Musings on André Deed

The Fashionable Sport (Gli sport alla moda) (1910)

I offer today's blog post as a tribute to André Deed, who is the first comedian spotlighted in my book Eighteen Comedians of Silent Film.  I continue to be fascinated by Deed, who may be the most unjustly overlooked performer in the history of film comedy.  Just the fact that he was the industry's first comedy star should grant him prominent status in film history.  But few people are aware of Deed or are willing to acknowledge his significance.

Cretinetti e gli stivali del Brasiliano (1916)

 
Not long after Deed made his film debut, a decidedly different comedian established himself as Deed's most formidable rival.  That comedian was the irrepressible Max Linder.  Deed and Linder were the yin and yang of early film comedy.  But, at first, Linder did not seem as influential as Deed, who spawned far more imitators than Linder.  There was, however, a good reason for that.  Linder derived comedy from his distinct charm and personality.  How could anyone really be Max Linder except for Max Linder himself?  Deed played a bungling idiot who created destruction wherever he went.  That was an easier formula to replicate.

Foolshead, Telegraph Boy (Cretinetti fattorino telegrafico) (1911)

The first two American comedy stars were modeled after Deed and Linder.  Essanay designed Ben Turpin to be the American Deed.  Turpin performed Deed's sort of foolish antics in several films, including The Crazy Barber (1909) and The Energetic Street Cleaner (1909).  Biograph designed John Cumpson to be the American Max Linder.  The first official film in Cumpson's "Mr. Jones" series, Mr. Jones at the Ball (1909), was a remake of Linder's Mon pantalon est décousu (1908). 

Deed, a protégé of Georges Méliès, is the missing link between Méliès and Mack Sennett.  He achieved popularity with camera-trick gags and slapstick chases.  An early success for Deed was The Wig Chase (1906), which was written by André Heuzé.  This film, which was about a woman's wig floating away with balloons and a mob of people climbing up the Eiffel Tower to retrieve it, established an effective formula of fantastic comic anarchy for the comedian.  Heuzé later applied the same formula to The Runaway Horse (1908), a highly successful comedy that was quickly remade by Biograph as The Curtain Pole (1909).  The Biograph film starred Mack Sennett as Monsieur Dupont, who was made up to  resemble a grotesque version of the dapper Linder.  This funny and energetic film set Sennett on a path that would eventually lead the young filmmaker to launch the Keystone studio. 

Let's look at a few stills from Deed's films.

This is a still from the 1910 comedy Foolshead, Victim of His Honesty (originally released in Italy under the title Cretinetti vittima della sua onesta).  In the film, Deed finds a handbag on the street and attempts to turn it in as lost property at a police station.  Unfortunately, the police have little interest in the handbag and compel Deed to wait among a menacing rogue's gallery.

Foolshead, Victim of His Honesty (Cretinetti vittima della sua onesta)
(1910)

This is a still from the 1911 comedy Foolshead, Lady of Company (released originally in Italy under the title Cretinetti dama di compagnia).  The plot was not the comedian's most original.  A wealthy man will not allow Deed into his home to spend time with his daughter, which drives the young woman into a state of melancholy.  The father is determined to cure his dispirited daughter of her loneliness.  He dispatches a note to an employment agency to provide his daughter with a lady companion.  However, the daughter intercepts the note and notifies Deed that they can be reunited if he comes to her home disguised as the skirted companion.

Foolshead, Lady of Company (Cretinetti dama di compagnia)
(1911)

Here are further stills from this period.

 Foolshead's Christmas (Come fu Che l'ingordigia rovino il Natalie di Cretinetti) (1910)

Foolshead Marries Against His Will (Cretinetti sposo suo malgrado) (1910)

 

The Fashionable Sport (Gli sport alla moda) (1910) 

 

Foolshead Receives (Cretinetti riceve) (1910)

 
 

Foolshead as a Porter (Cretinetti facchino) (1910)

 
 

Foolshead, Volunteer of the Red Cross  (Cretinetti volontario della Croce Rossa) (1910)

 

Two Girls Are in Love with Foolshead (Le due innamorate di Cretinetti) (1911)

Foolshead, Wrangler for Love (Cretinetti attaccabrighe per amore) (1911)

 

By 1914, Deed's films were no longer being exhibited in the United States.  The success of the Keystone comedies prompted Hollywood studios to accelerate the production of comedy films and American exhibitors were more than content to occupy their programs with this new homegrown product. 
 
