The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy is a short satirical novel published in 1948 by British novelist Evelyn Waugh about the funeral business in Los Angeles, the British expatriate community in Hollywood, and the film industry.
The Loved One was written as a result of Evelyn Waugh's trip to Hollywood in February and March 1947. MGM was interested in adapting Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited (1945). Waugh had written that, "I should not think six Americans will understand it" and was baffled and even angered by its popularity in America,[1]:143–144 referring to it as "my humiliating success in [the] U.S.A."[2]:224
Waugh had no intention of allowing MGM to adapt Brideshead Revisited, but allowed the film studio to bring him and his wife to California and pay him $2000 a week during negotiations. MGM was offering $140,000 if he granted them the film rights, but Waugh was careful to ensure that the weekly stipend was paid regardless of the results of the negotiation.[1]:153 Waugh was negotiating with MGM producer Leon Gordon, a British playwright and screenwriter, and British screenwriter Keith Winter, whom Waugh had previously known in Europe, who was to write the adaptation. Waugh complained that Winter "sees Brideshead purely as a love story", and that no one at MGM was able to grasp the "theological implication" of the novel. MGM abandoned its pursuit of the novel after Waugh explained to Gordon "what Brideshead was about", and he seemed to "lose heart", citing aspects highlighted by the censor.[1]:153–154[3]:673–675
In Hollywood, Waugh enjoyed meeting Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney ("the two artists of the place") but complained about the accommodations, the quality of food and the lack of wine at meals, the relaxed dress and informal manners, and the small talk of service workers – "the exact opposite of the English custom by which the upper classes are expected to ask personal questions of the lower".[3]:674–675 His trip to Hollywood was successful, however, in a literary way. He wrote "I found a deep mine of literary gold in the cemetery of Forest Lawn and the work of the morticians and intend to get to work immediately on a novelette staged there."[3]:675 Forest Lawn's founder, Dr. Hubert Eaton, and his staff gave Waugh tours of the facility and introduced him to their field. Waugh also had a copy of Eaton's book, Embalming Techniques, which Waugh annotated with marginalia. As Waugh felt that the eschatological or apocalyptic implications he had intended in Brideshead Revisited had escaped many American readers, he was determined to highlight eschatological aspects of American society in The Loved One.[1]:152–154
Plot
Sir Ambrose Abercrombie visits housemates Dennis Barlow and Sir Francis Hinsley to express his concern about Barlow's new job and how it reflects on the British enclave in Hollywood, which is also taken as an announcement of Barlow's impending exclusion from British society. Barlow reports to his job at the Happier Hunting Ground, a pet cemetery and funeral service, and picks up a couple's dead Sealyham Terrier.
Because of the difficulty he is having rebranding actress Juanita del Pablo as an Irish starlet (having previously rebranded Baby Aaronson as del Pablo), Hinsley is sent to work from home. After his secretary stops showing up, he ventures to Megalopolitan Studios and finds a man named Lorenzo Medici in his office. After working his way through the bureaucracy he finds he has been unceremoniously fired. In the next scene, Abercrombie and other British expatriates are discussing Hinsley's suicide and the funeral arrangements.
Barlow, given the task of making Hinsley's funeral arrangements, visits Whispering Glades. There he is transfixed by the cosmetician Aimée Thanatogenos, though he has yet to learn her name.
Barlow continues with the funeral arrangements while Hinsley's body arrives at Whispering Glades and is tended to by Thanatogenos and the senior mortician Mr. Joyboy.
Barlow visits Whispering Glades seeking inspiration for Hinsley's funeral ode. While touring a British-themed section of the cemetery, he meets Thanatogenos and begins his courtship of her when she learns he is a poet.
Six weeks later, Thanatogenos is torn between her very different affections for Barlow and Joyboy. She writes to the advice columnist "The Guru Brahmin" for advice. Joyboy invites her over for dinner and she meets his mother.
The office of the Guru Brahmin consists of "two gloomy men and a bright young secretary". Tasked with responding to Thanatogenos' letters is Mr. Slump, a grim drunk who advises that she marry Joyboy. She instead decides to marry Barlow.
Joyboy learns that the poems which Barlow has been using to woo Thanatogenos are not his own, and arranges that Thanatogenos, who still does not know Barlow works for a pet cemetery, attend the funeral of his mother's parrot at the Happier Hunting Ground.
Sometime after Thanatogenos' discovery of Barlow's deceptions, Barlow reads the announcement of her engagement to Joyboy. Barlow meets her and she is again torn between the two men. She tracks down Mr. Slump to seek the advice of the Guru Brahmin and finds him, via telephone, in a bar after he has been fired. Slump tells her to jump off a building. She commits suicide by injecting herself with embalming fluid in Joyboy's workroom at Whispering Glades.
