The writer of the greatest headline in the history of tabloidkind has retired, his paper reported Thursday:
The genius who dreamed up the iconic New York Post headline “Headless Body in Topless Bar,” Vincent A. Musetto, was given an affectionate send-off by his colleagues last night after 40 years at the paper. Retiring film critic Musetto, who once ran the newsroom, was toasted by staff, who regaled him with a reading from Steve Cuozzo‘s 1996 book, “It’s Alive,” about the genesis of the 1983 headline. But Musetto revealed that his favorite of his own headlines was “Granny Executed in Her Pink Pajamas.” And when the Times reprinted it as “slain,” not “executed,” he got the paper to run a correction.
Minyanville.com rounds up some quotes from Mussetto:
Here’s Musetto in a 1987 interview with People, talking about what New York Magazine called the Post‘s “single greatest headline of the past 35 years”:
I wrote HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR, the most infamous headline in journalism. They have T-shirts with it on, and buttons. It’s all right. It’s not one of my favorite headlines. Nobody expected it to become a classic, the Night of the Living Dead of headlines. One afternoon I got a report that there had been a murder in a bar, and that one of the victims had had his or her head cut off. Someone said it might be a topless bar, but we weren’t sure, and then the idea of the headline came around, so we were really questioning to make sure it was a topless bar. We sent the reporter, this girl, and she so determined that it was a topless bar. I just wrote it, and everyone said “ha ha,” but I didn’t think it would live in infamy.
Musetto also explained the difference between a headline and a New York Post headline:
Zap, zip, zonk, nix, those are good verbs. Short. Short and powerful. They’ve got to convey a sense of urgency. Nouns? Tots, kids, fire, you know — SIX-ALARM FIRE. Blaze is good, but fire’s shorter. Siege. Siege is good. Madman, maniac, fear. My favorite word is “coed.” When you see coed, people want to buy the paper. I don’t know why — just some young, innocent girl getting into a lot of trouble. It’s the dirty old man in people. It’s a very sexy word…. Without the hyphen. Some people spell it with a hyphen, we spell it without the hyphen.
Not surprisingly, Mussetto’s headline made the list of New York magazine’s Greatest Tabloid Headlines back in 2003:
FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD
(Daily News, 1975)SOMOZA SLAIN BY BAZOOKA
(News, 1980)HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR
(New York Post, 1982)‘I AM DEATH WISH VIGILANTE’
(Bernie Goetz turns himself in; Post, 1985)KOTCHA!
(Koch re-elected; News, 1985)MARLA: ‘BEST SEX I EVER HAD’
(Post, 1990)AMY’S NUDE ROMPS IN JAIL
(Post, 1993)KISS YOUR ASTEROID GOODBYE!
(Meteor misses earth; Post, 1998)CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR
(Senate fails to convict Clinton; News, 1999)FROM A BIG HOUSE TO THE BIG HOUSE
(Lizzie Grubman sentenced; News, 2002)AXIS OF WEASEL
(Post, 2003)
(Veteran readers of the Blogosphere know that PJTV’s own Scott Ott originally wrote that last headline.)
Mussetto’s headline also inspired the title of a compendium of classic front pages the Post released a few years ago. It’s a book that thinks it’s a hysterically funny compendium of New York Post headlines (and it is), but for bloggers, it’s actually a textbook on how to construct killer headlines. As one of the Post’s editors notes in the book, no matter how brilliant your article is, nobody’s going to read it if the headline doesn’t grab them first, and in one of the world’s most competitive newspaper markets, the ability to consistently write must-read headlines is an art.
Great post, Ed. I heard that guy speak years ago, at a newspaper event in New York City, and he and his headlines were the inspiration for the funny headlines I put on my syndicated advice column.
A dubious honor, Ed, but I’ll take it. Trivia: I actually applied for a headline writing job with the Weekly World News just after college. It paid $40,000 (which turned out to be four times my starting annual salary). I figured I was up to the challenge of writing headers like : Trick Cigar Blows Man’s Head Off
I had that article clipped to my dorm door in college!
Scott, which year? I applied in 1987, as a green copy editor, and went to the trouble of typesetting a pitch-perfect Weekly World News cover, complete with headlines about why I should get the gig. Alas, no love from the folks in Lantana, FL.