At this time, Deed made an effort to grow up on screen.  He went from playing an aimless, childish idiot to playing an uptight, obsessive bourgeois gentleman.  This type of character is on display in the 1914 comedy Boireau enragé fumeur.  Deed feels compelled to smoke cigars incessantly, but his fiancé insists that he refrain from smoking during a visit to her parents' home.  Deed, no matter how hard he tries, cannot resist smoking.  He puffs furiously on a cigar whenever no one is looking and, every time that he is suddenly confronted by his fiancé or her parents, he acts quickly to find someplace to hide the cigar.  At one point, he hides a cigar under his hat, which causes smoke to emit from the top of his head.  He later drops a cigar down the boot of another guest, which burns the poor fellow's foot. 

Obsessive behavior is also on display in Le Rocking-chair de Boireau (1914).  Deed expects to relax in a rocking chair during a transatlantic voyage on a luxury cruise ship.  Unfortunately, he finds himself repeatedly dislodged from the chair through a variety of mishaps and disagreements.  Still, he cannot be dissuaded from enjoying a nap in the cozy rocker.  At one point, he wrests the chair away from a woman and runs off with his prized possession rather than give it up.  His dizzying race around the ship causes a great deal of disruption for other passengers.  The quartermaster is furious when he finally captures Deed.  Without a hint of mercy, he shuts the undesirable passenger and his chair into a barrel, which he proceeds to toss overboard.  The film ends with Deed quietly napping in the chair on the sandy shores of a tropical island.

The comedian's style in one-reel comedies had been frantic, but he managed to relax his style to a slight extent when he graduated to two-reel comedies.  One of his two-reel comedies was the 1915 film Fear of Zeppelins (originally released in Italy under the title La paura degli aeromobili nemici).  By this time, the German military was making extensive use of Zeppelins in bombing raids on the Allied Powers.  Deed, who saw nothing wrong with transforming widespread panic into riotous humor, devised a plot based on the Zeppelin threat.  Deed starts out in the film as a joyful groom, but his joy turns to fear when he comes across a poster warning of a potential Zeppelin attack.  While guests prepare for the wedding dinner, Deed gathers buckets of water to put out any fires that might be caused by the bombs.  Not sure that he has collected enough water in the buckets, he fills a bathtub with water and pushes the bathtub into the middle of the dining room.  The dinner is interrupted by a horde of delivery men who, on Deed's instructions, have brought sandbags to fortify the building against a bomb blast.  A member of the wedding party is upset by these disruptions and gets into a shoving match with Deed.  A melee erupts as others become caught up in the battle.  As people clobber each other with the sandbags, the sandbags split open and spill sand onto the banquet.

Later, when Deed carries his bride over the threshold of the wedding suite, he must maneuver around an obstacle course of water-filled buckets and basins to get her to the bed.  Before he has a chance to kiss his bride, he hears a cab driver honking his car horn, which he mistakes for an air raid alarm.  He panics believing that the city is now, for sure, under attack by Zeppelins.  He desperately persists to follow the instructions in a Zeppelin defense flier, but everything he does brings about further havoc for himself, his bride and his guests.

Deed's ability to refine his style was put to the test when, in 1916, he produced a 4-reel feature called Cretinetti and the Brazilian's riding boots (originally released in Italy under the title Cretinetti e gli stivali del Brasiliano).  The film is lost today, but production stills suggest that the film was punctuated by the comedian's usual frantic action.  The film provided Deed with a formidable adversary, Bartolomeo Pagano.

Cretinetti e gli stivali del Brasiliano (1916)

Pagano was a muscular action star who, at the time, was appearing as a Hercules-like hero, Maciste, in an immensely popular sword-and-sandal series.  It was, in a way, a circus routine - strongman versus clown.  Other films had shown that no good could come from trifling with Pagano.

 

 
Film historian Gino Moliterno reported in his book The A to Z of Italian Cinema that Cretinetti and the Brazilian's riding boots turned out to be "extremely popular" in Italy.  Here are additional images from the film.

