Bruce Lee Address History Bruce Lee Address History Seattle WA After returning to the United States in 1959 (Bruce was born in America) he lived and worked at Ruby Chow's restaurant, 1122 Jefferson Street, Seattle WA 98104 (at the corner of Broadway and Jefferson). The building is no longer there and is now the parking lot for First Hill Medical Building. Click each picture for a larger version. As I walked down Boren Avenue from the old Ruby Chow location towards Seattle's Chinatown, I realized Bruce had likely walked this same path many times before me. It was a remarkable realization knowing that I was literally walking in the footsteps of the master Bruce and his students would often work out wherever there was space including parking garages, public parks, etc. One of the first locations where they would gather to exercise and train is in the Chinatown area at 651 S. Weller St, Seattle WA 98104. This is now the Ho Ho Restaurant (653 S. Weller St).

Click each picture for a larger version Bruce would sometimes demonstrate gung fu at the Chong Wa Benevolent Association hall in Chinatown at 522 7th Avenue S, Seattle WA 98104. Bruce taught gung fu lessons to the members of Boy Scout Troop 54 here at Chong Wa and later at the Chinese Southern Baptist Church. Click each picture for a larger version​ The Chinese Southern Baptist Church in Chinatown was located at 925 S King St, Seattle WA 98104 (10th Avenue S and King St). Click each picture for a larger version Early on Bruce used the address 908 8th Avenue, Seattle WA. This was actually student Taky Kimura's address and was the address Bruce listed on his United States Selective Service application. Click each picture for a larger version The TaiTung Restaurant in Chinatown at 655 S. King St, Seattle WA 98104 was one of Bruce's favorite places to eat Bruce opened his first gwoon (school) at 609 S. Weller St, Seattle WA 98104.

This is now the Mongolian Hot Pot restaurant Bruce's second gwoon was established a few blocks away at 418 1/2 8th Avenue South, Seattle WA 98104 next to the Szechuan Noodle Bowl restaurant. Some sources list the address as 420 1/2 (or B) 8th Avenue South in the basement of the actual Szechuan Noodle restaurant Bruce's 3rd gwoon was opened in 1963 near the University of Washington campus at 4750 University Way NE, Seattle WA 98105. He lived in the back of the restaurant at the same address. Taky Kimura became his senior instructor​​​ Bruce attended and graduated from the Edison Technical School in 1960. It is now the Seattle Central Community College, 1701 Broadway (Broadway and Pine), Seattle WA 98122. Bruce and his first student Jesse Glover used to workout in this area near some steps on the back of the college off Harvard Avenue Bruce performed gung fu demonstrations at Garfield High School, 400 23rd Avenue, Seattle WA 98122.

This is where he met his future wife Linda Emery He also gave gung fu demonstrations at Franklin High School, 3013 S. Mount Baker Blvd., Seattle WA 98144 Bruce attended the University of Washington, 4014 University Way NE, Seattle WA 98195​ Sometimes Bruce taught gung fu classes near these impressive columns on the University of Washington campus. Click each picture to see a larger version After Bruce passed away his body was shipped from Hong Kong to Butterworth Mortuary, 300 East Pine St, Seattle WA 98122. Butterworth has since moved to 520 W Raye St, Seattle WA 98119. This location is now Groff Murphy Lawyers of Seattle. Both Bruce and Brandon Lee are buried at Lakeview Cemetery, 1554 15th Avenue E, Seattle WA 98122. Many are unaware that Bruce's current headstone is not the original one it's actually the third. The original featured a picture of Bruce from Enter the Dragon. The second, featuring Bruce wearing glasses, was vandalized and subsequently replaced with the current headstone.

Click each picture to see a larger version The first picture is the original headstone. The second is the replacement after the first was vandalized. ​ About 30 feet to the right of Bruce and Brandon's graves (as you face the graves) are the headstones of Bruce's first student Jesse Glover and second student Ed Hart. Linda (Emery) Lee Linda Emery was born March 21st, 1945 in Seattle WA Linda lived in this house at 2332 11th Avenue E., Seattle WA 98102 at the time she met Bruce. Click each picture to see a larger version Linda and Bruce were married at the King County Courthouse on August 17, 1964. Click the picture to see a larger version of their marriage certificate. ​ The web's most comprehensive visual history of Bruce Lee's life Also visit my other Bruce Lee website ​ This page best viewed in Google Chrome. Other browsers may cause the page to display incorrectly with pictures covering up the text descriptions. Send your complaints to GoDaddy! Lol.

Bruce Lee born - Nov 27, 1940 - HISTORY.com Bruce Lee born Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1940, the actor and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee is born in San Francisco, California. In his all-too-brief career, Lee became a film star in Asia, and a pop-culture icon, posthumously, in America. Lee was born while his father, a Chinese opera star, was on tour in America. The Lee family moved back to Hong Kong in 1941. Growing up, Lee was a child actor who appeared in some 20 Chinese films; he also studied dancing and trained in the Wing Chun style of gung fu (also known as kung fu). In 1959, Lee returned to America, where he eventually attended the University of Washington and opened a martial-arts school in Seattle. In 1964, he married Linda Emery, who in 1965 gave birth to Brandon Lee, the first of the couple’s two children.

