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| ...film about 'Red Elvis' | | By Ray Furlong | | BBC correspondent in Berlin | | He was an American rock star adored by millions of people worldwide, but you may have never heard of him. | | Dean Reed made his name not in Hollywood or at Woodstock, but in East Germany and the Soviet Union. |
| An idealist who defected to the Communist bloc in the 1970s, he died under mysterious circumstances in 1986. | | Now Tom Hanks is going to make a film about him. | | "Hanks said he'd make a fair movie. I'm curious to see it," says Victor Grassmann, another American defector who was Reed's interpreter. | | "He was very sincere in his views. He was not, as they say he was, misused by the GDR. He had his own opinions and he expressed them." | | Massive hit | | With boyish good looks and American glamour, Reed was a breath of fresh air in the stultified world of the Communist bloc. | | His left-wing views made him the darling of the party bosses. | | | | He was popular because he was playing Elvis and Beatles songs when no-one else was playing that stuff in the East | | Stefan Ernsting, | | biographer | | He acquired his ideals after witnessing poverty while touring in Latin America, and first came to East Germany to present a film about the workers' movement in Chile. | | "I'd met lots of left-wing Americans, being one myself," says Grassmann, "but not such a cowboy from Colorado and rock'n'roll-type singer." | | Reed soon became a massive hit across the Eastern Bloc, particularly in the then Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. | | As well as singing, he also wrote screenplays, directing and starring in the films. | | "He was popular because he was playing Elvis and Beatles songs when no-one else was playing that stuff in the East," says Stefan Ernsting, who has written a biography of Reed. | | "But in the West, his material was outdated by the 1970s. He wouldn't have had a chance in the US." | | Hidden note | | It was the growing realisation of this, coupled with marital problems, that led Reed to drown himself in a lake near Berlin in 1986. | | The Communists, fearing a huge Cold War propaganda embarrassment, said it was accidental death. |
| Reed's suicide note was found scrawled in German on the back of a screenplay in his car, but it remained hidden until the fall of the Berlin Wall. | | "Erich Honecker, the East German leader, made the decision personally, that the letter should disappear forever in an Interior Ministry safe," says Eberhard Fensch, the GDR's propaganda chief. | | Fensch was also the man the letter was addressed to. | | "The reason was to spare his wife's feelings. There was no other reason. The letter even contained a greeting to Erich Honecker. Why would we cover that up?" | | 'Never heard of him' | | The letter recently resurfaced. | | Published by the German tabloid Bild, it accused his wife Renate of pushing him to suicide. | | But the paradox of Reed is that he continues to fascinate some people, while being totally unheard of for the majority. | | "Dean Reed, who's that? I've heard of Lou Reed," said a commuter at Berlin's Friedrichstrasse railway station, once a crossing point between East and West. | | "Never heard of him," added another bemused passer-by. | | Out of 10 people we asked, only two had any idea who he was. | | Perhaps Tom Hanks will change this. | | But for now, Reed's fate is a tale of idealism, disappointment and suicide that has become a forgotten footnote of the Cold War. |
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