Sun Flashbacks: Entertainment scene has changed

Saturday, July 1, 2000 | 2:50 a.m.

Dick Odessky, General assignment reporter and entertainment writer in 1953, on his work as a cub reporter for the Sun:

"I was hired over the telephone and arrived in town to find out I was the Sun's only full-time reporter.

"About that time, entertainment columnist Bill Willard left the Sun, so editors Adam Yacenda and Colin McKinley and I wrote the entertainment column under the byline Dick McAdam. After a while, they stopped contributing and I wrote the column myself.

"By days I did my regular reporting job and at night I did the entertainment beat, where I got to meet every important person in town.

"At the time, I was only 19 years old -- too young to legally be in the casinos and showrooms covering that beat."

Dick Odessky went on to work for other newspapers, including the Los Angeles Examiner, LA Herald Express and North Las Vegas Valley Times. He is the author of the book "Fly on the Wall -- Recollections of Las Vegas' Good Old Bad Old Days."