Rocky Custer (Grand Central Murder)

Created by Peter Ruric
Pseudonym of George Syms
Other pseudonyms include Peter Ruric
(1902-66)
Based on characters created by Sue MacVeigh
Pseudonym of Elizabeth Custer Nearing
(1898-1960)

So here’s an oddity — Grand Central Murder is a P.I. film based on the 1939 not-so-hard-boiled, not-so-P.I. novel of the same name by Sue MacVeigh, adapted by one of the shining lights of the hard-boiled Black Mask school, Paul Cain, under his screenwriter alias of Peter Ruric.

The story kicks off with a convict who gives his police escorts the slip at New York’s sprawling Grand Central Station. When his old girlfriend Mida King, a golddigging showgirl, is found murdered at the same station, the cops round up a motley group of suspects and drag them to police headquarters for questioning. Among those rounded up are the convict, several of the victim’s other old boyfriends, some of their jealous girlfriends, Mida’s maid, and ROCKY CUSTER, a wisecracking, pipe-smoking private eye already on the case, and his wife (and loyal assistant) Sue.

But if you were thinking, judging by its pedigree and Cain’s rep, that this would be a dark, terse, hard-boiled psychological slab of two-fisted noir, think again. Nor is is the relatively subdued but clever fair-play mystery the novel was.

Nope. It’s a comedy!

Grand Central Murder is an unapologetically breezy screwball romp; a rollercoaster ride of snappy patter and freewheeling detective work; loosely based on the novel of the same name by Sue MacVeigh.

MacVeigh (actually Elizabeth Custer Nearing) was a reporter and editor who wrote four books featuring the intrepid Andy and Sue MacVeigh, “a combination of the Thin Man and ‘had-I-but-known’ breathless school,” according to B film historian Don Miller.

Ruric monkeyed around considerably, changing the central role of Andy, a mild-mannered railroad detective,  to a “Park Avenue private dick” and made his long-suffering wife Sue his “gal Friday,” while “Captain” MacVeigh of the railroad police became Inspector Gunther, Rocky’s soda-slurping foil/straight man, who is ostensibly in charge of the investigation. 

It may sound convoluted, but the film works. It’s not quite noir, nor is it particularly hard-boiled, but it’s grittier than expected. It’s also great fun to watch everyone, including Van Heflin as cocky motormouth Custer, spinning out one wild theory after another while the increasingly bamboozled Inspector totters closer and closer to losing it completely. The entire film plays out like an Agatha Christie denouement on helium, as Rocky eventually leads the entire troup of suspects, cops and witnesses from the police station to Grand Central Station and on to the private railroad car where the murder took place.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

In his short literary career, Paul Cain (real name George Sims) only wrote 17 short stories for Black Mask, but is generally considered one of its greatest writers. Five of the stories were combined to make his one novel, Fast One, and seven of them were collected for his only collection, Seven Slayers. In that small but powerful body of work were even a few private eye tales, most notably one featuring Black. He worked as a production assistant in the film industry, and as Peter Ruric as a screenwriter in the thirties and forties, scripting Gambling Ship (allegedly “derived” from Fast One), The Black Cat, Affairs of a Gentleman, Dark Sands, Twelve Crowded Hours , The Night of January 16, Alias A Gentleman and Mademoiselle Fiji, as well as Grand Central Murder.

Sue MacVeigh was the pen name of author and journalist Elizabeth Custer Nearing, who was born in Philadelphia in 1898.  She later went to work for the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and later became the managing editor of the Clifton Times in New Jersey and a feature writer for the New York Telegram. She wrote four mystery novels featuring Andy and Sue MacVeigh. Custer, by the way, was her maiden name. She claimed to be a direct descendant of the infamous General George Armstrong Custer.

THE EVIDENCE

• “Whoever knicked off that witch ought to be a cinch for the Nobel prize.”
  — Rocky mourns the deceased.

UNDER OATH

• “…scripted by Peter Ruric at a breathless clip, so much so that the opening reel or so is more than ordinarily confusing, even for a whodunit. But once the threads become untangled and private eye Heflin comes on the scene to investigate the murder of a catty actress (Patricia Dane) in a private car in Grand Central Station, it becomes clever, witty and possessing all the ingredients to please a mystery fan.”
  — Don Miller (B Movies)

FILMS

• GRAND CENTRAL MURDER | Buy the DVD | Watch it now!
  (1942, MGM)
  73 minutes
  Black and white
  Based on the novel Grand Central Murder by Sue MacVeigh
  Screenplay by Peter Ruric
  Directed by S. Sylvan Simon
  Cinematography by George J. Folsey
  Original music by David Snell
  Produced by B.F. Zeidman
  Starring Van Heflin as ROCKY CUSTER
  with Virginia Grey as Sue Custer
  and Sam Levene as Inspector Gunther
  Also starring Patricia Dane, Cecilia Parker, Samuel S. Hinds, Connie Gilchrist, Mark Daniels, Stephen McNally, Tom Conway, Betty Wells, George Lynn, Roman Bohnen, Millard Mitchell

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.