Sir Ambrose Abercrombie, a prominent English expatriate, convinces Dennis to spend most of the money from his uncle's estate on an extravagant burial at Whispering Glades cemetery and mortuary.

Aimee's idol is the seemingly solemn and pious owner of Whispering Glades, Reverend Wilbur Glenworthy, unaware that, in private, he is a calculating businessman who regards the cemetery as just a business venture.

She invites him to her house, which was condemned before being completed due to the risk of landslides, but he cuts his visit short, alarmed by some ominous tremblings and Aimee's lack of concern for her safety.

Reverend Glenworthy, seeing little profit in Whispering Glades once all of the plots are filled, decides to convert it into a retirement community, but cannot proceed without a plan for dealing with the interred bodies.

When he learns of Harry's idea of launching bodies into space, he proceeds to obtain surplus rockets by hosting an orgy at Whispering Glades with top Air Force brass as the guests of honor.

In 1947, Evelyn Waugh visited Hollywood when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer offered him a six-figure sum for the film rights to his novel Brideshead Revisited, despite the fact that none of the studio bosses had read the book.

The project was scrapped after Waugh demanded complete veto rights over the finished film,[5] but, during his stay in Los Angeles, he became fascinated by the American obsession with the funeral industry and was inspired to write a lengthy journal article on Forest Lawn cemetery and its founder, Dr. Hubert Eaton, and then the 1948 novel The Loved One.

[6] In the following years, numerous people attempted unsuccessfully to produce a filmed version of Waugh's novel, including the Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel and the comic writer/director Elaine May.