 

 

 

 

Deed was overshadowed by the many comedians that followed him, but he was a funny and inventive filmmaker who inspired a number of popular comedians.  His direct influence can be found in the work of Buster Keaton and Larry Semon.  Any destructive bungler in films owes a debt to Deed.  It is to give Deed appropriate recognition that I have persistently written about him in books and articles.  Deed will be a prominent subject in my forthcoming book on the history of the manchild comedian, I Won't Grow Up!.

The photos featured in this article were taken from the digital online photo archive of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema.

Also, I have added strangely intriguing photos from Una strana avventura di Cretinetti (1911) to a previous article, "The Surreal and the Satirical: Early European Comedy Cinema."  Click here.

You can read more about Deed in Eighteen Comedians of Silent Film.

Let Us Die Together (Moriamo assieme!) (1910)

Can Such Things Be?: Marcel Perez's Wild and Surreal Antics Draw Criticism

Marcel Perez

Carl H. Claudy, a writer with The Moving Picture World, expressed open disgust of foreign comedies in a 1911 article, "Foibles of the Photoplay."  Claudy said that the films of André Deed showed no "standard or class."  He described the work of Marcel Perez as "slush."  He was particularly upset by a recent Perez comedy called Tweedledum's April Fool Joke (originally released in Italy as Pesce d'aprile di Robinet).  He accused the film of being "horse play of the childish order."  In the film, Perez plays a do-nothing son.  His father becomes so resentful of the young man that he cuts off his funds and kicks him out of the house.  Out of spite, the son places an ad in the local newspaper to notify the public that his father will provide food and shelter to vagrants.  This, of course, causes vagrants to swarm to his parents' home.  "So," wrote Claudy, "[paupers] ransack the house, tear it to pieces, [and] get gloriously drunk."  In the final moments of the film, Perez strolls into the home with a sign that reads "April Fool."  He is joined by his parents and the vagrants in a hearty laugh.  The film ends.

It undoubtedly rankled Claudy that the main character of the film was a "very devil of a fellow," but the critic expressed even greater dissatisfaction over the unbelievability of the plot.  Claudy, who had worked for newspapers, couldn't imagine an editor printing an ad that summoned the community's poor to a soiree at a private residence.  He also had to shake his head in disbelief to see the parents laughing hilariously after their home has been destroyed.

Marcel Perez in Tweedledum and Friscot Wager for a Wife (1913, Ambrosio)

Claudy asserted that, compared to foreign film producers, American film producers possessed humor and wit on "a far higher plane."  He offered as proof a recent Edison comedy called Department Store (1911), which featured a sympathetic character and a realistic situation.  He said that the audience "laughed, applauded and understood."  He maintained that the worst American comedies (specifically, Essanay's "Hank and Lank" series) were a "few degrees" better than the best foreign comedies.

Hank and Lank

A fair-minded person could not possibly consider Hank and Lank less devilish than Perez's waggish son.  Hank and Lank, as played by Victor Potel and Augustus Carney, are lazy tramps forever on the lookout for a scheme to cheat people out of money.  This is a still from They Dude Up Some (1910), in which the tramps pretend to fall down an open manhole so that they can collect payment for their scrapes and bruises.

In Blind Men (1910), the tramps pretend to be blind as a way to solicit public charity.  The series producer, G. M. Anderson, assured exhibitors from the start that the series would be wholesome fare.  He said, "[G]reat care will be exercised to keep the exaction of the story away from the slapstick variety of comedy.  Each story of the escapades of Hank and Lank will be legitimate in its way, and the producing of each will aim at giving point to the humor of a situation without resorting to horseplay or vulgarity."  So, maybe, the absence of violence and adultery is all that it takes to make a comedy wholesome.

Other American critics shared Claudy's view, reacting more kindly to the gentle, relatable work of Vitagraph's John Bunny than the wild and far out comedy that was imported from Europe.  It is hard to imagine that someone could be offended by one of Max Linder's boulevard farces.  But let's look at the opening scene from the 1910 comedy Max is Absent Minded (released in France as Max est distrait).  The scene introduces Max at breakfast.  Because he is preoccupied reading a newspaper, he pours coffee into his top hat.  It is a simple gag.  It is a gag that likely made viewers laugh.  But a Chicago-based critic for The Nickelodeon wrote, "Max is a bit disgusting in this film, where he pours coffee into his silk hat and then drinks it."  Presumably, it was the fact that Max drank the milk that pushed the critic over the edge.

A 1910 Gaumont comedy, A Dummy in Disguise, also offended a critic of The Nickelodeon.  The critic complained, "[T]he piece drops to the level of helter-skelter farce, with everybody hitting somebody else; and the final picture is one of those inexcusable bits of vulgarity, where an enlarged head is thrown upon the scene, the actor twitching and mouthing, and screwing up his face in an effort to be comical.  Why do the French, who are the very soul of wit, allow such disgusting horse-play?"

This could have largely been a case of national loyalty.  It would make sense in this context for a critic to favor homegrown product and hold resentment for foreign product that had dominated the market for years.  American film companies sporadically produced comedies during the early years of film production.  Essanay finally established a permanent comedy unit in 1907.  Other companies eventually followed their example - Biograph and Vitagraph in 1909, Edison in 1910, and Kalem in 1912.  Before 1909, the demand for comedy in the marketplace was mostly satisfied by European companies, including Gaumont, Williamson Kinematograph, Pathé Frères, George Albert Smith Films, Lumière, Robert W. Paul, Hepworth, Warwick, Lux, Itala, Aquila and Ambrosio.

Marcel Perez in Tweedledum on His First Bicycle (1910)

Claudy cannot be faulted for preferring likeable protagonists.  I, myself, get little pleasure from the comedy anti-heroes that populate films and television series today.  It can make a film more satisfying when a character responds to a dilemma with genuine emotion rather than mass destruction.  I also complain often about the overuse of CGI, which is often more important today than characters and story.  But silent film comedy was artful in its wild, fantastic and often destructive action.  American film comedy would have never risen to its great heights if it had never broken free of John Bunny's drawing room.

Helen Costello and John Bunny in Mr. Bolter's Niece (1913)

Another critic with The Moving Picture World half-heartedly defended Deed's films, which were known in America as the "Foolshead" comedies.  He wrote, "It may be that all sorts of faults can be pointed out in these 'Foolshead' films.  Their improbability and impossibility being the most important, but the average audience seems to accept them as they come.  The films are enjoyed and apparently the more absurd the performances the more the audience likes the pictures.  It would be difficult to say anything else.  It is scarcely right to commend these films, as they violate even common sense.  The fact remains, nevertheless, that they are popular and that the average audience will applaud them and ask for more."  In Foolshead Swallows a Crab (1909), Deed finds after he has eaten a crab that he is behaving much like a crab.  At one point, he walks backwards.  Is that believable?  Does it cause me to feel empathy?  No, but I can say that it makes me laugh.

André  Deed is tossed out of a hotel room in A Lodging for the Night (1913).

Department Store, which involved department store workers who come together to help a co-worker who has been robbed, may have been a touching film, but the same story could have easily been enacted on a theatre stage.  Deed and Perez provided impossible dreamlike visions that you could never see in a live theatre show.

Little did Claudy know that American comedy was soon to be coarsened by the Keystone studio, which would create a sensation the following year.  He would one day get to enjoy the tender and sympathetic comedy of Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, but he would first have to endure years of low comedy from Ford Sterling, Chester Conklin and Mack Swain.

Carl H. Claudy

Claudy later achieved success as a science fiction writer, often depicting wholesome American astronauts battling ugly space aliens.  If he expected his readers to suspend their disbelief about invisible beings from Venus prowling the Earth, then he could suspend disbelief about Perez's surreal antics.

The back cover for Claudy's The Mystery Men of Mars features, in bold letters, a forthright expression of disbelief - "Can Such Things Be?"  The European comedies of this early period were wonderfully creative and absurd.  Such things could exist through a writer's imagination, an actor's expressions, and a technical crew's ingenuity.  Welcome to the cinema of the fantastic.

You can read more about Deed, Perez and Linder in my book, Eighteen Comedians of Silent Film. 


Reference Sources

Claudy, C. H.  "Foibles of the Photoplay."  The Moving Picture World, Volume 8, Number 20, (May 20, 1911). 

The Moving Picture World (April 15, 1911) 

The Nickelodeon (October 1, 1910).  p. 200-201.