In 1966, the Lees relocated to Los Angeles and Bruce appeared on the television program The Green Hornet (1966-1967), playing the Hornet’s acrobatic sidekick, Kato. Lee also appeared in karate tournaments around the United States and continued to teach martial arts to private clients, including the actor Steve McQueen. In search of better acting roles than Hollywood was offering, Lee returned to Hong Kong in the early 1970s. He successfully established himself as a star in Asia with the action movies The Big Boss (1971) and The Way of the Dragon (1972), which he wrote, directed and starred in. Lee’s next film, Enter the Dragon, was released in the United States by Hollywood studio Warner Brothers in August 1973. Tragically, Lee had died one month earlier, on July 20, in Hong Kong, after suffering a brain edema believed to be caused by an adverse reaction to a pain medication. Enter the Dragon was a box-office hit, eventually grossing more than $200 million, and Lee posthumously became a movie icon in America.

Lee’s body was returned to Seattle, where he was buried. His sudden death at the young age of 32 led to rumors and speculation about the cause of his demise. One theory held that Lee had been murdered by Chinese gangsters, while another rumor circulated that the actor had been the victim of a curse. The family-curse theory resurfaced when Lee’s 28-year-old son Brandon, who had followed in his father’s footsteps to become an actor, died in an accidental shooting on the set of the movie The Crow on March 31, 1993. The younger Lee was buried next to his father at Seattle’s Lake View Cemetery. Related Videos EBM Kung Fu Academy EBM Kung Fu Academy "BRUCE LEE'S TOUGHEST FIGHT" by Michael Dorgan (from Official Karate, July 1980) Considering the skill of the opponents and the complete absence of referees, rules, and safety equipment, it was one hell of a fight that took place that day in December. It may have been the most savagely elegant exhibition of unarmed combat of the century.

Yet, at a time when top fighters tend to display their skills only in huge closed-circuited arenas, this battle was fought in virtual secrecy behind locked doors. And at a time when millions of dollars can ride on the outcome of a championship fight, these champions of another sort competed not for money, but for more personal and passionate reasons. The time was late winter, 1964; the setting was a small kung fu school in Oakland, California. Poised at the center of the room, with approximately 140 pounds packed tightly on his 5'7" frame, was the operator of the school, a 24-year old martial artist of Chinese ancestry but American birth who, within a few years, would skyrocket to international attention as a combination fighter/film star. A few years after that, at age 32, he would die under mysterious circumstances. His name, of course, was Bruce Lee. Also poised in the center of the room was another martial artist. Taller but lighter, with his 135 pounds stretched thinly over 5'10", this fighter was also 24 and also of Chinese descent.

Born in Hong Kong and reared in the south of mainland China, he had only recently arrived in San Francisco's teeming Chinatown, just across the bay from Oakland. Though over the next 15 years he would become widely known in martial arts circles and would train some of America's top martial artists, he would retain a near disdain for publicity and the commercialization of his art, and consequently would remain unknown to the general public. His name: Wong Jack Man. What happened after the fighters approached the center of the room has become a chapter of Chinatown's "wild history," that branch of Chinese history usually anchored in fact but always richly embellished by fantasy, a history that tells much about a time and place with little that's reliable about any particular incident. Exactly how the fight proceeded and just who won are still matters of controversy, and will likely remain so. But from the few available firsthand accounts and other evidence, it is possible to piece together a reasonably reliable picture that reveals two overriding truths. First, considering the skill of the opponents and the complete absence of referees, rules, and safety equipment, it was one hell of a fight that took place that day in December.

And second, Bruce Lee, who was soon to rival Mao Tse Tung as the world's most famous Chinese personality, was dramatically affected by the fight, perhaps fatally so. Due to the human desire to be known as an eye witness to a famous event, it is easier to obtain firsthand accounts of the fight from persons who were not there than from those who were. As to how many persons actually viewed the contest, even that is a point of dispute. Bruce Lee's wife Linda recalls a total of 13 persons, including herself. But the only person that she identifies other than her husband and his associate James Lee, who died of cancer shortly before her husband died, is Wong Jack Man. Wong, meanwhile, remembers only seven persons being present, including the three Lees. Of the three persons other than the Lees and himself, only one, a tai chi teacher named William Chen (not to be confused with the William Chi Cheng Chen who teaches the art in New York), could be located. Chen recalls about 15 persons being present but can identify none other than Wong and the Lees.

So except for a skimpy reference to the fight by Bruce Lee himself in a magazine interview, we are left with only three firsthand accounts of the battle. They are accounts which vary widely. Linda Lee, in her book Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew, initially dismisses the fight as follows: "The two came out, bowed formally and then began to fight. Wong adopted a classic stance whereas Bruce, who at the time was still using his Wing Chun style, produced a series of straight punches. "Within a minute, Wong's men were trying to stop the fight as Bruce began to warm to his task. James Lee warned them to let the fight continue. A minute later, with Bruce continuing the attack in earnest, Wong began to backpedal as fast as he could. For an instant, indeed, the scrap threatened to degenerate into a farce as Wong actually turned and ran. But Bruce pounced on him like a springing leopard and brought him to the floor where he began pounding him into a state of demoralization. "Is that enough?" shouted Bruce. "That's enough!" pleaded Wong in desperation. So the entire matter was just another quick triumph for the man who frequently boasted he could whip any man in the world.

Or was it? Later in her book, Linda Lee hints that the fight may have amounted to more than the brief moment of violent diversion she had earlier described. "Bruce's whole life was an evolving process - and this was never seen to greater effect than in his work with the martial arts," she begins. "The clash with Wong Jack Man metamorphosed his own personal expression of kung fu. Until this battle, he had largely been content to improvise and expand on his original Wing Chun style, but then he suddenly realized that although he had won comparatively easily, his performance had been neither crisp of efficient. The fight, he realized, ought to have ended within a few seconds of him striking the first blows - instead of which it had dragged on for three minutes. In addition, at the end, Bruce had felt unusually winded which proved to him he was far from perfect condition. So he began to dissect the fight, analyzing where he had gone wrong and seeking to find ways where he could have improved his performance. It did not take him long to realize that the basis of his fighting art, the Wing Chun style, was insufficient.

