Preceded by short Necrology (Standish Lawder, 1969-70). "Without a doubt, the sickest joke I've ever seen on film" (Hollis Frampton). (12 mins, B&W, 16mm, From PFA Collection) Evelyn Waugh's macabre satire on American mores linked Hollywood with the funeral business. Tony Richardson added his own focus on sex-food obsession. The Loved One thus became, as it was billed, "The motion picture with something to offend everyone," including Waugh. But even those critics who were most offended admitted it was a very funny film. Robert Morse plays a young English poet come to Hollywood, where he takes a job at a pet cemetery. He falls in love with a funeral parlor cosmetician who is torn between him and the head mortician, Mr. Joyboy (Rod Steiger, at his most grotesque). The casting itself is iconoclastic, with Sir John Gielgud playing a dead film director, Jonathan Winters and Milton Berle doing what comes naturally, and cameos by everyone from James Coburn to Liberace.