The Loved One - Conception

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 angered by its popularity in America, referring to it as "my humiliating success in U.S.A."

Waugh had no intention of allowing MGM to adapt Brideshead Revisited, but allowed MGM to bring him and his wife to California and pay him $2000 a week during negotiations. MGM was offering $140,000 if he allowed them the film rights, but Waugh was careful to ensure that the weekly stipend was paid regardless of the results of the negotiation. 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, 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.

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". His trip to Hollywood was very 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." 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. Since the eschatological aspects of Brideshead Revisited had escaped Americans, Waugh was determined to highlight the eschatological aspects of American society.