Follow up question if it is allowed.

Was the introduction of this character the cause of any friction in the public at the time?

Comment 1/3

Not exactly analogous, but there were fairly positive depictions of American and British individuals in the Soviet WWII movies filmed during and shortly after the war (and vice versa).

As for the more analogous examples, it is no accident that we find most of them in sci-fi. Планета Бурь (informally known as the "Planet of Storms" in the English speaking world) was released in 1961 and featured a joint Soviet-American space mission.

The better known Solaris (released in 1972 and based on a Polish novel) features a protagonist with the name of Kris Kelvin, though his actual nationality is not mentioned (or perhaps there are no more nation states in the future, the film doesn't specify).

Two immediate Soviet films I can think of are Mr. West and Solo Voyage. Mr. West is a silent era film where the American main character travels to the RSFR in the early 1920s. He is portrayed as a typical, if investigative, capitalist. He is abducted by White bandits and after he is rescued by the Red Army he tells his wife to hang Lenin's picture in his study. On the opposite side of Soviet film is Solo Voyage, the "Soviet Rambo". The villans are rogue CIA and Vietnam vets who massacred a village. They are trying to increase Cold War tensions by sinking an American passenger liner during a Soviet naval exercise so their defense industry stock can rise (frighteningly accurate). There is a main character, an American diver and his girlfriend. After his girlfriend is killed by the rogue American forces, he teams up with a Soviet Naval infantry team to stop the rogue Americans from launching a nuke. He is portrayed very sympathetically. Conversely, I'm having trouble thinking of a Soviet film where there is a super evil American just because he is evil (the opposite is common in American films). While Soviet films where Americans are the antagonists aren't rare, they're always given a clear motivation and either wanting the best for capitalism/America, or manipulated by the system. The ambiguously evil villian is pretty unheard of outside of Nazis. As opposed to Hollywood where it's the norm.

Edited for typos, typing this on a phone sorry.