The Loved One (book)

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.

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]: 675  Forest Lawn's founder, Dr. Hubert Eaton, and his staff gave Waugh tours of the facility and introduced him to their field.

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.

After his secretary stops showing up, he ventures to Megalopolitan Studios and finds a man named Lorenzo Medici in his office.

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.

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.

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.

[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]: 156 Tom Paxton mentions The Loved One, along with Jessica Mitford's book The American Way of Death, as one of the inspirations for his satirical song "Forest Lawn".