It laid too much stress on hand techniques, had very few kicking techniques and was, essentially, partial." Still later in the book, Linda Lee adds: "The Wong Jack Man fight also caused Bruce to intensify his training methods. From that date, he began to seek out more and more sophisticated and exhaustive training methods. I shall try to explain these in greater detail later, but in general the new forms of training meant that Bruce was always doing something, always training some part of his body or keeping it in condition." Whether Bruce Lee's intensified training was to his benefit or to his destruction is a matter to be discussed later. For now, merely let it be observed that the allegedly insignificant "scrap" described early by Linda Lee has now been identified by her as cause for her husband to intensify his training and serves as the pivotal reason for his abandoning the fighting style he had practiced religiously for more than 10 years. That the fight with Wong was the reason Lee quit, and then later repudiated the Wing Chun style, was confirmed by Lee himself in an interview with Black Belt.

"I'd gotten into a fight in San Francisco (a reference, no doubt, to the Bay Area rather than the city) with a Kung-Fu cat, and after a brief encounter the son-of-a-bitch started to run. I chased him and, like a fool, kept punching him behind his head and back. Soon my fists began to swell from hitting his hard head. Right then I realized Wing Chun was not too practical and began to alter my way of fighting." For those who have difficulty believing that a quick if clumsy victory over a worthy opponent was sufficient reason for Lee to abandon a fighting style that had seen him through dozens of vicious street fights as a youth in Hong Kong, where his family had moved shortly after his birth in San Francisco, a more substantial reason for Lee to change styles can be found in the account of the fight given by Wong Jack Man. According to Wong, the battle began with him bowing and offering his hand to Lee in the traditional manner of opening a match. Lee, he say, responded by pretending to extend a friendly hand only to suddenly transform the hand into a four-pronged spear aimed at Wong's eyes.

"That opening move," says Wong, "set the tone for Lee's fight." Wing Chun has but three sets, the solo exercises which contain the full body of technique of any style, and one of those sets is devoted to deadly jabbing and gouging attacks directed primarily at the eyes and throat. "It was those techniques," say Wong, "which Lee used most." There were flurries of straight punches and repeated kicks at his groin, adds Wong, but mostly, relentlessly, there were those darting deadly finger tips trying to poke out his eyes or puncture his throat. And what he say he anticipated as serious but sportsmanly comparison of skill suddenly became an exercise in defending his life. Wong says that before the fight began Lee remarked, in reference to a mutual acquaintance who had helped instigate the match, "You've been killed by your friend." Shortly after the bout commenced, he adds, he realized Lee's words had been said in earnest. "He really wanted to kill me," says Wong. In contrast to Lee's three Wing Chun sets, Wong, as the grand master of the Northern Shaolin style, knew dozens. But most of what he used against Lee, says Wong, was defensive.

Wong says he parried Lee's kicks with his legs while using his hand and arms to protect his head and torso, only occasionally delivering a stinging blow to Lee's head or body. He fought defensively, explains Wong, in part because of Lee's relentless aggressive strategy, and in part because he feared the consequences of responding in kind to Lee's attempt to kill him. In pre-Revolutionary China, fights to the finish were often allowed by law, but Wong knew that in modern-day America, a crippling or killing blow, while winning a victory, might also win him a jail sentence. That, says Wong, is why he failed to deliver a devastating right-hand blow on any of the three occasions he had Lee's head locked under his left arm. Instead, he says, he released his opponent each time, only to have an even more enraged Bruce Lee press on with his furious attack. "He would never say he lost until you killed him," says Wong. And despite his concern with the legal consequences, Wong says that killing Lee is something he began to consider.

"I remember thinking, 'If he injures me, if he really hurts me, I'll have to kill him." But according to Wong, before that need arose, the fight had ended, due more to what Linda Lee described as Lee's "unusually winded" condition than to a decisive blow by either opponent. "It had lasted," says Wong, "at least 20 minutes, maybe 25." Though William Chen's recollections of the fight are more vague than the other two accounts, they are more in alignment with Wong's than Lee's. On the question of duration, for example, Chen, like Wong, remembers the fight continuing for "20 or 25 minutes." Also, he cannot recall either man being knocked down. "Certainly," he says, "Wong was not brought to the floor and pounded into a 'state of demoralization.'" Regarding Wong's claim that three times he had Lee's head locked under his arm, Chen says he can neither confirm or deny it. He remembers the fighters joining on several occasions, but he could not see very clearly what was happening at those moments.

Chen describes the outcome of the battle as "a tie." He adds, however, that whereas an enraged Bruce Lee had charged Wong "like a mad bull," obviously intent upon doing him serious injury. Wong had displayed extraordinary restraint by never employing what were perhaps his most dangerous weapons - his devastating kicks. A principal difference between northern and southern Chinese fighting styles is that the northern styles give much more emphasis to kicking, and Northern Shaolin had armed Wong with kicks of blinding speeds and crushing power. But before the fight, recalls Chen, "Sifu Wong said he would not use his kicks; he thought they were too dangerous." And despite the dangerous developments that followed that pledge, Chen adds that Wong "kept his word." Though Chen's recollections exhaust the firsthand accounts, there are further fragments of evidence to indicate how the fight ended. Ming Lum, who was then a San Francisco martial arts promoter, says he did not attend the fight because he was a friend of both Lee and Wong, and feared that a battle between them would end in serious injury, maybe even death.

