About Me
FACTS
Bruce Lee (Traditional Chinese: ???; Simplified Chinese: ???; Pinyin: L,, Xi,,olóng; Cantonese Yale: Léih SÃulùhng; November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973) was an American-born martial artist, philosopher, instructor, and martial arts actor widely regarded as the most influential martial artist of the 20th century. He is the father of deceased actor Brandon Lee and actress Shannon Lee.
Lee was born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong. His Hong Kong-produced and Hollywood-produced films elevated the traditional Hong Kong martial arts film to a new level of popularity and acclaim, and sparked the first major surge of interest in Chinese martial arts in the West. The direction and tone of his films changed and influenced martial arts and martial arts films in Hong Kong and the rest of the world. Lee became an iconic figure particularly to Chinese, as he portrayed Chinese national pride and Chinese nationalism in his movies. Many see Lee as a model blueprint for acquiring a strong and efficient body and the highest possible level of physical fitness, as well as developing a mastery of martial arts and hand to hand combat skills. First, it's technique, power, and speed.
EARLY LIFE
Bruce Lee was born in the hour of the dragon, 6-8 a.m., in the year of the Dragon, November 27, 1940 at the Jackson Street Hospital in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the United States. His father, Lee Hoi-Chuen (???), was Chinese, and his Catholic mother, Grace (???), had a half German and half Chinese father and a Chinese mother. Lee's parents returned to Hong Kong with the newborn Lee when he was three months old. He was a citizen of the United States and did not hold any other citizenships.
EDUCATOIN AND FAMILY
At age 12, Lee entered Chaboya Middle School a secondary school. Then, he attended St Francis Xavier's College. In 1959, at the age of 18, Lee got into a fight and had badly beaten a feared Triad gang member's son. His father became concerned about young Bruce's safety, and as a result, he and his wife decided to send Bruce to the United States to live with an old friend of his father's. All he had was $100 in his pocket with the titles of 1958 Boxing Champion and the Crown Colony Cha Cha Champion of Hong Kong. After living in San Francisco, he moved to Seattle to work for Ruby Chow, another friend of his father's. In 1959, Lee completed his high school education in Seattle and received his diploma from Edison Technical School. He enrolled at the University of Washington as a drama major and took some philosophy classes. It was at the University of Washington that he met his future wife Linda Emery, whom he would marry in 1964. He had two children with Linda, Brandon Lee (1965-1993) and Shannon Lee (1969-). Brandon, who would also become an actor like his father, died in an accident during the filming of The Crow in 1993. Shannon Lee also became an actress and appeared in some low-budget films since the mid 1990s but has since quit acting.
NAMES
Lee's Cantonese given name, Jun Fan (??; Mandarin Pinyin: Zhènfán), literally means "invigorate San Francisco" (???). At his birth, he additionally was given the English name of "Bruce" by a Dr. Mary Glover. It is the Chinese custom to bestow a Western name as well as a Chinese name on a child. Though Mrs. Lee had not initially planned on an English name for the child, she deemed it appropriate and would concur with Dr. Glover's addition. Interestingly, the name "Bruce" was never used within his family until Bruce Lee enrolled in La Salle College (a Hong Kong high school) at the age of 12, and again at another high school (St. Francis Xavier's College in Kowloon), where Lee would come to represent the boxing team in inter-school events.
Lee initially had the birth name Li Yuen Kam(???); Mandarin Pinyin: L,, Xuà nj,,n) given to him by his mother, as at the time Lee's father was away on a Chinese opera tour. This name would later be abandoned because of a conflict with the name of Bruce Lee's grandfather, causing him to be renamed Jun Fan upon his father's return. Also of note is that Bruce Lee was given a feminine name, Sai Fung (??, literally "small phoenix"), which was used throughout his early childhood in keeping with a Chinese custom that is traditionally thought to hide the child away from evil spirits.
Lee's screen names were respectively Lee Siu Lung (in Cantonese), and Li Xiao Long (in Mandarin) (???; Cantonese pengyam: Ley5 Siu² Long4; Mandarin Pinyin: L,, Xi,,olóng) which literally translate to "Lee the Little Dragon" in English. These names were first used by director ??? of the 1950 Cantonese movie ??? in which Lee would perform. It is possible that the name "Lee Little Dragon" was based on his childhood name of "small dragon", as in Chinese tradition the Chinese dragon and phoenix come in pairs to represent the male and female genders, respectively. The more likely explanation however is that he came to be called "Little Dragon" because according to the Chinese zodiac, Bruce Lee was born in the Year of the Dragon.
