Berlin -A documentary film titled The Red Elvis dealing with the life of Denver-born crooner Dean Reed, who became the darling of pop fans from East Berlin to the Urals during the communist era, but later drowned in mysterious circumstances, is currently showing in German movie houses. Directed by Berlin filmmaker Leopold Gruen, it recounts the life of thrice-married Reed, who spent almost 20 years behind the Iron Curtain and was called the "Johnny Cash of Communism" in the l970s and '80s, but gained little recognition in the West.
Reed defected via South America to Eastern Europe in the 1960s, where he was soon one of its biggest celebrities -plucking his guitar and singing ballads and country-style protest songs - but his life ended dramatically in June 1986 when his body was fished out of an East Berlin lake.
He apparently drowned himself in a moment of despair.
His sudden death three years before the fall of communism was one of the great mysteries of the Cold War. There were theories that the singer had become disillusioned with life in the East and that the East German "Stasi" secret police had killed him to prevent him from returning to America.
But, as Gruen discreetly makes clear, Reed was not a victim of the Stasi. At the time of his death, he was suffering from depression and was in bitter conflict with his wife, East German actress Renate Blume.
In an emotional suicide letter sent to Erich Honecker, East Germany's head of state in 1986, Reed claimed he'd wanted to live with Renate Blume until the end of their days, but she'd allegedly made his life a torment, yelling at him and saying he was a "bad American showman."
For years Reed's letter to Honecker was hushed up by the communist authorities, who were hugely embarrassed by the death of their "Red Square Elvis."
Earlier, during happier times in East Germany, this Deutsche Presse-Agentur