"Who," he asks, "would have stopped them?" But Lum did see Wong the very next day at the Jackson Cafe, where the young grand master earned his living as a waiter (he had, in fact, worked a full shift at the busy Chinatown restaurant the previous day before fighting Lee). And Lum says the only evidence he saw of the fight was a scratch above one eye, a scratch Wong says was inflicted when Lee went for his eyes as he extended his arm for the opening handshake. "Some people say Bruce Lee beat up Jack Man bad," note Lum. "But if he had, the man would not have been to work the next day." By Lum's assessment, the fact that neither man suffered serious injury in a no-holds-barred battle indicates that both were "very, very good." Both men were no doubt, very, very, good. But Wong, after the fight, felt compelled to assert, boldly and publicly, that he was the better of the two. He did so, he says, only because Lee violated their agreement to not discuss the fight. According to Wong, immediately following the match Lee had asked that neither man discuss it.

Discussion would lead to more argument over who had won, a matter which could never be resolved as there had been no judges. Wong said he agreed. But within a couple of weeks, he says, Lee violated the agreement by claiming in an interview that he had defeated an unnamed challenger. Though Lee had not identified Wong as the loser, Wong says it was obvious to all of Chinatown that Lee was speaking of Wong. It had already become common knowledge within the Chinese community that the two had fought. In response to Lee's interview, Wong wrote a detailed description of the fight which concluded with an open invitation to Lee to meet him for a public bout if Lee was not satisfied with Wong's account. Wong's version of the fight, along with the challenge, was run as the top story on the front page of San Francisco's Chinese language Chinese Pacific Weekly. But Bruce Lee, despite his reputation for responding with fists of fury to the slightest provocation, remained silent. Now death has rendered the man forever silent. And the question of whether Wong presented Lee, who is considered by many to have been the world's top martial artist, with the only defeat of his adult life will remain, among those concerned about such matters, forever a controversial one.

Even those Bruce Lee fans who accepts the evidence as supportive of Wong's account of the fight may argue that the outcome would have been different had the two battled a few years after Lee had developed his own style, Jeet Kune Do. But while it is true that Jeet Kune Du provided lee with a wider range of weapons, particularly kicks, it is also true that Wong continued to grow as a martial artist after the fight. Only after that battle, says Wong, did he develop tremendous chi powers from the practice of Tai Chi, Hsing I, and Pakua. Martial art styles can be divided roughly into two categories: external and internal. External styles, which are also called "hard" styles and which include such American favorites as Japanese karate and Korean taekwondo, rely primarily upon muscular strength, while internal or "soft" styles, such as Japanese Aikido and the three above-mentioned Chinese styles, cultivate a more mysterious energy called chi. Although everybody has chi, few people have much of it, and fewer still know how to express it. But according to the Chinese, this precious elixir can be cultivated and controlled through the exercises of the internal martial arts styles.

Specifically, they say chi can be brewed in the tan tien, a spot about an inch below the navel. Once the tan tien is filled, the chi supposedly spills out into other parts of the body, where it is stored in the marrow of the bones. It is said that as a martial artist develops chi energy, his bones become hard, his sinews tough, is muscles supple and relaxed, which allow the chi to circulate freely through the body. Chi usually takes much longer to develop than muscular strength, but it is considered a much more formidable energy. In normal times it is said to serve as a source of extraordinary vitality and as a guardian against my diseases. And in battle, it is said to provide a person with awesome power and near invulnerability. Though Wong had been trained in the internal styles while still in China, up until the time he fought Lee he had concentrated mainly on the refinement of his elegantly athletic Northern Shaolin, which, like Lee's Wing Chun, is an external style.

Following the battle with Lee, Wong would train in the internal styles until he had developed such chi power that he can, according to Peter Ralston, a former student of Wong and the first non-Asian to win the Chinese Martial Arts World Championships in Taiwan, take a punch to any part of his body without injury or even discomfort. As for Wong's offensive capabilities, they have apparently never been tested. Regarding the question of how much Lee grew as a martial artist after the fight, Wong is convinced that the benefits to Lee from his homemade style were more than offset by the damage it did him. Wong even goes so far as to speculate that Jeet Kune Do may have caused Lee's death. Most martial arts masters agree that just as serious training in a proper method can greatly improve one's health, strenuous and prolonged training in an improper method can destroy health. Of the health damage is attributed to improper breathing practices, and often the damage is to the brain. Special use of the breath is acknowledged by every martial arts style as a key element to developing power, though different styles have different breathing methods.

Proper methods can be simply categorized as those which develop power while building health, and improper methods as those which either fail to build power or build it but at the expense of one's health. Though many of the ways in which breathing methods affect health remain mysterious, the methods themselves - at least the proper methods - have been empirically refined over many generations. Wong's Northern Shaolin, for example, can be traced back to the great Shaolin Temple of more than a thousand years ago, which is considered the source of Chinese martial arts. While the Wing Chun practiced by Lee until his fight with Wong also had a long period of development and refinement, the style he put together after the fight was a chop suey of many and varied ingredients. That Jeet Kune Do lacked the cohesion and harmony of a style in the traditional sense was something acknowledged by Lee himself, who preferred to call it a "sophisticated form of street fighting" rather than a style. After abandoning Wing Chin, Lee developed a disdain for all traditional styles, which he considered restrictive and ineffective.

