctor?, a love letter to screwball comedies. O’Neal follows Howard, a serious musicologist who meets the droll Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand), along with her overbearing fiancé Eunice (Madeline Kahn), who travels to San Francisco in search of a music research grant. Play Bannister. What follows is a farce of the highest order, with mixed baggage, mistaken identity, and a hilarious car chase through the streets of San Francisco involving a bicycle and a Volkswagen Bug.
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O’Neal has built a career primarily on playing popular preppy boys. What’s wrong, Doctor? He transforms into a nebbish academic, closer to Cary Grant than anyone since Cary Grant. Just wear thick frame glasses, raise a babyO’Neill throws his usual coolness out the window and instead shows us a man slowly being unraveled by the most fascinating and infuriating woman he’s ever met.
It’s a masterpiece of physical comedy, with O’Neal having to do everything from enduring multiple clothing rips to having heated conversations under the table to putting out fires in hotel rooms. . But the scene that encapsulates his mastery of the genre is when his character, Howard, walks into Streisand’s Judy’s bath and, shocked, quickly drops his pants, leaving him in just his boxers. This is the scene where he is shown wearing only a bow tie. She gave him a look at the movement, and she told him, “I think I dropped something.” But O’Neill’s goal here isn’t to be sexy. Instead, he freaks out and trips over his own pants as Judy’s presence sends him into a spiraling panic.
This practical chaos is a deceptively difficult art, requiring both concentration and joyful abandon. O’Neal had an innate understanding that in the world of screwball comedy, there’s nothing funnier than a mild-mannered man completely blown away by a spinning woman. The general impression is that Howard is just going along with it as his life collides with Judy’s, which is of course the result of careful planning and creative acting choices.
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The film required something that O’Neal’s roles (and personal life) often lack: an ability to eliminate any pretense of seriousness and make fun of himself. Howard’s winking sense of humor is evident in everything he does, but even more so at the end of the film, when he follows Judy onto a plane to confess his love to her, and when she says, “Love is… It means you’ll never have to say you’re sorry.” His response was one of the best meta-jokes in movie history, replying, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” and calling out his appearance on Star. I skewered it. love story.
“I laughed at it,” O’Neal told EW of the line in 2021. “I didn’t hurt you, but I mocked you.”
O’Neal, who has largely disappeared from movies, brought something to the screen that is incredibly rare today. It’s a screwball comedy staple whose innate romanticism is matched only by his tendency to trip over things. O’Neal only had one chance to play a role like this, and that’s our loss. Because behind the shadow of his checkered off-screen life and melodramatic exploits, there lurks a talented comedian who can go from dry, acerbic delivery to complex wordplay to slapstick in an instant. Because it was there.
Despite O’Neal’s turbulent life, O’Neal’s escapism and comedic genius What’s wrong, Doctor? This provides the most solid evidence of what he could have done when the stars aligned. That’s it, guys.
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