Goodbye Ryan O’Neal at 82 whom I remember best for ‘Paper Moon’and ‘Barry Lyndon,’ but not so much for ‘Love Story’

O’Neal in 1968

I also remember his recurring role on “Bones” as Temperance Brennan’s somewhat ne’er-do-well father Max. Since I watch re-runs of “Bones ” I still see Ryan O’Neal a lot. He made a nice foil for the ultra-logical Brennan and the always-suspicious FBI agent Booth.

I was a huge fan of the 1973 comedy-drama film directed by  Peter Bogdanovich and starring Ryan and his daughter Tatum who won a best supporting actress Oscar for the work in the film.

According to the critics, “Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised “two first-class performances” from Ryan and Tatum O’Neal but found the film “oddly depressing” and unable to “make up its mind whether it wants to be an instant antique or a comment on one”. Roger Ebert gave the film his top four-star rating and commented that “a genre movie about a con man and a little girl is teamed up with the real poverty and desperation of Kansas and Missouri, circa 1936. You wouldn’t think the two approaches would fit together, somehow, but, they do, and the movie comes off as more honest and affecting than if Bogdanovich had simply paid tribute to older style.” Gene Siskel gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that Tatum O’Neal “is more than cute. Her role is something special in the well-established tradition of children on film.” I don’t agree that the film was “oddly depressing.”

According to Variety, “O’Neal was diagnosed with chronic leukemia in 2001 and with prostate cancer in 2012.” And noted that he was a “marquee draw” in the 1970s.

Part of that draw came from “Love Story” (1970).  The film earned a lot of money though it was much maligned for being a shameless tear-jerker. O’Neal and Candace Bergen starred in the 1978 sequel “Oliver’s Story.”  I preferred “Barry Lyndon,”  Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 historical drama that was drawn from William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1844-era novel  The Luck of Barry Lyndon. The film received Oscar nominations and was notable for its cinematography.

So, we lost another journeyman actor whose work spanned many decades and genres from “Peyton Place” and beyond.

–Malcolm