He even went so far as to place outside his school a mock tombstone that read: "In memory of a once fluid man crammed and distorted by the classical mess." It is grimly ironic that it would be Lee would be in need of a tombstone long before the man, trained by and loyal to the "classical mess," who was almost certainly his most formidable opponent. It cannot be proven, of course, that Lee's fatal edema of the brain was caused by Jeet Kune Do, just as it could not be proven his death was brought on by any of the other rumored causes ranging from illicit drugs to excessive sex to blows on the head. Wong thinks, to serve as a caution to those who believe they can, by themselves, develop the knowledge it has taken others many generations of cumulative effort to acquire. Perhaps it is because he gives so much credit to those who came before him that Wong's voice is absent of boast when he says his art was superior to Lee's. But while to him that is a matter of simple fact, Wong, aware that legends are larger than men, is not optimistic about ever being accepted as the winner of the fight.

He says, however, that what people think regarding the outcome of the fight is less important to him than what they think provoked the battle in the first place. In Linda Lee's account, which has been repeated in a number of Bruce Lee biographies, Wong is portrayed not only as a loser but also as a villian. According to Ms. Lee, Wong provoked the fight in an attempt to force her husband to stop teaching Kung Fu to Caucasians. After sketching a brief history of Chinese martial arts up to the Boxer Rebellion, she writes: "Since then - and the attitude is understandable - Chinese, particularly in America, have been reluctant to disclose these secrets to Caucasians. It became an unwritten law that the art should be taught only to Chinese. Bruce considered such thinking completely outmoded and when it was argued that white men, if taught the secrets, would use the art to injure the Chinese, he pointed out that if a white man really wanted to injure a Chinese, there were plenty of other ways he could do it. "However, Bruce soon found that at first his views were not shared by members of the Chinese community in San Francisco, particularly those in martial arts' circles.

Several months after he and James Lee had begun teaching, a kung fu expert called Wong Jack Man turned up at Bruce's kwoon (school) on Broadway. Wong had just recently arrived in San Francisco's Chinatown from Hong Kong and was seeking to establish himself at the time, all his pupils being strictly pure Chinese. Three other Chinese accompanied Wong Jack Man who handed Bruce an ornate scroll which appears to have been an ultimatum from the San Francisco martial arts community. Presumably, if Bruce lost the challenge, he was either to close down his Institute or stop teaching Caucasians." So by Linda Lee's account, her husband had suddenly found himself in a position no less heroic than of having to defend, possibly to the death, the right to teach Caucasians the ancient Chinese fighting secrets. It is a notion that Wong finds ridiculous. The reason he showed up at Lee's school that day, says Wong, is because a mutual acquaintance had hand-delivered a note from Lee inviting him to fight.

The note was sent, say Wong, after he had requested a public bout with Lee after Lee had boasted during a demonstration at a Chinatown theater that he could beat any martial artist in San Francisco and had issued an open challenge to fight anyone who thought he could prove him wrong. As for those in attendance at the fight, Wong says he only knew of few of them, and those barely. Certainly, he says, no group had come as formal representative of the San Francisco martial arts community. Wong attributes both Lee's initial challenge and his response to the same emotion, to arrogance. "If I had it to do over," he says, " I wouldn't." But while admitting to youthful arrogance, Wong strongly contests Linda Lee's allegation that he was guilty of trying to stop Bruce Lee from teaching Caucasians. It is true, say Wong, that most - but not all - of his students during his first years were teaching were Chinese. But that was true, he adds, only because few Americans outside of Chinese communities had even heard of kung fu. Americans who then knew anything at all of the martial arts most likely knew of Japanese judo or karate.

They would not hear of kung fu until several years later, when it would be made famous by the dazzling choreography's of Bruce Lee. Far from attempting to keep kung fu secret and exclusive, Wong observes that his was the first school in San Francisco's Chinatown to operate with open doors. That the other kung fu schools then in existence conducted classes behind locked doors was due more to the instructor's fears of being challenged, say Wong, than to a refusal to teach Caucasians. Once Caucasians became interested in kung fu, it would be Wong who would train some of the best of them, including Ralston and several other leading West Coast instructors. And all of these students of Wong who currently teaches at San Francisco's Fort Mason Center would be taught for a monthly fee amounting to a fraction of the hourly rate (in some cases $500) charged by the man who allegedly fought for the right to teach them.

EBM KUNG FU ACADEMY OAKLAND, CA USA PHONE: (510) 658-3378 EMAIL: ebmkungfu@gmail.com When Bruce Lee Left Hollywood to Become 'The Big Boss' | Hollywood Reporter When Bruce Lee Left Hollywood to Become 'The Big Boss' 8:33 AM PDT 3/14/2016 by Patrick Brzeski COMMENTS Photofest Exactly why Hong Kong has declined to tap Lee’s enduring star power to serve as one of the city’s icons is still the subject of some debate. For decades, Hong Kong movie buffs have been perplexed by their city’s neglect of its most famous native son: Bruce Lee. Hong Kong has no Bruce Lee museum, no Bruce Lee Boulevard, not even a proper Bruce Lee memorial. The city’s Avenue of Stars, Hong Kong’s version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, features a lone statue of the star, but its erection was the result of a global fan initiative, not the local government’s largesse.

In 2011, the owner of Lee’s former mansion in Kowloon Tong offered to donate the home to the city so that it could be made into a commemorative museum, but the project fizzled within the city bureaucracy. Exactly why Hong Kong has declined to tap Lee’s enduring star power to serve as one of the city’s icons is still the subject of some debate — most suggest that the local elders never viewed Lee as a true native, given that he was born to Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, USA (even though he returned to Hong Kong when he was three months old and grew up there until he returned to California at age 18). But this year, for its part, HKIFF is taking steps to right the oversight. The 40th edition of the fest is honoring Lee with screenings of restored, digital versions of four classic Bruce Lee kung fu flicks, beginning with The Big Boss, the film that brought him back to Hong Kong and launched him into superstardom.

