It would have been bigger than "Love Story." Robert Redford was supposed to screen his new morality play, the movie "Quiz Show," for first-years next Tuesday, and the Crimson Key had even printed the event on its Freshman Week T-shirts.

But last week, Redford canceled the show, saying he couldn't make the September 20 date he had originally suggested. Like the groom at the conclusion of the 1967 film "The Graduate," Harvard officials--who had scrambled to reschedule a host of activities to accommodate Redford and his film about the '50s TV game show scandals--were left standing at the altar.

"Last week, all of a sudden, they announced Mr. Redford wouldn't be coming," Dean of Freshman Elizabeth Studley Nathans said yesterday. "Now we have 150 press guides sitting on my shelf. They're very glossy, very fancy and now very useless."

The plan was to use the film to prompt discussion between first-years and their proctors about community values and ethics, Nathans said.

"Mr. Redford appears to see his movie as in some ways a commentary on social and ethical values. I think he draws a somewhat oversimplistic line between the quiz show scandals and Watergate, etc.," she said. "He is in fact a bright and articulate man. We had looked forward to a piece that would be interesting and thought provoking and lead to discussions with proctors."

Administrators said they are particularly exasperated because the actor-director's people had approached President Neil L. Rudenstine earlier in the summer to suggest the showing. Initially, Nathans said, "I was delighted."

The Freshman Dean's Office moved quickly to reschedule the open houses of organizations including CityStep, the Harvard-Radcliffe Television Organization, the Independent and the Veritones.

"A lot of people bent themselves inside out and backwards at great inconvenience to a lot of established groups," the dean said. "We thought it would have been kind of fun. We're sorry in the end that he's not coming."

Nathans was so certain of Redford's visit that she sent a letter to proctors telling them that first-year schedules were going to be reworked.

"We got sent a letter saying this event was happening. We weren't told how it was clued into anything," said Pennypacker proctor Cally Waite. "But whatever it was, it's not happening."

Next Tuesday's schedule for first-years now goes back to the one originally scheduled in the spring and sent to first-years in the 1994 Calendar of Opening Days.

"It was already scheduled, fully scheduled," Nathans said. "We're now delighted from the standpoint of those groups.