This image is the cover for the book Sleep till Noon

Sleep till Noon

A rags-to-riches tale so outrageously hysterical it could have only come from the marvelous mind of Max Shulman, bestselling author of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

A sensitive boy growing up in a bad neighborhood, Harry Riddle doesn’t fit in with the kids who hold up gas stations, steal purses, and drop safes on policemen. He prefers to contemplate the American dream and his father’s advice for achieving it: “Get rich, boy. Then sleep till noon and screw ’em all.” But when Harry gets his first job as a cafeteria busboy, a customer warns him that money leads to corruption. The idea disturbs him so much that he accidently sticks his hand into a meat grinder.

Luckily, attorney Walter Obispo witnesses Harry’s mishap and manages to win him a hefty court settlement—which becomes a lot less hefty when Obispo takes his eighty percent cut. Impressed, Harry decides to make his fortune in law. But the shortcuts he takes to pass the bar and start his own practice do him no good when he loses case after case after case. Not to worry, however, because our hero soon learns the oldest trick in book: Marry rich. With an heiress as a bride, Harry can’t lose—anything except his friends, his integrity, and his sanity, that is.

Max Shulman

Max Shulman (1919–1988) was an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer best known as the author of Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1957), The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1951), and the popular television series of the same name. The son of Russian immigrants, Shulman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a celebrated column for the campus newspaper and edited the humor magazine. His bestselling debut novel, Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1943), was followed by two books written while he served in the Army during World War II: The Feather Merchants (1944) and The Zebra Derby (1946). The Tender Trap (1954), a Broadway play cowritten with Robert Paul Smith, was adapted into a movie starring Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. His acclaimed novel Rally Round the Flag, Boys! became a film starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Shulman’s other books include Sleep till Noon (1950), a hilarious reinvention of the rags-to-riches tale; I Was a Teenage Dwarf (1959), which chronicles the further adventures of Dobie Gillis; Anyone Got a Match? (1964), a prescient satire of the tobacco, television, and food industries; and Potatoes Are Cheaper (1971), the tale of a romantic Jewish college student in depression-era St. Paul. His movies include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (with Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse) and House Calls (with Walter Mathau and Glenda Jackson). One of America’s premier humorists, he greatly influenced the comedy of Woody Allen and Bob Newhart, among many others.

Open Road Integrated Media