In 1971, having grown frustrated with the side parts and choreography work he was getting in Los Angeles, Lee returned to Hong Kong on the advice of producer Fred Weintraub to make a feature film that would showcase his skills for executives in Hollywood. After signing a two-picture deal with Golden Harvest, Lee played his first leading role in director Lo Wei’s The Big Boss opposite James Tien, already a big star in Hong Kong. Lee’s charisma and fighting style made the film a phenomenon, and it soon became the highest-grossing picture in Hong Kong history, not to be surpassed until the release of Lee’s second Golden Harvest vehicle, Fist of Fury (1972). The global success of these movies had the intended effect: in 1972, Warner Brothers offered Lee the lead role in Enter the Dragon, the first Chinese film to be produced by a major Hollywood studio. Tragically, this artistic and entertainment industry milestone would be Lee’s last onscreen appearance before his mysterious and untimely death on July 20, 1973, at the age of 32.

Lee, Bruce (1940-1973), Martial Arts Master and Film Maker - HistoryLink.org Lee, Bruce (1940-1973), Martial Arts Master and Film Maker By Alyssa Burrows Tweet Bruce Lee popularized Kung Fu and other Asian martial arts disciplines during a brief but influential career as an instructor and as an actor on television and in feature films. Born in San Francisco and raised in Hong Kong, Bruce moved to Seattle in 1959 to work at Ruby Chow's Chinese restaurant and to attend the University of Washington. In Seattle he began teaching martial arts and established his first studio. He met and married his wife Linda before pursuing his TV and film career in Hollywood and in Hong Kong. His roles in the 1966-1967 television series Green Hornet and the 1973 film Enter the Dragon won international acclaim and made Kung Fu a household word around the globe. Bruce Lee died suddenly on July 20, 1973, while working on the film The Game of Death in Hong Kong. He is buried at Lake View Cemetery on Seattle's Capitol Hill.

Born in the USA Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940, at the Jackson Street Hospital in San Francisco's Chinatown. His father, Lee Hoi Chuen, an actor on tour with Hong Kong's Cantonese Opera Company, was Chinese. His mother, Grace, a Catholic, was the daughter of a German father and a Chinese mother. The nurse at the hospital suggested the name Bruce -- Grace named him Jun Fan meaning "return again" -- because she felt he would come back to live in America someday. At home he was called Sai Fon, meaning Small Phoenix. "Bruce" was never used as his name until he enrolled at school. Bruce Lee made his acting debut in San Francisco in a movie role as an infant being carried by his father in The Golden Gate Girl, (1940). A few months after Bruce's birth, the family moved back to China. They had a family home in Kowloon, a suburb of Hong Kong. Living in this two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment were not only Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Bruce and his siblings Phoebe, Agnes, Peter, and later, Robert, but also Mr.

Lee's sister-in-law, her five children, servants, the servant's child, and many pets. Following the Chinese custom, Mr. Lee supported his sister-in-law and her family after the death of his brother. Bruce was a child star in Hong Kong. At age six, he starred in The Birth of Mankind, (1946) billed as Lee Siu Lung, or "Little Dragon." His sister Agnes gave him this nickname. Bruce had been born in the year of the Dragon and in the hour of the Dragon (between 6:00 and 8:00 a.m.). He starred in 20 movies while in Hong Kong, including Kid Chueng,(1950) and The Orphan, (1958). His mother said that Bruce had no problem getting up at two a.m. to get to a movie shoot, but getting up for school was a different matter. She often joked, "By the time Bruce was 10, that was as far as he could count." At the age of 12 in 1952, Bruce entered La Salle College, a Catholic, English-speaking school. His grades were poor, and he got into many fights.

He asked his parents to enroll him in a martial arts school because he was being bullied and wanted to learn to defend himself. They agreed and in 1953, Bruce began to study under Master Yip Man, head of the school of the Wing Chun style of Kung-Fu. In the October 1967 issue of Blackbelt magazine, Bruce Lee remembered, "I was a punk and went out looking for fights. We used chains and pens with knives hidden inside them." His brothers stated that if Bruce didn't like someone, he told him straight to his face, which meant he had no trouble finding trouble. He was known to the Hong Kong police. Time for You to Leave Bruce was much more interested in studying martial arts, dancing (at age 18 in 1958, he won the Hong Kong Cha Cha Championship), and girls than in school work. His defiant attitude towards La Salle's teachers and administrators, his mediocre grades, and his reputation as a fighter and troublemaker led to his expulsion from La Salle. He enrolled at St Francis Xavier where a teacher encouraged him to enter the inter-school boxing championships.

He went through the elimination rounds easily, then faced the three-time champion Gary Elms from the rival British King George V High School. Bruce won by knock out in the third round. In 1958, after a challenge to the Wing Chun students from Choy Li Fut, a rival martial arts school, a fight was arranged on a rooftop. There were many such rivalries in Hong Kong -- the winner was whoever could force their opponent over a line. In response to an unfair punch, Bruce lashed out and beat the other boy badly, knocking out his tooth. This boy's parents made a complaint to the police, and Bruce's mother had to go down to the police station and sign a form saying she would take full responsibility for Bruce's actions if they released him to her custody. Not mentioning the incident to her husband, she suggested that Bruce should exercise his American citizenship rights and return to his birthplace. Despairing of Bruce's college prospects, his father agreed. With $100 U.S. in his pocket, Bruce left Hong Kong on a steamship bound for San Francisco in April 1959. In San Francisco, he lived with a friend of his father's and made a little money teaching dance lessons.

