Vincent Musetto was an editor at The New York Post, which was already a slightly sleazy tabloid back in April 13, 1983, when the newspaper headline hit the streets.
The Times noted that "Musetto’s headline, exquisitely emblematic of The Post under Rupert Murdoch, quickly insinuated itself into popular culture. It appeared on T-shirts; as the title of a 1995 movie starring Raymond J. Barry and loosely based on the crime; and as the name of a 2007 book, “Headless Body in Topless Bar: The Best Headlines From America’s Favorite Newspaper.”
A former editor of mine, for decades, used to cite that headline routinely as the best of all time to whoever in The Macomb Daily newsroom was within earshot.
The irreverent headline was inspired by a fatal shooting at a Queens strip joint where the perpetrator unsuccessfully tried to throw the police off his trail by forcing the dancing girls at the establishment to decapitate the victim.
Here's a bit of a comical twist to the story, as it related to the Post newsroom:
As several former colleagues have recalled over the years, Mr. Musetto’s headline almost did not come to be, wrote Margalit Fox in her unorthodox obituary published today by the Times. That April evening, as deadline loomed in the newsroom, it occurred to someone that the bar in question might not actually be topless.
“It’s gotta be a topless bar!” Mr. Musetto cried, as his former colleague Charlie Carillo wrote for The Huffington Post in 2012. “This is the greatest headline of my career!” (As quoted by Mr. Carillo, there was an intervening, ungenteel participle between “greatest” and “headline.”)
The Post dispatched a reporter, who phoned from Queens to say, to the relief of all and to the everlasting glory of American tabloid journalism, that topless it was.
No comments:
Post a Comment