Career in C Major

Career in C Major is an opera-themed novella by American writer James M. Cain, first published in 1938. First appearing as a serial in The American Magazine entitled "Two Can Sing", this comic romance is a departure from Cain's first novels, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) and Double Indemnity (1936), both hardboiled crime stories that included premeditated murder. Redbook magazine, disappointed that Cain had exchanged his hard-boiled themes involving sex and murder for a "comedic adventure", declined to purchase the novella but Liberty obtained the piece and carried it as a serial in 1935.

The story was included with two of Cain's depression era novels in 1943 in a collection entitled Three of a Kind. Career in C Major was adapted to film in 1938 by Twentieth Century Fox as Wife, Husband and Friend, and again in 1949 as Everybody Does It.