As a favor to Bruce's father, Ruby Chow offered Bruce a room above her Chinese restaurant in Seattle (1122 Jefferson Street) and a full-time job as a waiter. Bruce moved to Seattle later the same year. He attended Edison Technical College (now Seattle Central Community College) during the day and worked at Ruby Chow's in the evening. He received his high school diploma from Edison and his grades were good enough to be accepted into the University of Washington, where he became a Philosophy major. Teaching Kung Fu Bruce didn't like the odd jobs (such as stuffing advertisements into Seattle Times newspapers) he found himself doing to keep himself solvent, so he started teaching kung fu on the side. He taught his first classes in the back alley behind Ruby Chow's. He also taught in parks and, on Sundays, in empty parking garages. In the fall of 1963, Bruce opened a kung fu studio he named the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute at 4750 University Way in the University District. (Gung Fu is the Cantonese spelling of the Mandarin "Kung Fu.") He lived in a small, windowless room in the back of the studio.

He charged $22 a month and $17 for juniors. Bruce met Linda Emery when she became a student of his through her Garfield High School friend, Sue Ann Kay. According to Linda, Bruce's first "Studio" was a basement room in Chinatown with bare lightbulbs. Bruce's instruction had a strong social aspect. He would go out with the students for lunch at Chinese restaurants after Sunday morning workouts, or take them to a Chinese film in Chinatown. Bruce taught them Chinese culture as well as providing friendship and a social atmosphere. Other students spoke highly of Bruce's individualized training, how he would spend time with each student and learned exactly what their strengths and weaknesses were and what they needed to do to best benefit them in their training and their lives. John Mitsules, one of Bruce's first students in Seattle, writes in his autobiography, St. Ann's Kid: A Seattle Memoir: "Part of a person's training with Bruce focused on understanding their own value. He told people that they were special and held meaning in this world.

I think Bruce was very good at assessing levels of self-confidence and determining what kind of support people required." Mitsules, who briefly roomed with Bruce, also described Bruce's incredible talent: "You could not convince a person his feats were real by description only -- he was like watching a deft magician. You always wondered how he could be so graceful, quick, and powerful at the same time. Once people saw him in action they became believers. He would take on four guys effortlessly. You could feel the force in the air when his punches came close to your nose in practice ... To show off, he would do push ups with me laying on his back. I weighed 200 pounds at the time." Linda, Wife To Be In 1963, Bruce was attending the University of Washington as a junior when Linda was a freshman. He and his students would often meet at the UW Hub and work out over lunch period. One of their favorite campus spots to practice was the large, grassy "Sylvan Theatre" with the columns from the original University of Washington. It was at one of these practices in October that Bruce first asked Linda out.

"One afternoon, Bruce and I were racing from one end to the other and when we got away from the group he tackled me to the ground. I thought he was going to show me a new maneuver, but instead he held me down and when I stopped laughing, he asked me if I wanted to go to dinner at the Space Needle. I hesitated a moment, thinking that was a pretty expensive place for all of us to go, and I said, "You mean all of us?" And he replied, "No, only you and me." I was speechless, although I must have managed to say, 'Yes!' " (Lee). A Clandestine Affair goes Public Linda began seeing Bruce, but she hid their relationship from her mother. When Bruce moved down to Oakland, California, in June 1964 to set up the second branch of the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute with his friend James Y. Lee, Linda considered it a possibility that her and Bruce's lives might drift apart, so she didn't bother telling her mother about their relationship.

But Bruce wrote her letters all that summer, and when he arrived back in Seattle on August 12, they went down to the King County Courthouse to apply for a marriage license, intent on eloping and telling Linda's family about it later. She did not know that the names of people who apply for marriage licenses are printed in the paper. Her Aunt Sally read that section and called her mother. A large family meeting was called and all day long her relatives tried to dissuade them from marrying, telling them how difficult their life would be as an interracial couple and that they should wait to examine their feelings. They even told Bruce that Linda couldn't cook, (which was basically true, by her own admission). Since her family knew nothing about the relationship, they didn't know that Bruce and Linda had already "examined their feelings" for each other and were intent on marrying. On August 17, 1964, Bruce and Linda were married at the Seattle Congregational Church. They immediately moved to Oakland and stayed with friend James Lee and his wife in their home. Bruce closed up the University Way Studio, but left Jun Fan training in the hands of his good friend, student, and assistant instructor Taky Kimura.

Challenge and Change In Oakland, everything was going well, until James Lee's wife died suddenly. Linda took over the cooking, cleaning, and care of his two children, and though it was a bit overwhelming, the second Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute was covering the bills, and Bruce and Linda were excited about the upcoming birth of their first child. Then in December 1964, leaders of the Chinese martial arts community who objected to Bruce teaching martial arts to non-Chinese students visited his studio with an ornate scroll stating that if he refused to stop teaching other races, he would have to fight their challenger, Wong Jack Man, a kung fu master recently arrived from China. If he lost, he would have to close down his studio or stop teaching non-Chinese students. Bruce approached the challenger and asked him if he wanted to do this. Linda, who was there at the time (eight months pregnant with Brandon), says the challenger was apologetic and said, "No, but I'm representing these people," motioning to the community leaders. Bruce agreed to fight. The leaders hadn't expected him to. The challenger said "No hitting in the face.

