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an open casket.” Another shows two somberly suited pallbearers shouldering a casket, each wearing an outsize button inscribed HAVE A NICE DAY. One exclaims, “Always dreaded an American takeover.” Thus with a mixture of groans and ridicule was the advent of SCI greeted in the British press in 1994, the year in which SCI acquired two of the largest British funeral chains, the felicitously named Plantsbrook Group and the Great Southern Group, comprising more than five hundred undertaking establishments, cemeteries, and crematoria:

The Independent, June 12, 1994—

GRAVE UNDERTAKING: GROUP THAT BURIED ELVIS WANTS TO TAKE OVER U.K. FIRM. “I’m here to do a deal, and I’m here for the duration,” said Bill Heiligbrodt, SCI’s Texan president.… Mr. Heiligbrodt has been called a cowboy but he loves the term. “I gather it’s not such a compliment in Britain, but I am a cowboy.… I just love being competitive,” he said.

The Telegraph, August 11, 1994—

The Texas-based Service Corporation International is plotting a takeover of Britain’s third-biggest undertaker, Great Southern. However sensitively it approaches the British market, inevitably any U.S. involvement is bound to raise here the spectre of the American way of death. Across the Atlantic, death has long meant big money.

The Tqqwelegraph, August 13, 1994—

TEXANS OUT TO MAKE ANOTHER KILLING. The Texas funerals group Service Corporation International has become trigger-happy.… These Texan undertakers have mastered taking-over rather quickly.…

The Guardian, September 3, 1994—

Last night SCI president, Bill Heiligbrodt, was jubilant about the success of his lightning campaign, which started on May 30 when he landed in the U.K. with the fixed intention of building a major business in the U.K. “I’m having a lot of fun now,” he said.… “We are here now for the rest of time.”

Across the pond, the funeral trade press was in a celebratory mood. The Southern Funeral Director (September 1994) offered some predictions about the future of British funerals now that SCI was on the scene:

The British cremation rate runs about 75 percent. This is not necessarily by choice, but because nobody markets “Americanized funerals” to them. The British aren’t real big on selling the casketed service. But leave it to SCI to educate them. SCI will establish yet another stronghold market for caskets.

Resistance to SCI’s pedagogical incursion was soon apparent. Pharos, organ of the British Cremation Society, called its account of the takeover INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. It warned of “possible price rise and the arrival of U.S.-style high-pressure sales methods.” Imported American coffins, it noted, may have a markup of up to 900 percent.

Unkindest of all was a prizewinning television documentary deriding the SCI takeover, scathingly titled “Over My Dead Body,” unanimously praised by the television critics and chosen as “Pick of the Week” by the Times. It was broadcast on November 27, 1994, just three months after SCI had consummated its U.K. transaction.

Set forth for British viewers to gape at in wonder are a funeral directors’ trade fair at which are displayed a gruesome array of embalming fluids, tools for removing the innards, cosmetics for corpses, and a dazzling assortment of caskets, culminating in “our top-of-the-line” item priced at $85,000. Jerry Pullin, SCI’s man in London, explains:

We feel the opportunities are greatest in offering a broader range of merchandise and services which will enhance our revenue base by offering enhanced consumer choices.

L. William Heiligbrodt, president of SCI, tells the viewing audience why the average price of Australian funerals rose by 40 percent after his company entered that market:

We have found in Australia in the short time we’ve been there that people have chosen to spend more on funerals. I want again to emphasize “chosen.” It’s been their choice. The fact that our revenues per funeral have grown in Australia is because the Australian public have demanded it. In the U.K., that’s our goal, as well.

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