The strong and sinewy Bruce Lee is known as the greatest icon of martial arts cinema, and is often credited with taking the martial arts film genre into mainstream Western cinema during the 1960s and 1970s. He remained actively involved in filming movies up until just months before his unusual death on July 20, 1973.
Bruce Lee was born Lee Jun Fan in Jackson Street Hospital in San Francisco’s Chinatown on November 27, 1940. Lee moved with his parents (Lee Hoi Chen and Grace Ho) and three siblings to Hong Kong when he was three months old.
When Lee was thirteen years old he began to study gung fu under the direction of Master Yip Man, a teacher of the Wing Chun style of gung fu. Lee studied with Master Yip Man for five years.
During high school Lee participated in an interschool boxing championship where no kicking was allowed and he won against an English student. Lee also did a lot of dancing during his teen years and had memorized and perfected 108 cha-cha steps. In 1958 he won the Hong Kong Cha-Cha Championship.
In April 1959 Lee’s parents sent him overseas back to the to find his future, even though he had not officially graduated high school due to poor grades. He soon got his first job as a dance instructor in San Francisco . But Lee had bigger dreams and moved to Seattle where he worked in a restaurant and studied at Edison Technical School to get his high school equivalency diploma. Then he went on to study at the University of Washington with a major in philosophy.
In 1963 Bruce and some university friends opened a gung fu school. One of his first students was Linda Emery whom he married a year later. The couple moved from Seattle to Oakland where Lee opened his second marital arts school.
By this time Lee’s reputation as a spectacular gung fu artist was begging to become known. Word of his skills made it to producer William Dozier through his hairstylist, Jay Sebring. In 1966 Lee starred in the movie The Green Hornet with Van Williams, and was paid the generous sum (for the time) of $313 a week. His movements were so fast in the fight scenes that he had to slow down his movements so that the cameras could capture the action.
In 1970 a serious injury to one of his nerves, caused by lifting heavy weights without warming up, forced him to become bed-ridden for six months. With a lot of hard work and determination, Lee was good enough physical condition about a year later to act in a few low-budget martial arts films. In July 1971 he landed a role in the Hong Kong movie The Big Boss. The movie grossed more than $3.5 million in the first three weeks, and was later released in the as Fists of Fury.
In 1972 Lee starred in his third film, released as The Way of the Dragon in Hong Kong, and as The Return of the Dragon in the States, which he also wrote and directed. The movie was hugely successful. Sadly, only a year later, and shortly after filming his movie Enter the Dragon, Lee died of an unexplained cerebral edema (swelling of the brain) while in Hong Kong.
For his funeral in Hong Kong five days later on July 25, 1973, he was dressed in the same outfit he wore in Enter the Dragon. The movie was released on August 24, 1973, and became a box-office hit.
The story of Bruce Lee’s life and mysterious death was released in 1993, Dragon:The Bruce Lee Story. Lee was played by Jason Scott Lee (no relation) and Linda Lee was played by Lauren Holly.
Lee had two children: son Brandon Lee born on February 1, 1965, and daughter Shannon Emery Lee born on April 19, 1969. Tragically his son, also an actor and martial artist, was killed in a freak accident on the set of the 1994 thriller, The Crow.
YUDDY