Joyboy discovers Thanatogenos' body and seeks assistance from Barlow. Then Barlow meets Abercrombie, who, fearing Barlow's plans to become a non-sectarian funeral pastor will further damage the image of the British enclave, pays his return passage to England. Joyboy returns, unaware of Barlow's impending departure, and in exchange for all his savings, Barlow says he will leave town so it will appear that he ran away with Thanatogenos. After cremating the body, Barlow registers Joyboy for the Happier Hunting Ground annual postcard service so every year Joyboy will receive a card reading "Your little Aimée is wagging her tail in heaven tonight, thinking of you."
Characters
Dennis Barlow, a celebrated 28-year-old British poet who is brought to Hollywood to write a script for a film biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley. He is fired from his job and, as the novel opens, he is working for the Happier Hunting Ground, a funeral service for pets. He frequently quotes lines of poetry in his speech and writing, especially when he is wooing Aimée Thanatogenos, whom he allows to believe he is the author of those lines. The sources include Alfred Tennyson, Edgar Allan Poe, and others. One quotation, from the poet Richard Middleton, was not publicly identified until 1981, 33 years after the publication of The Loved One.[4]:62
Aimée Thanatogenos, a cosmetician at Whispering Glades. She was named after evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. Her first name is French for "loved one" while her last name is Greek for "born of death".[4]:195 Waugh describes her eyes as "greenish and remote, with a rich glint of lunacy."
Mr. Joyboy, senior mortician at Whispering Glades. His trademark is a beaming smile he leaves on the faces of embalmed bodies. He lives with his mother, Mrs. Joyboy, and is dominated by her.
Sir Francis Hinsley, Barlow's Hollywood housemate. In his youth, Hinsley authored the widely acclaimed novel A Free Man Greets the Dawn, but has long since abandoned writing. Former chief scriptwriter for Megalopolitan Pictures, as the novel opens he works for their publicity department and is struggling with rebranding an actress named Juanita del Pablo into an Irish starlet. He is fired from Megalopolitan and hangs himself.
Sir Ambrose Abercrombie, a distinguished British actor and leader of the British enclave in Hollywood, is primarily concerned to maintain the image of his country in the eyes of Hollywood. It is believed that he is based on actor Sir C. Aubrey Smith.[4]:115
Publication and reception
Waugh began writing The Loved One in May 1947.[3]:679 After initial "very slow" going,[3]:679 he finished the first draft in early July[3]:681 and completed the novel in September.[1]:154 It was published in its entirety by Cyril Connolly in the February 1948 issue of Horizon.[1]:154 (Hinsley is described reading a copy of Horizon in the opening chapter of The Loved One.) It was enthusiastically greeted by readers who thought Waugh had returned to early form with this short comic novel.[1]:155
The novel was successfully published in America as well, though Waugh had feared lawsuits so much that he employed his friend Lord Stanley of Alderley to add a codicil to his will instructing that he be buried at Forest Lawn.[1]:154–155 Waugh also claimed that American morticians would refuse to service his body should he die in the US.[1]:156 The novel was well-reviewed, however, and sales were good.[1]:156
The New Yorker, though, refused to publish the novel because they thought the themes of the novel had already been well-handled by American authors, such as S. J. Perelman, Sinclair Lewis, and Nathanael West, the latter of whom had written two novels on themes (Hollywood studios and advice columnists) Waugh tackled in The Loved One. The magazine wrote "The freshest part of Mr. Waugh's story is the part which refers to the English in Hollywood, and we wish, wistfully, that he had concerned himself more exclusively with that theme."[1]:156
The book was adapted in 1965 by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood into a film of the same title, which features, while adding to the novel's plot with new characters and scenes, many in-joke cameos and familiar California filming locations such as the Greystone Mansion. Isherwood himself can be glimpsed within the film as one of 'Uncle Frank's' mourners.
Related Research Articles
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.
Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder is a novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1945. It follows, from the 1920s to the early 1940s, the life and romances of Charles Ryder, especially his friendship with the Flytes, a family of wealthy English Catholics who live in a palatial mansion, Brideshead Castle. Ryder has relationships with two of the Flytes: Lord Sebastian and Lady Julia. The novel explores themes including Catholicism and nostalgia for the age of English aristocracy. A well-received television adaptation of the novel was produced in an 11-part miniseries by Granada Television in 1981. In 2008, it was adapted as a film.
A Handful of Dust is a novel by the British writer Evelyn Waugh. First published in 1934, it is often grouped with the author's early, satirical comic novels for which he became famous in the pre–World War II years. Some commentators regard it as a transitional work due to its serious undertones, pointing towards Waugh's Catholic postwar fiction.
William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp,, styled Viscount Elmley until 1891, was a British Liberal politician. He was Governor of New South Wales between 1899 and 1901, a member of the Liberal administrations of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and H. H. Asquith between 1905 and 1915, and leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords between 1924 and 1931. When political enemies threatened to make his homosexuality public, he resigned from office to go into exile. Lord Beauchamp is generally considered to be the model for the character Lord Marchmain in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited.
