Norm Clarke, a Las Vegas celebrity columnist and former AP sports writer, dies at 82

Norm Clarke, a colorful journalist who covered the back-to-back World Series champion Cincinnati Reds of the 1970s as an Associated Press sports writer and then became a popular entertainment columnist in Las Vegas, has died after a long battle with prostate cancer.

Clarke, 82, died on Thursday at a Las Vegas hospice center, said his brother, Jeff Scheid.

Instantly recognizable with his signature eye patch — he lost his right eye in a childhood accident — Clarke had a big hit with his “Vegas Confidential” column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal beginning in 1999. He covered what he called “the world’s greatest buffet of entertainment news” in a 2024 interview with “Vegas Revealed” podcast co-host Dayna Roselli.

His celebrity sightings and reports of “celebrities behaving badly” included scoops on Britney Spears’ 55-hour Vegas marriage in 2004, Michael Jackson’s surprise return to the city in 2006 after nearly three years in Europe, and Elton John getting booed after losing his temper and throwing a stool and glass of water during a show.

“Norm’s Review-Journal column was so popular he became a celebrity in his own right,” Review-Journal Executive Editor Glenn Cook said by email. “He was a gentleman. Readers loved him. I consistently heard from subscribers who said Norm was the first thing they read every day.”

A 2010 Forbes magazine profile described his role this way: “Writing up gossip in Sin City is the Wild West of entertainment beats. Norm Clarke is the sheriff.”

Donald Trump and “Playboy” founder Hugh Hefner were among those offering blurbs for Clarke’s 2009 book “Sinsational Celebrity Tales.”

Clarke, who retired in 2016, credited his AP training with helping develop the aggressive reporting and interviewing style that made his Vegas column a long-running hit.

“Being remembered as a reporter was always my hope. I would not want to be known as a gossip columnist,” Clarke said in a Review-Journal interview last week. “With all the time I put in with The Associated Press, wearing the mantle of AP reporter meant everything to me. A lot of pride goes into working for the AP.”

Clarke left the Helena, Montana, Independent Record in 1973 and joined AP in Cincinnati, where he covered the emergence of the dominating Big Red Machine that won baseball world championships in 1975-76 led by Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez.

That was the beginning of a long, sometimes contentious relationship with Rose.

Clarke broke news on his contract squabbles with the Reds, subsequent signing with the Philadelphia Phillies, and his retirement. Decades later, Rose, who stayed in Las Vegas for much of the year to sell his autograph, slapped Clarke in the face after Clarke listed him among Vegas’ worst tippers. However, Clarke said he and Rose shook hands in their final meeting.

Major League Baseball’s all-time hits leader died in Las Vegas on Sept. 30, 2024, at age 83.

Clarke also led AP coverage of the devastating 1977 fire at the popular Beverly Hills Supper Club entertainment spot just across the river from Cincinnati in Southgate, Kentucky. As Clarke tried to get to the scene, he found traffic was at a standstill, so he pulled over and ran a mile (1.61 kilometers) to the club. He was the first to interview Walter Bailey, the busser who interrupted a dinner show and warned people to evacuate, likely saving many lives from the blaze that killed 165.

Andy Lippman, AP’s retired chief of bureau in Los Angeles who first worked with Clarke as the correspondent in the Cincinnati AP office, recalled Clarke’s tireless coverage of the fire.

“In those pre-cellphone days, he ran up and down the hill where the club was located, found phones and dictated, for about 16 hours,” Lippman said, adding that Clarke later called him and said he had dreamed of seeing the charred bodies around him.

Clarke moved on to San Diego with the AP. He was sent to Las Vegas in 1980 to help cover the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino fire that claimed 85 lives. He also helped coordinate coverage of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

He then joined the Rocky Mountain News as a sports reporter, producing an award-winning series on illegal sports betting and chronicling Denver’s successful pursuit of a baseball expansion franchise that became the Rockies in 1993. Highlights of his reporting became his 1993 book, “High Hard Ones.”

Clarke was “the best pure news reporter I knew in more than 50 years in newspapers. He had a special ear for quotes, and the ability to get people to talk to him,” said Denny Dressman, a former Rocky Mountain News editor who helped complete Clarke's recent memoir and edited “High Hard Ones.”

Among his personal adventures was twice running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, then getting stomped by a bull in the inaugural running in Tecate, Mexico.

A native of Terry, Montana, Clarke was 10 when he lost his father, Charlie, to cancer and then his right eye months later. His father was “a huge sports fan” who in 1951 drove from Montana to New York City for the all-New York Giants-Yankees World Series, Clarke said.

His mother, Dorothy, was reluctant to let Norm play football, fearing he would damage his other eye, but she finally relented, and he became a starting defensive lineman.

He was working in a grocery store when the editor of the local weekly newspaper offered him $5 to cover a three-day basketball tournament. His hometown team won the tournament on a buzzer-beating half-court shot.

“It was the best payday of my life,” he recalled, “because in that moment, I realized I could do what I loved — and get paid for it,” he said. “Covering sports lifted me out of a dark place and changed my life.”

Clarke’s memoir, “Power of the Patch,” was published this month. He wanted the book distributed free of charge in schools and libraries in Montana and in the cities where he worked.

Besides Scheid, Clarke is survived by a sister, Nancy Morast of Kalispell, Montana; another brother, Newell Clarke of Terry; and his wife, Cara Roberts Clarke, whom he married in 2012. Clarke was godfather to Marine Sgt. David Kreuter of Cincinnati, who was killed at age 26 on Aug. 3, 2005, by a bombing in Iraq that claimed 15 lives.

Scheid said a memorial service will be scheduled later. ___

This story has been corrected to show that Andy Lippman was The Associated Press' chief of bureau in Los Angeles when he retired, not assistant bureau chief.

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Sewell, a retired AP journalist, first worked with Clarke as an intern in AP's Cincinnati office in 1977.