ACTING CAREER
Lee's father Lee Hoi-Chuen was a famous Cantonese Opera star. Through his father, he was introduced into films at a very young age and appeared in several short black-and-white films as a child. Lee had his first role when he was a mere baby that was carried onto the stage. By the time he was 18, he had appeared in twenty films.
While in the United States from 1958-1964, Lee abandoned thoughts of a film career in favor of the martial arts. Fate would intervene, however, after Lee's high-profile martial arts demonstration at the 1964 Long Beach Karate Tournament, seen by some of the nation's most proficient martial artists and, as fate would have it, by the hairdresser of Batman producer William Dozier. Dozier invited Lee for an audition, where the martial artist so impressed the producers with his lightning-fast moves that he earned the role of Kato alongside Van Williams in the TV series The Green Hornet. The show lasted just one season, from 1966 to 1967. Lee would also play Kato in three episodes of the series Batman, produced by the same company as The Green Hornet. This was followed by guest appearances in a host of television series, including Ironside (1967) and Here Come the Brides (1969).
In 1969 Lee made his first major film appearance in Marlowe which was based on one of Raymond Chandler's novels. In the film Lee's henchman character is hired to intimidate private detective Philip Marlowe (played by James Garner) by smashing up his office with leaping kicks and flashing punches, only to later accidentally jump off a tall building while trying to kick Marlowe off. In 1971 Lee appeared in four episodes of the television series Longstreet as the martial arts instructor of the title character Mike Longstreet (played by James Franciscus). Bruce would later pitch a television series of his own tentatively titled The Warrior. Allegedly, Lee's concept was retooled and renamed Kung Fu, but if true, Warner Bros. gave Lee no credit. The role of the Shaolin monk in the Wild West, known to have been coveted by Bruce, was awarded to non-martial artist David Carradine purportedly because of the studio's belief that a Chinese leading man would not be embraced by the American public.
Not happy with his supportive roles in the U.S., Lee returned to Hong Kong and was offered a film contract by legendary director Raymond Chow and his production company Golden Harvest. Lee played his first leading role in The Big Boss (1971) which proved a smashing box office success across Asia and catapulted him to stardom. He soon followed up his success with two more huge box office successes: Fist of Fury (1972) and Way of the Dragon (1972). For Way of the Dragon he took complete control over the film's production as the writer, director, star as well as choreographer of the fight scenes. In 1964 at a demonstration in Long Beach, California, Lee had met karate champion Chuck Norris. In Way of the Dragon Lee introduced Chuck Norris to moviegoers as his opponent in the final death fight at the colosseum in Rome, today considered one of Lee's most legendary fight scenes.
In 1973 Lee starred in the lead role in Enter the Dragon (1973), his first film to be produced jointly by Golden Harvest and Warner Bros. This film would shoot Lee to fame in the U.S. and Europe but, tragically, only a few months after the film's completion and three weeks before its release, the supremely fit Lee mysteriously died. Enter the Dragon would go on to become one of the year's highest grossing films and cemented Lee as a martial arts legend. It was made for US$850,000 in 1973 (equivalent to $3.74 million adjusted for inflation as if 2005). To date, Enter the Dragon has grossed over $200 million worldwide. The movie sparked a brief fad in the martial-arts epitomized in songs like Kung Fu Fighting and TV shows like Kung Fu.
Robert Clouse, the director of Enter the Dragon attempted to finish Lee's incomplete film Game of Death which Lee was to also write and direct. Lee had shot over forty minutes of footage for Game of Death before shooting was stopped to allow him to work on Enter the Dragon. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - a student of Bruce Lee - also appeared in the film, which culminates in Lee's character, Billy Lo (clad in the now-famous yellow track suit) taking on the seven foot two inch basketball player in a climactic fight scene. Unfortunately, Lee died before he resumed filming Game of Death. In a controversial move, Robert Clouse finished the film using a Bruce Lee look-alike and archive footage of Lee from his other films and released it in 1978 with a new storyline and cast. However the cobbled-together film contained only 15 minutes of actual footage of Lee while the rest had Lee's lookalike Tai Chung Kim and Yuen Biao as a stunt doubles. The unused footage Lee had filmed was recovered 22 years later and included in the Bruce Lee documentary Bruce Lee: A Warrior's Journey.
