The Loved One **** (1965, Robert Morse, John Gielgud, Rod Steiger, Liberace, Jonathan Winters, Anjanette Comer) – Classic Movie Review 5727

Director Tony Richardson turns Evelyn Waugh’s brilliant 1948 satirical novel on the funeral business and Californian burial rites into this funny and ferocious 1965 film farce by Hollywood.

It is the golden opportunity for a series of priceless Sixties-style star turns by a bunch of wonderfully extravagant actors, all of whom are superb value. Rod Steiger has a field day as the mad embalmer Mr Joyboy, and so does Jonathan Winters as the Rev Wilbur Glenworthy, owner of the swish Whispering Glades Cemetery funeral parlour. Also notable are John Gielgud as Sir Francis Hinsley, Paul Williams as young Gunther, and Liberace as Mr Starker, the salesman in the Whispering Glades showroom.

Leading man Robert Morse somehow holds it all together in a straight turn as the naive hero Dennis Barlow, a young British poet newly arrived in Hollywood. He is soon compelled to arrange the funeral of his English expatriate uncle, Sir Francis Hinsley (John Gielgud), a Hollywood player who works for a movie studio, when he commits suicide.

The workless Dennis is recruited by Henry Glenworthy (also Jonathan Winters) and is forced to take shameful work at the The Happy Hunting Ground pets’ memorial home. He falls for pioneering woman embalmer Aimee Thanatogenous (Anjanette Comer).

The Loved One is lustily directed by Britain’s Richardson and energetically written by Terry Southern and Christopher Isherwood, who profitably draw on their own bad experiences of Hollywood and dip their pens in vitriol. The film loses some of its incisiveness, direction and vitriolic humour in the second half, but it still remains a bit of a treasure. You expect it to be in colour, but Haskell Wexler shoots in vibrantly crisp and clear black and white.

There is a gay director, co-writer (Isherwood) and several gay actors (John Gielgud, Liberace, Tab Hunter, Roddy McDowall) and the original author was gay early in life, too.

Also in the cast are Dana Andrews, Lionel Stander, Milton Berle, James Coburn, Margaret Leighton, Roddy McDowall, Robert Morley, Barbara Nichols, Roxanne Arlen, Dort Clark, Pamela Curran, Robert Easton, Aylleen Gibbons, Don Haggerty, Chick Hearn, Warren Kemmerling, Claire Kelly, Bernie Kopell, Brad Moore, Alan Napier, Edwin Reimers, Reta Shaw, Paul Williams, Jamie Farr, Jim Brewer Beverly Powers, Martin Ransohoff and Elizabeth Ann Roberts.

Gail Gerber [aka Gail Gilmore], uncredited here as the Girl in Funeral Home, died on 2 March 2014, aged 76. She played in two Elvis movies – Girl Happy and Harum Scarum, a couple of Beach movies, and Village of the Giants.

Robert Morse also stars in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5727

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