Perhaps the biggest martial arts icon of them all, Bruce Lee is the man who would revolutionise ‘kung fu’ in the hearts and minds of not just practitioners of the art, but also the mainstream crowds who knew very little of the martial arts and its philosophy.

Through the medium of film and television, Bruce Lee can be credited for single handedly popularising the term ‘kung fu’ and is still, well over three decades after his death, the most recognisable figure in the world of martial arts. You don’t have to be an aficionado to enjoy the sheer vibrancy and vitality of his films, or a complete novice to understand his approach to martial science and culture. To the uninitiated, Bruce Lee remains solely as an iconic cinematic figure in cult movie reference books as the ice cool, humble kung fu hero of films like Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon, and like James Dean, a doomed victim of celebrity who’s life was abruptly cut short aged 32 after only appearing in four and a half films.

As a martial artist, Lee would invent his own system, Jeet Kune Do, as an attack on the ‘classical mess’ of the traditional systems which had gone before in a controversial approach which saw Lee adapt and diversify techniques and routines from a number of different martial arts. Many would rebuke his claims of ‘using no way as way’ during his lifetime, but since his passing, the respect for his philosophical approach to the arts has increased abundantly through the publication of his notebooks and diaries and many latter day martial arts practitioners and movie stars still credit him as being a huge inspiration on their work.

Yet, perhaps his biggest credit was achieving his ambition of redefining the image of the Chinese in the eyes of Westerners, who’s views of the Orient were restricted to crude caricatures and outdated stereotypes, introducing the West to a new brand of Chinese hero who used his hands and feet to poetically express and protect himself. Yet in doing so, he may have also conversely created a brand of stereotypes all of his own.

Lee was born Lee Jun-fan in San Francisco 1940 in the year of the Dragon while his father, Lee Hoi-chuen, was performing in a traveling Peking Opera troupe. Lee was raised in Hong Kong where he followed in his father’s footsteps into the world of theatre and performed in many local short film productions. By the age of 18, Lee had appeared in over 20 films.

Often cast as the unruly child or juvenile delinquent, these early black and white films of Lee as a child remarkably display all the cinematic traits he would later define as his own: a sense of pride and honesty, his self assured cockiness and willingness to fight - even mannerisms and gestures would later be adapted. Just how close to the real Bruce Lee these inherent traits are is open for debate, but Lee was widely regarded as a troubled youth, brawling with local hoodlums and often being reported to the police. It is alleged that his father sent him to America at the age of 18 to avoid incarceration following clashes with the wealthy son of a Triad leader, but it is also true that Lee needed to return to the States to renew his work visa.

The world is full of people who are determined to be somebody or give trouble. They want to get ahead to stand out. Such ambition has no use for a man of Tao, who rejects all forms of self asertiveness and competition. - Bruce Lee

With only $100 to his name, Lee lived with a friend of his father’s in San Francisco and moved to Seattle to work in a Chinese restaurant and study philosophy at the University of Washington, which is where he would meet his wife Linda who married in 1964. Throughout this time, Lee continued to study the martial arts in accordance to the principals that he had learnt from his Wing Chun teacher in Hong Kong, Yip Man. A former Cha Cha champion of Hong Kong, Lee adopted the graceful movements of Chinese kung fu into his rigorous training regimes, which included western boxing, Northern Shaolin legwork and weaponry. He began teaching students of all ages and cultures upon arrival in Seattle in 1958, teaching his own variant on the principles of Wing Chun which he called ‘Jun Fan Gung Fu’. In 1964 and 1967, he would make landmark appearances at the International Karate Championships at Long Beach, California, where he publicly remonstrated his fighting principals alongside demonstrations of extraordinary strength (with two-finger press ups) and skill (with the iconic ‘one inch punch’).

Lee’s ‘style of no style,’ (which would later develop into Jeet Kune Do or ‘the way of the intercepting fist’) originated in 1965 following his involvement in a fight which he claimed “took too long”. Frustrated at the way certain styles struggled to adapt to the free-for-all etiquette of real life street fighting, Lee started to lift ideas from a variety of sources to emphasise size, strength and focus. To this end, he incorporated weight training, stretching routines, and full contact sparring. Lee would later denounce his own theories on Jeet Kune Do following its eventual dependency on set routines and rudiments, which acted in contrast to the initial philosophy behind its creation. Since his death, the art has been taught widely as ‘Bruce Lee’s signature style’, but this was never Lee’s intention.

