He acknowledged that its success unleashed 'egotism bordering on megalomania' and he was denied tenure at Yale. The motion picture of the same name was the number one box office attraction of 1970. 1 bestseller, the book became the top selling work of fiction for 1970 in the United States, and was translated into 33 languages worldwide. Literary agent Lois Wallace at the William Morris Agency then suggested he turn the script into a novel, and the result was Love Story (1970). He wrote a romantic story about a Harvard student and a Radcliffe student but failed to sell it. In the late 1960s, Segal collaborated on other screenplays. His first academic book, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus (1968), published by the Harvard University Press, gave him considerable recognition and chronicled the great Roman comic playwright who inspired the Broadway hit A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). In 1967, through connections on Broadway, Segal was given the opportunity to collaborate on the screenplay for the Beatles' 1968 motion picture Yellow Submarine, based on a story by Lee Minoff. He attended Harvard College, graduating as both the class poet and Latin salutatorian in 1958, and then obtained his master's degree (in 1959) and a doctorate (in 1965) in comparative literature from Harvard University, after which he started teaching at Yale. His coach advised him to jog as a part of his rehabilitation, which ended up becoming his passion and caused him to participate in the Boston Marathon more than 12 times. He went to Midwood High School, during which he suffered a serious accident while canoeing. His interest in writing and narrating stories developed as a child. His father was a rabbi and his mother was a homemaker. Karen Marianne James (1975–2010 his death 2 children)Įrich Wolf Segal (June 16, 1937 – January 17, 2010) was an American author, screenwriter, educator, and classicist who wrote the bestselling novel Love Story (1970) and its hit film adaptation.īorn and raised in a Jewish household in Brooklyn, New York, Segal was the first of three brothers.

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