I watched the movie Love Story last week. Then while reading some reviews, one had a point that struck me. Jenny’s doctors in the movie seem very blase about Jenny’s disease. (Yes, I know it’s popularly called Old Movie Disease. But let’s all agree for this point that we are talking about leukemia.)
I blinked a few times when at the first diagnosis talk to Oliver, the doctor says, “We can delay therapy for a while. Not for long.” Whaa? It’s cancer. Why would you delay therapy?
Anyway, the point is the doctors’ attitudes appear to be along the lines of “Too bad, so sad.” Like they just decide Jenny’s dying and that’s it. And Jenny doesn’t appear sickly at all, not even at her deathbed scene. Of course, that’s an acting problem, but still…
But then I thought, this is 1970. Perhaps then, there really wasn’t very much that could be done for leukemia. That would explain a little of the attitude. Did doctors really give up that easily back then?
Here’s a good survivorship chart. While it was definitely survivable for some years, the history wasn’t so great, and it’s not clear at that point in time if they’d have fully understood the benefits of multiple chemotherapies.
Well, therapy (such as it was) might have detracted from her ability to act in the later scenes.
There wasn’t as much recognition in 1970 of how heterogenous acute leukemias were, with various molecular subtypes now known to have varying prognoses. Docs of that era should’ve been able to recognize particularly aggressive clinical courses.
It boils down to “Forget it, Jake. It’s Hollywood.”
In the nineteenth century at least, women slowly dying of consumption (tuberculosis) were thought by some to be especially beautiful.
Whoa yes, and there was popular media promotion of that notion too. Ever read Little Eva’s multiple death scenes in Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Talk about wanting to hit the ground already.
Everyone, not just women, was thought to be beautiful with tuberculosis (“consumption”).
Chemotherapy at the time of Love Story was brutal, so one might delay for quality of life or getting one’s affairs in order.
“We can delay therapy for a while. Not for long.” Whaa? It’s cancer. Why would you delay therapy?
I delayed cancer surgery by about 4 weeks, with my surgeon’s okay, due to work-related deadlines and the specter of job security. It was ultimately less stressful and less work for me to take care of some tasks and activities up front rather than clean up the mess afterward.
When I got my diagnosis I was confused because I was under the impression they would schedule me for surgery then once it was chopped out they would schedule chemo and radiation. Instead, it was chemo first, then they would schedule an operation once they shrunk the tumor as far as it would go. Then we got funky - we opted to go with radiation and oral chemo, and then to just sit and wait, I would come in every 3 months for bloodwork and a flexible sigmoidoscopy and every 6 months a CT to see if it would stay away or come back. [hint - after 19 months it did come back, so back to infusion and when it kept growing while during chemo then we opted to chop it out.]
It is all so existential - it was a slow and delicate sort of race to a cure [I guess one could call it that] I mean, treatment has advanced so much in the 40 odd years or however long ago that was. Chemo has changed a lot, and radiation has gotten more delicately targeted. Heck, surgery has changed - I discovered a lump during my monthly self check, and back in the 60s they would have gone in and chopped the entire breast mass out, with me they went in and scooped out about a tablespoon of breast tissue and 4 sentinal nodes from the armpit on that side [though there was no involvement of the nodes they just wanted to biopsy them] Unless I really point it out, you can’t even tell where it happened, other than the armpit skin, a patch of skin sort of around to the side towards my back and a patch where the incision is that all ended up with radiation burning thinned out the skin [it has that thin crepe-y little old lady skin feel, the radiation burning more or less damaged the sweat/oil glands so the skin is not really getting lubricated [?] so it feels thin and papery. [I just checked by feel, the skin where my anus used to be that got heavily nuked also has the funny texture. I would have to either try a selfie or wait til mrAru is back visiting to see if it is still ‘suntanned’ the way it was back during radiation =) ]
And many doctors dealing with the terminal or about to be terminal used to have a pretty too bad so sad bedside manner with their patients. I mean, if all you seem to do is see your patients drop dead, you don’t get too vested in them. I mean it was refreshing to see my honorary Uncle ‘Buzz’ with his doctors - he went in for what in 1973 or so was considered to be a terminal case of pancreatitis and he actually lived. They were pretty much happy-dancing about his being able to actually walk out of the hospital alive.
I’ve never seen the movie. Could the comment about not delaying for long be hinting that they couldn’t delay long enough for her to have a baby? That might be on the mind of some couples.
Possibly, though I never thought of that. It’s true that Oliver asked the doctor why they were having such problems getting pregnant, and also which one of them had the infertility issue. The doctor says Jenny has the issue and that she’s dying.
It still seems ambiguous to me whether Jenny’s illness was making her infertile. Since the disease is never named, its effects on Jenny’s body could be anything. If the disease is leukemia, that doesn’t make you infertile.
I think writers want a quick resolution to terminal illnesses. It moves the plot forward and the emotional reactions of the survivors provide great dramatic scenes for the actors.
Jenny probably could have survived for a year or two. Maybe longer if she went into remission. It would have required visits to the doctors, extended hospitalization and chemo therapy. That’s real life. It’s not the neat little story Love Story wanted to tell.
It could be a great movie. Imagine Oliver by Jenny’s side as she fought the illness and dealt with all the side effects of chemo. But that would require a bigger audience investment in Jenny. Her deterioration and death would be more painful to watch.
A doctor doesn’t want things to get to the point where they have to apologize for their treatment choices. Because cancer means never having to say you’re sorry.
There is also vomiting, intractible diarrhea, loss of bowel and bladder control … modifications available to us they did not have back then - an incinerator toilet 6 feet from my bedside in a spare closet, one of those clear heavy plastic runners between bed and toilet. Add a sitz bath setup made of one of those bedside toilets, a polybucket to pour the leftover warm water in when done and a sitz bath that set into the toilet frame instead of the thimble normally used for bodily wastes, and a ready supply of adult diapers. Did you know that sandwich zippy bags are great as emesis bags? One yacks into them then dumps the zipped shut baggy of yack into a trash bucket. [cancer sucks ass.]
Love Story was old-fashioned in a lot of ways. Erich Segal, who wrote the novel and film script, wanted to make the character of Jenny Jewish. The producers told him that that would be pushing too far. She was already from a working-class family, so having her be Jewish too would make it too implausible that Oliver’s parents (who were from a rich WASP family) could ever eventually accept Oliver marrying her. So Segal changed it to make her Italian-American, which was already pushing it. Even by 1970, when the various counterculture events of the late 1960s had already happened in the U.S., far too many people didn’t like intermarriage across religious and ethnic divides. Remember, when All in the Family premiered on American television in 1971, WASP Archie Bunker was bothered by his daughter marrying a Polish-American.
Suppose in 1970 you gave the producers of Love Story a film script which was set only forty-eight years in the future. You told them it was about a member of the British royal family who was going to marry an American actress who was divorced and partly of African-American ancestry. They would have said, “That’s ridiculous. It can’t possibly happen that soon. Maybe if you set it two hundred years in the future it might be plausible, but it would still be offensive to many people.” Then you said, “It wouldn’t be that be a deal. In this future the American president from 2009 to 2017 will be partly of African-American ancestry. He will also have a Luo last name and Arabic middle and last names.” The producers would assume you were insane.
Also remember that in the pilot episode, Mike (played by a different actor) was Irish-American, and Archie was just as bothered.
Another sitcom of that era, “Bridget Loves Bernie”, portrayed a working-class Jewish boy and a wealthy Catholic girl falling in love. Despite high ratings, it was canceled after one season. According to wiki, this was due to controversy over the topic of interfaith marriage, which brought on threats of violence from conservative Jewish groups.
