Vincent Musetto, author of flawless 'Headless' headline, dies aged 74

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jun/09/vincent-musetto-new-york-post-headline

Version 0 of 1.

Headline writers of the world, lament. Vinny Musetto, a long-time New York Post editor, has died aged 74. He is the man responsible for the timeless, peerless, flawless Post headline: “Headless body in topless bar.”

If that front page isn’t signed, framed and mounted at Post HQ, shame on them.

Musetto’s headline tells of heartless crime. The story appeared on the front page of the Post on 15 April 1983, after a man killed a Queens strip club owner – and then forced one of the patrons to cut off the victim’s head. Gruesome murder, lurid details: a headline writer’s dream.

On 13 April, Charles Dingle, who was drinking in a bar, got into an argument with the owner, Herbert Cummings, and shot him to death. He then took several customers hostage and, to confound the police, forced one of them to cut off Cummings’s head. Dingle, 23 at the time, was convicted and sentenced to a 25-years-to-life term.

But how to make the story sing? Described, in true tabloid style, as a “larger-than-life character”, Musetto was responsible for many of the Post’s sensational page one headlines. There was “Khadafy goes daffy”, “Granny executed in her pink pajamas”, “500lb sex maniac goes free”, “I slept with a trumpet.” None of them flawless, but each distinctive: wacky, audacious, arresting. Artful, in their own way.

Headless body in topless bar. Great, isn’t it? Clean, precise, witty, original, with a lovely eight-syllable rhythm. Try saying it over and over again: headless body in topless bar. No wasted words; indeed, no verbs. A healthy dash of gallows humour. And, of course, it contains that essential Post-ness: it’s cheeky, irreverent, wide-eyed, scurrilous, lurid.

“It just came to me,” Musetto said of his most famous piece of work. “I loved it.”

For contrast, consider the same story in the the New York Times that day: “Owner of a bar shot to death; suspect is held.” (Headlessness was not mentioned until the third paragraph; toplessness not at all.) Grey, grey, grey.

There’s one extra element to Musetto’s masterpiece: luck. How fortunate that the murder should have occurred at a strip club, and not, say, an Irish pub, or an upscale Manhattan cocktail bar. Remove the topless, so to speak, and it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

But City editor Dick Belsky was not convinced: “Hang on, Vinnie, we’re not 100% sure it’s a topless bar!”

“It’s gotta be a topless bar!” Musetto yelled, as his former colleague Charlie Carillo wrote for The Huffington Post in 2012. “This is the greatest fucking headline of my career!”

A reporter was dispatched. Word came back: it was indeed a topless bar. Victory!

The job of a headline writer is a largely thankless task. I should know: I am one. Toiling away, behind the scenes, trying to turn a silk purse into a sow’s ear. The writers get the credit, the byline photo, the Twitter followers; the copy editor usually receives the opprobrium.

But when a headline works: boy, oh boy. Some examples from the UK: funny – “Super Caley go ballistic, Celtic are atrocious”. Preposterous: “Freddie Starr ate my hamster”. Arch: “Book lack in Ongar”. Sometimes, they technically don’t work: “Up yours, Delors”. It’s a craft all of its own.

The Guardian style guide has an entry for headlines: it’s comprehensive, and helpful, but the key phrase is this: “There is no magic formula.” Quite right. You can’t force it. Sometimes they just come to you. A flash of inspiration. Sometimes tasteless, sometimes shameless.

Headless body in topless bar? Priceless.