‘A Sad Story’ – Rudy Valentino and Missoula’s Alfred Addleman
Rudolph Valentino and Missoula’s Alfred Addleman
Rudolph Valentino Passes Through City
Rudolph Valentino, the movie actor, who passed through Missoula yesterday on his way to Spokane, did not create a very favorable impression with the women who gathered at the Northern Pacific station to see him.
As the train pulled in Valentino alighted and paraded his bull dog and his wife’s Pekinese pup before a hundred admiring women and a few admittedly scornful members of his own sex on the platform. It was apparent that he did not see the admiring women. Never a smile or hint or recognition did he give, ignoring the curious circle entirely. One courageous woman asked him for his autograph. He did not hear her. Another insisted on climbing the steps attempting to clasp his hand.
There’s no mistaking the “Shiek.” His photographers did a perfect job. He did not wear a hat, so that his black hair laid back over his head served to help easy identification. He was first off the car, looking for the limelight which he would not notice. Valentino and his wife are on the way to Spokane for a dancing engagement, coming here from Butte.
Alfred Addleman, a Missoula boy who went to Butte Monday to attend the affair given there, and who accompanied the Valentino party to Missoula yesterday, in explaining the situation, said Valentino’s ideas and intentions were misunderstood. “His attitude at the station today was brought about by a woman asking him to dance for the crowd on the station platform and called him the ‘Shiek,’ a name which he detests.”
The above is from an article appearing in The Daily Missoulian on May 30, 1923.
https://www.newspapers.com/image/352382965/
A Missoula native, Alfred Addleman attended MCHS and was involved in the drama and the Glee Club programs in 1923. An article in The Sunday Missoulian in late May of 1923 stated that Alfred had just returned to Missoula after spending “several weeks in Arizona, Mexico and California.” Another article in The Sunday Missoulian in 1926, stated that Alfred had just visited his parents in Missoula after living in Hollywood for 4 years. In 1928 another Missoulian article stated he had played host to a group of actors whom he had known in California.
By 1930 Alfred lived back in Missoula and was the proprietor of Casa Del Fresco, an ice-cream fountain. He committed suicide in Missoula in 1930 at age 25. The previous year he had given testimony in a case involving the strange death of a Missoula man, John E. Nelson.