Wednesday, June 10, 2015

The greatest headline of the 20th Century.

Vincent Musetto died on Tuesday in the Bronx.

Vincent who?

Well, you could argue that Mr. Musetto wrote the best headline  of the 20th Century when Charles Dingle shot and killed Herbert Cummings in a Queens saloon and forced a female hostage to decapitate Cummings' corpse.

"The New York Times" headlined the gore this way: "Owner of a Bar is Shot to Death; Suspect is Held." That's what you'd expect from the Times. Austere, sober, serious. Headlessness was not mentioned until paragraph three. They didn't mention toplessness at all.

Musetto was more lurid, more sensational, more alive. He was writing to sell copies from newsstands. He was writing to hawk papers.

I guess if the Post rewrote David Ogilvy's headline "At 60 miles per hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock," they'd write something like "Quiet luxe car perfect for noisy orgies."

You can read Musetto's obit here.

And be sure to stay out of topless bars. Headless or otherwise.

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