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.
Conception
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, referring to it as "my humiliating success in [the] U.S.A."
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 $2,000 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.
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".
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".
The 1985 Doctor Who serial Revelation of the Daleks is loosely based on the plot of the novel.
Adaptations
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.
BBC Radio 4 broadcast a three-part audio adaptation in 1990, starring Rupert Graves and Miranda Richardson. It was repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra in 2026, as part of programming to mark the sixtieth anniversay of Waugh's death.