While in Hollywood, Lee landed the role of Kato in the TV series The Green Hornet, a spin-off from the makers of Batman, but the series would only last a single season before being taken off air. He summarily became a master to the stars, working as fight coordinator on movies like The Wrecking Crew with Dean Martin, and appearing as a bit part player in TV shows like Longstreet and movies, including Marlowe starring James Garner. His A-list of celebrity students included James Coburn, basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Steve McQueen.

Following his refusal from Warner Brothers on a concept for his own TV show, who claimed that Lee looked “too Chinese” for the lead role (the concept would later be developed into the hit show Kung Fu, starring David Carradine), a frustrated Bruce Lee moved his wife and family (including young son Brandon Lee and daughter Shannon Lee) back to Hong Kong where he was quickly signed up by producer Raymond Chow at Golden Harvest studios and made a succession of low budget, but highly successful, kung fu films. Lee’s unique, visceral choreography breathed new life into the stale ‘chop socky’ genre in Hong Kong and championed a new brand of patriotic Chinese film hero. In The Big Boss, he fought for workers rights against bullying Thai management at an ice factory; in Fist of Fury, Lee played a doomed Chinese patriot fighting the Japanese during the occupation of Shanghai; and in his directing debut, The Way of the Dragon, Lee defends his Chinese cousins against unscrupulous Italian Mafioso.

In 1973, and halfway through the production of his fourth film for Golden Harvest (entitled Game of Death), Warner Brothers offered Lee his first fully-fledged starring role in an American picture called Enter the Dragon (its original title, Blood and Steel, was changed on Lee’s instructions). The film was a big international success and made Bruce Lee a global sensation, but Lee never lived to witness the fame that he had achieved. Three weeks before the opening of Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee fell into a mysterious coma and died aged 32.

Over 30,000 people attended a very public funeral in Hong Kong. Lee’s body was flown to Seattle to be buried in the city which he had come to adopt as his own. Rumours still abound as to the mysterious way that Lee died, with many conspiracy theorists suggesting involvement by the Chinese mafia, or an ancient curse, or a fatal death touch (dim mak). The official verdict on Lee’s death certificate didn’t help matters: ‘death by misadventure.’ A series of ‘Bruceploitation’ films marked Lee’s passing as Hong Kong movie producers rushed to cash in on the unique appeal of Bruce Lee, manufacturing copycat actors with pseudonyms like Bruce Li, Bruce Le and Dragon Lee, before martial arts films were given a contemporary makeover by Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung, who started out as young stunt players and choreographers on Bruce Lee’s films and developed a brand new style of action comedy based on the foundations set out by Lee.

Across the world, Bruce Lee is still regarded as the greatest martial artist of all time, but this is possibly due to notoriety and myth, rather than circumstantial evidence. Those martial artists who claim on the contrary often site the fact that Lee never fought in any open competitions, whereas his contempories Joe Lewis and Chuck Norris were both established, championship fighters. Lee is regarded as the quintessential ‘martial scientist’ – as an academic in the subject, he would combine elements of religious spirituality and Far Eastern philosophy into his broad understanding of self defense, its methodology and foundations, only to turn tradition on its head by creating his own interpretation on the natural progression of martial arts fighting. Lee, with his iconic screen image and many publications, has done more to further the martial arts in the consciousness of people all over the world than anyone else in the history of the twentieth century.

1981 Game of Death II (actor)

1978 Game of Death (pro/scr/actor)

1973 Enter the Dragon (action dir/actor)

1972 The Way of the Dragon (dir/pro/action dir/actor)

1972 Fist of Fury (action dir/actor)

1971 The Big Boss (actor)

1969 Walk in the Spring Rain (action dir)

1969 Marlowe (action dir/actor)

1969 The Wrecking Crew (action dir)

1968 The Green Berets (action dir)

---

Share Our Martial Arts Features With Your Friends: