Comments on: The Strange, Sad Saga of Alphonso DeNoble https://halloweenlove.com/the-strange-sad-saga-of-alphonso-denoble/Halloween & Horror BlogSat, 17 Jan 2026 04:33:03 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.2 By: General General https://halloweenlove.com/the-strange-sad-saga-of-alphonso-denoble/#comment-11253Sat, 17 Jan 2026 04:33:03 +0000https://halloweenlove.com/?p=1063072#comment-11253I really enjoyed his acting in Alice Sweet Alice! It's sweet that this little corner of the internet remembers him!

]]> By: Elcio Da Silva https://halloweenlove.com/the-strange-sad-saga-of-alphonso-denoble/#comment-11182Sat, 07 Dec 2024 21:56:25 +0000https://halloweenlove.com/?p=1063072#comment-11182He was born in 1946 and died in 1978.

]]> By: Toaster Leavins https://halloweenlove.com/the-strange-sad-saga-of-alphonso-denoble/#comment-11115Tue, 14 May 2024 04:55:57 +0000https://halloweenlove.com/?p=1063072#comment-11115In reply to Rebecca Maye Holiday.

Hey beautiful.

]]> By: Rebecca Maye Holiday https://halloweenlove.com/the-strange-sad-saga-of-alphonso-denoble/#comment-11010Sun, 26 Mar 2023 19:51:47 +0000https://halloweenlove.com/?p=1063072#comment-11010What a tragic case, and terrible what the media did to him (which, if true, luckily doesn’t seem to come up in any search results and will probably remain relegated to an old microfilm in some dusty library somewhere, or more likely the tabloids). According to Troy Howarth’s book Unholy Communion, DeNoble committed suicide because he was “ashamed of his obesity”, but I never knew about the turnstile incident. The media should have gotten DeNoble’s consent before publicizing that in newspapers… although I do suspect it’s a false story; according to one magazine (Sleazoid Express) that discussed Reed in 2005, “Reed also made up a strange death scenario. He enjoyed repeating with mock sadness that Alphonse [sic] DeNoble, a grossly overweight actor known for repugnant roles such as the lecherous super in Alice Sweet Alice, had married a beautiful young girl. DeNoble was a degenerate racetrack gambler and had gotten stuck in the turnstiles out at Meadowlands during a manic episode of playing the ponies. The staff had to saw him out of the turnstile. DeNoble felt so embarrassed by this incident that he went home and blew his brains out.” If Reed was spreading this story around as fake gossip because he found it amusing, then I find that immature and repugnant, especially considering that DeNoble is dead and isn’t able to defend himself against these rumours. His story also changes; at one point he says that the Meadowlands staff had to saw DeNoble out of the turnstile, while in other sources he mentions that the fire department had to rescue him. Reed was rather lucky that DeNoble has no estate to sue him.

In some ways, Alphonso DeNoble’s career parallels the more pleasant success story of actress Darlene Cates, an obese woman who appeared in a talk show segment about being too large to leave her house, and Cates is known today for playing Bonnie “Momma” Grape alongside Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. She got her start in the film industry due to her weight and played obese characters, but it was her personality that people remember her best for. She was a kind and fun person. Overweight and obese actors have often led difficult lives and often get typecast as a certain type of character. To Alphonso DeNoble’s credit, his very brief acting career had a diverse set of character roles and it seems like he was a nice man, taking into account that the lecherous character that he played in Alice, Sweet Alice was a fictional construct.

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