Scoop is a 1938 novel by the English writer Evelyn Waugh. It is a satire of sensationalist journalism and foreign correspondents.
The Sword of Honour is a trilogy of novels by Evelyn Waugh which loosely parallel Waugh's experiences during the Second World War. Published by Chapman & Hall from 1952 to 1961, the novels are: Men at Arms (1952); Officers and Gentlemen (1955); and Unconditional Surrender (1961), marketed as The End of the Battle in the United States and Canada.
Madresfield Court is a country house in Malvern, Worcestershire, England. The home of the Lygon family for nearly six centuries, it has never been sold and has passed only by inheritance since the 12th century; a line of unbroken family ownership reputedly exceeded in length in England only by homes owned by the British Royal Family. The present building is largely a Victorian reconstruction, although the origins of the present house are from the 16th century, and the site has been occupied since Anglo-Saxon times. The novelist Evelyn Waugh was a frequent visitor to the house and based the family of Marchmain, who are central to his novel Brideshead Revisited, on the Lygons. Surrounded by a moat, the Court is a Grade I listed building.
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a novel by the British writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in July 1957. It is Waugh's penultimate full-length work of fiction, which the author called his "mad book"—a largely autobiographical account of a period of hallucinations caused by bromide intoxication that he experienced in the early months of 1954, recounted through his protagonist Gilbert Pinfold.
The Loved One is a 1965 black-and-white black comedy film directed by British filmmaker Tony Richardson. A satirical look at the funeral business in Los Angeles, it is based on Evelyn Waugh's 1948 short novel The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy, though the screenplay by noted American satirical novelist Terry Southern and British author Christopher Isherwood also incorporates elements from Jessica Mitford's 1963 nonfiction book The American Way of Death. The film stars Robert Morse, Jonathan Winters, Anjanette Comer, and Rod Steiger, with Dana Andrews, Milton Berle, James Coburn, John Gielgud, Tab Hunter, Margaret Leighton, Liberace, Roddy McDowall, Robert Morley, Barbara Nichols, and Lionel Stander credited as "cameo guest stars", and features the debut acting performance of songwriter Paul Williams.
Paula Jayne Byrne, Lady Bate, is a British biographer, novelist, and literary critic.
Brideshead Revisited is a 1981 British television serial starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. It was produced by Granada Television for broadcast by the ITV network. Significant elements of it were directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who handled the initial phases of the production, before Charles Sturridge carried on with the series. The first episode is credited to both men equally.
Brideshead Revisited is a 2008 British drama film directed by Julian Jarrold. The screenplay by Jeremy Brock and Andrew Davies is based on the 1945 novel of the same name by Evelyn Waugh, which previously had been adapted in 1981 as the television serial Brideshead Revisited.
A varsity novel is a novel whose main action is set in and around the campus of a university and focuses on students rather than faculty. Examples include Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, Donna Tartt's The Secret History, Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue and Stephen Fry's The Liar and Making History. Novels that focus on faculty rather than students are often considered to belong to a distinct genre, termed campus novels.
The Temple at Thatch was an unpublished novel by the British author Evelyn Waugh, his first adult attempt at full-length fiction. He began writing it in 1924 at the end of his final year as an undergraduate at Hertford College, Oxford, and continued to work on it intermittently in the following 12 months. After his friend Harold Acton commented unfavourably on the draft in June 1925, Waugh burned the manuscript. In a fit of despondency from this and other personal disappointments he began a suicide attempt before experiencing what he termed "a sharp return to good sense".
A Handful of Dust is a 1988 British film directed by Charles Sturridge, based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Evelyn Waugh. It stars James Wilby and Kristin Scott Thomas. Originally conceived as a television project, it was the first feature film financed by London Weekend Television.
Lady Margaret Pansy Felicia Lamb, known as Lady Pansy Lamb was an English writer under her maiden name of Pansy Pakenham. A novelist, biographer, and translator of French poetry, she was the wife of the Australian-born painter Henry Lamb.
Ratcatcher is informal attire worn when fox hunting and consists primarily of a tweed jacket with tan breeches. Other specific items of clothing, forming part of the "uniform", might be prescribed by individual hunting clubs.
Alastair Hugh Graham was an honorary attaché in Athens and Cairo, an Oxford friend of Evelyn Waugh, and, according to Waugh's letters, one of his "romances". He is, together with Hugh Lygon and Stephen Tennant, considered the main inspiration for Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited.
Evelyn Florence Margaret Winifred Gardner was the first wife of Evelyn Waugh. She was one of the Bright Young Things.
Lady Dorothy Lygon was an English socialite, and one of the Bright Young Things. She served as a Flight Officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during WWII, and later became an archivist.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
