Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee was a Hong Kong and American martial artist, actor, filmmaker, and philosopher. He was born Lee Jun Fan on November 27, 1940 in San Francisco, California, in both the hour and year of the Dragon. His father Lee Hoi Chuen, a Hong Kong opera singer, moved with his wife, Grace Ho, and three children to the United States in 1939. Hoi Chuen's fourth child was born while he was on tour in San Francisco.

Hoi chuen was a famous Cantonese opera star. As a result, the junior Lee was introduced to the world of cinema at a very young age and appeared in several films as a child. Lee had his first role as a baby who was carried onto the stage in the film Golden Gate Girl.

Lee received the name "Bruce" from a nurse at his birthing hospital, and his family never used the name during his preschool years.

As a 9year old, he would co-star with his father in The Kid in 1950, which was based on a comic book character and was his first leading role. By the time he was 18, he had appeared in 20 films.

 

"Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful. Reject what is useless. Add what is essentially your own"

 

As a teenager, he was taunted by British students for his Chinese background and later joined a street gang. In 1953, he began to hone his passions into a discipline, studying kung fu under the tutelage of Master Yip Man. By the end of the decade, Lee moved back to the U.S. to live with family friends outside Seattle, Washington, initially taking up work as a dance instructor.

 

 

Bruce, Linda, Brandon, Shannon

Lee finished high school in Edison, Washington, and subsequently enrolled as a philosophy major at the University of Washington. He also got a job teaching the Wing Chun style of martial arts that he had learned in Hong Kong to his fellow students and others. Through his teaching, Lee met Linda Emery whom he married in 1964.

Out of college in early 1964 and moved to Oakland to live with James Yimm Lee. James was 20 years senior to Bruce Lee and a well known Chinese martial artist in the area. Together they founded the second Jun Fan martial arts studio in Oakland. James was also responsible for introducing Bruce Lee to Ed Parker, an American martial artist. At the invitation of Parker, Lee appeared in the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships and performed repetitions of two-finger push-ups (using the thumb and the index finger of one hand) with feet at approximately shoulder-width apart. In the same Long Beach event he also performed the "one-inch punch". Lee stood upright, his right foot forward with knees bent slightly, in front of a standing, stationary partner. Lee's right arm was partly extended and his right fist approximately one inch (2.5 cm) away from the partner's chest. Without retracting his right arm, Lee then forcibly delivered the punch to volunteer Bob Baker while largely maintaining his posture, sending Baker backwards and falling into a chair said to be placed behind Baker to prevent injury, though Baker's momentum soon caused him to fall to the floor.

 

Bruce Lee’s philosophies have inspired millions of people the world over.

Lee gained a measure of celebrity with his role in the television series The Green Hornet, which aired in 26 episodes from 1966 - 67. In the show which was based on a 1930s radio program, the wiry Lee displayed his acrobatic and theatrical fighting style as the Hornet's sidekick, Kato. He went on to make guest appearances in such TV shows as Ironside and Longstreet, while a notable film role came in 1969's Marlowe, starring James Garner as the notable detective created by Raymond Chandler. (The screenwriter for the film, Stirling Silliphant, was one of Lee's martial arts students. Other Lee students included James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Garner himself.)

"Using no way as way; having no limitation as limitation"

 

Lee, who was devoted to a variety of workouts and physical training activities, suffered a major back injury that he gradually recovered from, taking time for self-care and writing. He also came up with the idea that became the basis for the Buddhist monk TV series Kung Fu; however, David Carradine would get the starring role initially slated for Lee due to the belief that an Asian actor wouldn't pull in audiences as the lead. Confronted with a dearth of meaty roles and the prevalence of stereotypes regarding Asian performers, Lee left Los Angeles for Hong Kong in the summer of 1971.

The Big Boss, aka Fists of Fury in the U.S., was released in 1971 and featured Lee as the factory worker hero who has sworn off fighting yet enters combat to confront a murderous drug smuggling operation. Combining his smooth Jeet Kune Do athleticism with the high-energy theatrics of his performance in The Green Hornet, Lee was the charismatic center of the film, which set new box office records in Hong Kong.

He soon followed up with Fist of Fury (1972), which broke the box office records set previously by The Big Boss. Having finished his initial 2year contract, Lee negotiated a new deal with Golden Harvest. Lee later formed his own company, Concord Production Inc with Chow. For his third film Way of the Dragon (1972), he was given complete control of the film's production as the writer, director, star, and choreographer of the fight scenes.

On July 20, 1973, just one month before the premiere of Enter the Dragon, Lee died in Hong Kong, China, at the age of 32. The official cause of his sudden and utterly unexpected death was a brain edema, found in an autopsy to have been caused by a strange reaction to a prescription painkiller he was reportedly taking for a back injury. Controversy surrounded Lee's death from the beginning, as some claimed he had been murdered. There was also the belief that he might have been cursed, a conclusion driven by Lee's obsession with his own early death.

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