Am I still bitter? Mmmmmmmmmaybe.
Actual headline 10 years ago in Ft. Lauderdale. Elderly woman found alive in car 3+ days after accident: TILLY TUDOR’S TWISTED TOYOTA TERCEL.
My favourite Post headline – I’m amazed it’s not in the top 10 – is ‘The Arafat Lady Sings’, which appeared above a story shortly after Arafat died. The story was about how much money Arafat had stolen from the poor fools who idolised him, and how his widow was living it up in Paris or wherever.
I was visiting NY from England at the time and bought a copy of the paper – I still have it somewhere.
I always liked “I FORGOTTI!” when the man alleg. assaulted by John Gotti in a Manhatten alley changed his testimony.
I love the recent reporting about Obama’s chastising Congress to eat their peas, do their homework and get stuff done!
“BAM: Give peas a chance.”
A Minnesota paper once ran a headline:
“Fertile Man Dies In Climax”
Fertile and Climax are towns in the land of 10,000 lakes.
V.A. Musetto also did an excellent job making sure the NY POST maintained a careful liberal slant in its Arts coverage. He’d probably have retired sooner if he hadn’t felt like he was needed to keep battling against the likes of Rod Dreher and Kyle Smith.
Who knew that a Murdoch/News Corp property could have a liberal slant…
Well, other than the Fox TV network, the spin-off FX network, and 20th Century Fox pictures of course.
Oh No! The New York Post is HEAD linewriter LESS!!!
Good one, today, linked via Tatler. POTUS is IMPOTUS. Brutal. Devastating. Ad-worthy.
Here in the boonies the best I recall in the locals was “School Cafeteria Worker Dies, Leaves Son in Sandwich”. Sandwich is, of course, a town.
My all time favorite Post headline was when the cult leader Bhagwan Shree Rashneesh got deported from the US. His cult was responsible for some serious crimes including poisoning salad bars around Dalles, Oregon and making people sick, but Rashneesh took a plea and agreed to leave the country. The Post headline: “Let Bhagwans Be Bhagwans.”
Bar none, by far the best headline I ever heard of was in Britain, when the soccer star George Best had his car fail in a tunnel, and his friend/wife, named Ball, who happened to be on the scene, attached a rope and pulled him out.:
“George Best Dragged out of Tunnel by the Balls.”
“Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050300374.html
“Oblong Boy Marries Normal Girl.” Two towns in Illinois – society page.
Bullshit. I’m tired of getting screwed over for credit for this. I was senior producer of the Big Story with John Gibson at Fox News Channel that year. We had recently revamped our show opening to start with a headline … I wrote “Axis of Weasels” … and the goddam Post ripped it off the next morning. I have (had) a staff that can vouch for that, and if you want to do your homework, look at the day the Post had that front page headline, and look at the Fox News aircheck from the day before.
Jesus. It’s bad enough when one person steals your work, worse when another chimes in to falsely take credit.
Now piss off.
“if you want to do your homework, look at the day the Post had that front page headline, and look at the Fox News aircheck from the day before. ”
The New York Post cover is dated January 24th. Scott’s headline is dated January 22nd.
“Jesus. It’s bad enough when one person steals your work, worse when another chimes in to falsely take credit.
Now piss off.”
Exactly.
I am VERY impressed at who reads your column. Scott Ott is my all-time favorite blogger, but it would seem likely that they came up with it independently. I recall Scott Adams (“Dilbert”) was pushing the word “weasel” in a different context, I think around then.
It is hard to beat Ford to City, since the Democrats used it in election flyers and it might have cost Ford the state. (I never believed the standard narrative about him losing over the Nixon pardon; more likely it was the recession.) Of course, we know realize he had a good point.
I don’t know if Vincent wrote what is, in my opinion, the best Post headline ever, from when Ike Turner died:
IKE BEATS TINA TO DEATH
Isn’t this the guy who slugged the story of Ike Turner’s death with “Ike Beats Tina To Death”?
In an English housing estate, an elderly lady, fed up with the vermin in her apartment, finally complained to the landlord after a centipede came out of her faucet while she was getting a drink. The local headline ran: “Old woman survives a fall of 100 feet into a glass of water!”
Wonder if he got the line from the old Bugs Bunny cartoon?
My favorite from the Anthony Weiner story: Erections Have Consequences.