Muscle Beach (novel)

Muscle Beach

First edition
Author	Ira Wallach
Language	English
Genre	Comedy-satire
Publisher	Little, Brown and Company Dell (paperback)
Publication date	1959
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages	236 pp (1st edition)

Muscle Beach is a 1959 novel by American writer Ira Wallach. It was reprinted in 1967 as a paperback under the new title Don't Make Waves.

Carlo Cofield, a restless WWII vet in New York City, alternates between work at the Atlantic Novelty Company and hanging out at the Treble Bar listening to the Quo Vadis Quartet. Impulsively entering an office of Seaspray Swimming Pools, he pitches a sale to a client on Long Island. A condition of his making this sale is his being transferred to the Seaspray office in LA. During his flight to the Coast he places his neck-tie in an air-sickness bag for disposal, never to be worn again. In LA, he meets Vic Salter and his chimp Simeon in a bar up on Sunset. Vic introduces Carlo to hit songwriter Prescott Tom, whose sister Toby takes him to the beach to see the body builders. Carlo joins them to get close to the beautiful Jocelyn, but eventually he finds happiness and fulfillment with Toby.

The novel was made into a 1967 film directed by Alexander Mackendrick and starring Tony Curtis, Sharon Tate and Claudia Cardinale. Ira Wallach wrote the screenplay and Mort Sahl has a small role.

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Ira Wallach once collaborated with Peter Ustinov on the screenplay for "Hot Millions," His 1959 novel "Muscle Beach^[1]," a comedy about the body-building cult in Southern California, was made into a film, "Don't Make Waves" (1967), with Tony Curtis and Claudia Cardinale.

The novel generated a generally positive reaction in the New York Times Book Review: "Mr. Wallach is one of the deftest satirists at large and a master of the fragile art of parody."^[2] However, a review in Kirkus Reviews was more critical: "This, the author's first attempt at a novel, aims at the Peter De Vries type of verbal wit and falls far short of the mark."^[3]

The online bookseller Amazon still carries both hardcover and paperback versions of the novel, giving a top five-starred review. Goodreads.com gives a mid-level rating of the book.

• Muscle Beach

• The Life, Death, and Rebirth of Muscle Beach: Reassessing the Muscular Physique in Postwar America, 1940s–1980s - Mentions the novel and film several times.