ABSTRACT
Even to contemporaries, John Reed seemed larger than life. Good-looking and dashing, he was a romantic figure whose lengthy American pedigree showed that radicalism was not a foreign import but could be the product of conditions within the United States. None of his friends, many of them among the nation's cultural elite, would have been surprised that Reed's thirty-three hectic years would, more than half a century after his death, become the source for three motion pictures, produced in three different countries—the American multiple Academy Award winner Reds (1982); the six-hour Soviet epic Red Bells (1981); and the Mexican drama Reed— Insurgent Mexico (1970).