MARTIAL ARTS TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT
Bruce Lee's first introduction to martial arts was through his father, Lee Hoi Cheun. He learned the fundamentals of Wu style Tai Ji from his father. Lee's sifu, Wing Chun master Yip Man, was also a colleague and friend of Hong Kong's Wu family Tai Ji teacher Wu Tai-Ji.
Lee trained in Wing Chun Gung Fu from age 13-18 under Hong Kong Wing Chun Sifu Yip Man. Lee was introduced to Yip Man in early 1954 by William Cheung, then a live-in student of Yip Man. Like most Chinese martial arts schools at that time, Sifu Yip Man's classes were often taught by the highest ranking students. One of the highest ranking students under Yip Man at the time was Wong Shun-Leung. Wong is thought to have had the largest influence on Bruce's training. Yip Man trained Lee privately after some students refused to train with Lee due to his ancestry.Bruce Lee's first introduction to martial arts was through his father, Lee Hoi Cheun. He learned the fundamentals of Wu style Tai Ji from his father. Lee's sifu, Wing Chun master Yip Man, was also a colleague and friend of Hong Kong's Wu family Tai Ji teacher Wu Tai-Ji.
Lee trained in Wing Chun Gung Fu from age 13-18 under Hong Kong Wing Chun Sifu Yip Man. Lee was introduced to Yip Man in early 1954 by William Cheung, then a live-in student of Yip Man. Like most Chinese martial arts schools at that time, Sifu Yip Man's classes were often taught by the highest ranking students. One of the highest ranking students under Yip Man at the time was Wong Shun-Leung. Wong is thought to have had the largest influence on Bruce's training. Yip Man trained Lee privately after some students refused to train with Lee due to his ancestry.Bruce Lee's first introduction to martial arts was through his father, Lee Hoi Cheun. He learned the fundamentals of Wu style Tai Ji from his father. Lee's sifu, Wing Chun master Yip Man, was also a colleague and friend of Hong Kong's Wu family Tai Ji teacher Wu Tai-Ji.
Lee trained in Wing Chun Gung Fu from age 13-18 under Hong Kong Wing Chun Sifu Yip Man. Lee was introduced to Yip Man in early 1954 by William Cheung, then a live-in student of Yip Man. Like most Chinese martial arts schools at that time, Sifu Yip Man's classes were often taught by the highest ranking students. One of the highest ranking students under Yip Man at the time was Wong Shun-Leung. Wong is thought to have had the largest influence on Bruce's training. Yip Man trained Lee privately after some students refused to train with Lee due to his ancestry.
Bruce was also trained in Western boxing and won the 1958 Boxing Championship match against 3-time champion Gary Elms by knockout in the 3rd round. Before arriving to the finals against Elms, Lee had knocked out 3 straight boxers in the first round. In addition, Bruce learned western fencing techniques from his brother Peter Lee, who was a champion fencer at the time. This multi-faceted exposure to different fighting arts would later play an influence in the creation of the eclectic martial art Jeet Kune Do.
Bruce was also trained in Western boxing and won the 1958 Boxing Championship match against 3-time champion Gary Elms by knockout in the 3rd round. Before arriving to the finals against Elms, Lee had knocked out 3 straight boxers in the first round. In addition, Bruce learned western fencing techniques from his brother Peter Lee, who was a champion fencer at the time. This multi-faceted exposure to different fighting arts would later play an influence in the creation of the eclectic martial art Jeet Kune Do.
Bruce was also trained in Western boxing and won the 1958 Boxing Championship match against 3-time champion Gary Elms by knockout in the 3rd round. Before arriving to the finals against Elms, Lee had knocked out 3 straight boxers in the first round. In addition, Bruce learned western fencing techniques from his brother Peter Lee, who was a champion fencer at the time. This multi-faceted exposure to different fighting arts would later play an influence in the creation of the eclectic martial art Jeet Kune Do.
COLLAPS ON MAY 10, 1973
Bruce Lee was doing dubbing work in Hong Kong on May 10, 1973, for Enter the Dragon at Golden Harvest studios. He collapsed in the bathroom and was rushed to the Hong Kong Baptist Hospital. Doctors there that day who treated him said he almost died of cerebral edema.
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