Aahana Swrup
‘Mr. Deeds,’ a comedy film, chronicles the adventures of its titular character, Longfellow Deeds, who finds himself in for a wild ride after the death of a wealthy relative renders him the heir to a billion-dollar company. Hailing from a small town, Deeds’ method of doing business in New York varies significantly from the norm. However, Chuck Cedar, Deeds’ deceased uncle’s business partner, doesn’t plan on allowing the young man to helm the company as he attempts to manipulate Deeds into selling him his shares.
Even so, Chuck’s villainy stops at manipulating company shares as he ignores the large fortune the other man inherits, making no play to steal it from under him as well. Nevertheless, by the end, Deed ends up parting with the fortune himself, signing a large cheque for the charity United Negro College Fund. Thus, due to its momentary reference in the comedy film, curiosity is bound to arise about the reality of such a charity fund. SPOILERS AHEAD!
United Negro College Fund: A Real Nonprofit Organization
Most of the narrative elements or one-off gags in ‘Mr. Deeds’ are fictional, created solely to serve the comedy film. Therefore, places like Mandrake Falls —the protagonist’s hometown—or his love interest Babe Bennett’s new program Inside Access are rendered fictional additions to the storyline that contribute to the overarching world-building. However, the United Negro College Fund, or UNCF, is an exception to the same, as it’s an actual charity nonprofit organization that fans can find in real life.
The UNCF charity momentarily appears in the film after Deeds decides to leave New York and return to his hometown on the heels of his latest heartbreak. By then, the city had immeasurably crushed his spirit, compelling him to leave all memories of it behind, including the 40 billion dollars he inherited from his uncle Preston Blake’s estate. As a result, Deeds off-handedly asks Chuck and his friend, Cecil Anderson, for a random charity that he can donate the money to, leading him to write a 40 billion dollar cheque to the United Negro College Fund.
In real life, the United Negro College Fund has been around for about seven decades. The organization works towards providing equal access to college education to under-represented students and strives to increase the number of African American college graduates. Therefore, the film’s equipment of the charity as the throwaway reference to tie up Deeds’ inheritance plotline remains a convenient way to maintain the character’s perpetual Nice Guy persona.
However, while the charity itself is real, the on-screen donation made to it in ‘Mr. Deeds’ is a work of fiction. Through the years, UNCF has raised more than 5 billion dollars, yet none of it has anything to do with the film. In fact, a good few years after the film’s release, a theory emerged that its fictionalized 40 billion donation to the UNCF may have briefly had a negative effect on the reality of the donations made to the charity. Nevertheless, the theory could never be proven since various other socio-economic factors played a part in the decline of donations made to charities in the early 2000s.
Read More: Mr. Deeds: Is Deeds’ Pizza a Real Place?
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