Deed, Andre

(1879-1938)

   Actor, writer, director. Following an early career as a stage performer and sometime actor in the films of Georges Melies, Deed (whose real name was Andre Chapuis or De Chapais) had become one of the Pathe studios' greatest stars with his creation of the popular comic character Boireau. Still at the peak of his fame, Deed was lured to Turin by a lucrative contract from Giovanni Pastrone, head of Itala Film. At Itala, Deed created the even more popular character of Cretinetti, the overwhelming success of which did much to solidify Itala's financial position (and thus help it, only a few years later, to finance Cabiria).

   Deed assembled an energetic team around him that included actors Alberto Collo, Emilio Ghione, and Valentina Frascaroli (whom he later married), and was able to produce a film a week for over two years, films that were so popular they were bought sight unseen by distributors throughout Europe and America. In 1912 Deed broke his contract with Itala and returned to Paris to work for Pathe again but in 1914 was induced by legal threat to return to Turin, where he continued to make feature-length Cretinetti films, which included La paura degli aeromobili nemici (The Fear of the Enemy Airplanes, 1915) and the extremely popular Cretinetti e gli stivali del brasiliano (Foolshead and the Brazilian Boots, 1916). Following another brief period in France he returned in 1919 to Italy, where, after several other Cretinetti films, he made L'uomo meccanico (The Mechanical Man, 1922), a much more ominous and curious mixture of comedy, crime, and science fiction that, with its two dueling robots, appears to anticipate certain elements of Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). Deed returned to Paris in 1923 and thereafter played small parts in a number of otherwise unremarkable films. With the coming of sound he retired completely from the film industry, preferring to work as a night watchman at the Pathe studios.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira