Body gone but head belongs to the ages

Vincent Musetto and his legendary front page. Main picture: AP

Vale the great Vincent Musetto. What’s that, you say? You haven’t heard of Vincent Musetto? Musetto was a retired editor at the New York Post who in 1983 created what is widely considered by newspaper men and women around the world as the most utterly perfect headline of all time — HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR.

Musetto died of pancreatic cancer on Tuesday. He was 74.

The headline referred to an especially gruesome crime but what has lived on beyond the violence of the event is the headline — a copybook example of the power of the barest minimum of words in 20-point font on a newspaper’s front page, verbless and in perfect trochaic symmetry.

Headline creation is if not an art form then a deft skill in wordplay that draws the reader in at the newsstand. Consider it the print form of what we now call clickbait. It is a time-honoured practice and it is worth delving into the work of some of its most adept practitioners.

As Musetto’s headline shows, he understood body parts can be especially helpful given their numerous different meanings. So it was, too, for one copy editor at The Times who came up with the cracking head when British Labour leader Michael Foot chaired a nuclear disarmament lobby group: “FOOT HEADS ARMS BODY”.

Rhyming dictionaries are available online now but in a time not so long ago, every newsroom would have at least one dog-eared hard copy of Whitmer’s Rhyming Dictionary sitting on the shelves ready to assist in bringing joy to the printed page when a story is so silly it demands extra silly treatment.

The Sun in the UK was faced with such a challenge when they came across the story of a drunken moose that had an unfortunate and ultimately fatal collision with a bus in one of the former Soviet Republics. And so it came to pass that the headline screamed, “A MOOSE ON THE JUICE RUNS LOOSE AND HITS BUUS IN BELARUS”.

If I may be so bold to get the red pen out and point out to these verbal artisans that when it comes to a headline, brevity is all. Aside from the obvious but clever misspelling of ‘bus’ ‘A moose on juice’ is really a Juiced Moose, thus avoiding two superfluous participles and further on running a line through an equally unnecessary conjunction. I hate to be picky but to become real quality, the headline should have run “JUICED MOOSE RUNS LOOSE HITS BUUS IN BELARUS”.

The Sun is no stranger to the prosaic headline. It famously reported on the nuptials of Elton John to his longtime partner David Furnish with the headline, “ELTON TAKES DAVID UP THE AISLE”.

I look in on The Sun frequently for little other reason than to admire the work of its wordsmiths. My all-time favourite Sun headline relates to the death of Osama bin Laden with the fabulously succinct “BIN BAGGED”.

When television host and left-wing activist Rosie O’Donnell married her same-sex partner in 2004 and used the event to further promote her political views, the editors of the Chicago Sun Times opted for a bit of mischief when they arrived at the headline, “ROSIE WEDS LONG TIME PARTNER, SLAMS BUSH”.

Just as there is greatness to be found in athletic endeavours, there is magnificence to be seen in the reporting of them. In the 1970s, The Liverpool Echo ran with a headline detailing Liverpool star midfielder Ian Callaghan’s day out against a hapless Queens Park Rangers. The wonderful “SUPER CALLY GOES BALLISTIC QPR ATROCIOUS” ran on the back page.

The headline was considered so good it was revived (though the references to “Caley” were obscure) by the Scottish Sun in 2000 when it ran the amended headline in relation to Inverness Caledonian thumping Celtic in the Scottish Football League — SUPER CALEY GO BALLISTIC CELTIC ARE ATROCIOUS.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery and the Scottish Sun would acknowledge that the points in this instance must go to the subs at The Liverpool Echo.

No article of on this subject matter would be regarded as definitive without a mention of Australia’s own noble journal of merit, the NT News — chroniclers of important stories on crocodiles on the fang, crocodiles battling aliens, crocodiles fighting sharks, crocodiles consuming us and crocodiles basically being crocodiles.

In a departure from its usual reptilian fixation, the NT News published a profoundly disturbing account of a Queensland man who found himself in the middle of a rowdy drinking and pyrotechnics episode which left him hospitalised with burns to his nether regions. The memorable headline, “WHY I STUCK A CRACKER UP MY CLACKER” drew guffaws around the nation.

Sydney’s Daily Telegraph should not go unnoticed either although I prefer for sentiment’s sake to dwell on some of its more historical efforts, notably the propaganda purler printed during the Korean War, “CHINESE GENERALS FLY BACK TO FRONT” and the front-page photograph of Soviet dictator and mass murderer Joseph Stalin in post — mortem repose, accompanied by the words “STALIN DEAD — HOORAY”.

Sometimes the strength of occasion creates a headline in our minds that never actually makes it into print.

While I was researching this article, actor Jackie Weaver reminded me of accounts of a report from many years ago when socialite Gloria Vanderbilt became ill in Europe and had to be rushed home for treatment. According to Jackie (and many others who think this true) one of the New York newspapers reportedly ran the head, “SICK GLORIA IN TRANSIT”, a rather cunning and delightful play on the Latin phrase sic gloria transit mondi (Thus passes the glory of the world), or at least it would be if it were true but alas, I can find no source for it and it appears to be apocryphal.

Musetto’s famous headline related to a true and truly shocking story of a man, Charles Dingle, who was drinking in a bar in Queens, New York. He had an argument with the bar owner, Herbert Cummings, produced a gun and shot him dead. He then went on to take a number of female dancers at the club hostage and at gunpoint forced one of them to cut off Mr Cummings’ head.

While the New York Post ran with the superlative “HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR”, the New York Times opted for a more conservative approach. Its own headline ran “OWNER OF A BAR SHOT DEAD, SUSPECT HELD”. Naturally the Post won the day.

It could have been different. The story goes that Musetto came up with the famous headline within minutes of hearing the details of the story. In the fog that generally surrounds a major news event, a New York Post reporter covered the story at the scene but omitted one crucial point, referring to the crime scene only as a bar. With deadline looming another reporter was dispatched to Queens to determine the one fact needed to run the headline. The reporter called back to a breathless newsroom. Yes, the bar was topless.

Musetto has left us but his headline belongs to the ages.

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