No kicking in the groin." Bruce refused and said "You've made the challenge -- so I'm making the rules. So, as far as I'm concerned, it's no holds barred. It's all out!" Linda described the fight as follows: "Within one minute, the men who had accompanied the challenger were trying to stop the fight as Bruce began to achieve the upper hand. James Lee warned them to let the fight go on. A minute later, with Bruce continuing the attack in earnest, his opponent began to backpedal as fast as he could. For an instant, the fight threatened to disintegrate into a farce as he actually turned and ran. When the two men returned to the center of the gym, Bruce's opponent was unable to mount an attack. Bruce quickly brought him to the floor and poised above him with his fist raised. "Is that enough?" "That's enough!" pleaded his adversary. Bruce demanded a second reply to his question to make sure that he understood this was the end of the fight. Still highly incensed, Bruce dragged the man to his feet and then threw the whole bunch off the premises" (Lee).

In James Bishop's Remembering Bruce, Wong Jack Man reports that Bruce offered a supposedly friendly hand and when he accepted it, Bruce turned it into an attempt to gouge out his eyes. "He really wanted to kill me," recalled Wong. The Way of the Intercepting Fist This fight was momentous for Bruce Lee. He won, but not as easily as he would have liked. He found himself winded and embarked on more extreme fitness training. This fight marked the beginning of Bruce's concept of Jeet Kune Do Kung Fu -- or, "The Way of No Way." Up until then, Bruce had been basically teaching the form of Wing Chun Kung Fu he had learned from his only master, Yip Man. Bruce began in earnest reading all he could of other martial arts and all forms of combat, including philosophy, psychology, and motivation books -- anything to help him grow as a martial artist and a human being. Bruce was to amass a library of more than 2,500 books.

In Jeet Kune Do, jeet means "to stop or intercept," kune means "fist," and do means "the way or the ultimate reality." His definition of Jeet Kune Do gradually became "The Way of the Intercepting Fist." Bruce came to believe that most of classical training was not helpful -- that you do what you have to do as quickly as possible in a fight. Jeet Kune Do was actually a minimizing of form, rather than an elaboration. "If somebody attacks you," Bruce said, "your response is not Technique No. 1, Stance No. 2, Section 3, Paragraph 5. Instead, you simply move in like sound and echo, without any deliberation." Or, more concisely, "the proper method is the one that works." Bruce's attitude stepped on a lot of toes in the martial arts community. Bruce's good friend, Jhoon Rhee, known as "the father of American Tae Kwon Do," said "There were a number of people who didn't like Bruce, but when you are as frank as he was, you cannot avoid offending people." Bruce even went so far as to have a tombstone erected in his L.A.

Studio that said "In memory of a once fluid man crammed and distorted by the classical mess." "That describes my attitude perfectly," he said. Introduction to Hollywood In 1964, Bruce had given a martial arts demonstration at Ed Parker's karate tournament in Long Beach, California. Ed Parker was the karate master who taught Elvis. As it happened, Jay Sebring, a celebrity hairdresser (who was later murdered by Charles Manson's gang), attended this demonstration. While doing TV producer William Dozier's hair, Sebring mentioned Bruce Lee's performance. Dozier had been looking for an actor to play Charlie Chan's son in a new series in the works, Number-One Son. He viewed Ed Parker's film of the demonstration, contacted Bruce, and brought him down to L.A. for a screen test. The screen test went well, and Dozier paid him $1,800 to put him under "options." Soon after, Brandon Lee was born (on February 1, 1965). Bruce's father died one week later.

Although Bruce had made a quick trip to Hong Kong for the funeral, he decided to use the option money to return to Hong Kong and introduce his wife and new son to his family. Bruce and Linda stayed with the Lee family in Kowloon for four months. Bruce's family would have preferred him to marry a Chinese woman, but they welcomed Linda and she "did not receive any of the prejudicial reaction Bruce had endured with my family." During this time, Bruce was awaiting word from Dozier. Dozier had decided to scrap Number-One Son and wait to see what kind of reaction his new series Batman would produce. If it went well, he wanted to follow it up with another comic-book-inspired show, The Green Hornet. The Green Hornet Bruce and Linda returned to the United States in September 1965, and lived in Seattle with Linda's mother, Vivian Dickinson, for four months. Linda says that her mother "really got to know and love Bruce" during this time. Then they returned to Oakland and lived with James Lee again. The Oakland studio was not doing as well as Bruce would have liked, mostly because he insisted on having only serious students.

In March 1966, when Bruce and Linda got the call from Dozier saying The Green Hornet was a "go, " they moved to Los Angeles. The Green Hornet series went into production that year, and Bruce's take-home pay of $313 a week helped them cover rent and bills. The first show aired September 9, 1966. Most Americans had never seen martial arts before, and Bruce's self-choreographed fight scenes and fast-action disposal of enemies made him the star of the show in the eyes of many of the viewers, especially children. He received the most fan mail on the show, outshining actor Van Williams as the Green Hornet. Bruce enjoyed the notoriety the role of Kato gave him, and he went on many public appearance trips, happy to meet and sign his autograph for fans. Even though the show enjoyed popularity, it was too campy for most adults, and it was cancelled after 26 episodes on July 14, 1967. Bruce had opened his third Gung Fu Institute in February of that year at 628 College Street in L.A.'s Chinatown, so he was not without income.

Friend and student Danny Inosanto became his assistant instructor. Guest Spots, Fight Choreography, and Private Instruction Bruce started working with producer Fred Weintraub on a show concept about a mercenary Shaolin priest who fights in the old West entitled The Warrior. Bruce needed an infusion of money after the cancellation, and friendships he had made with producer Sy Weintraub, television writer Sterling Silliphant, and others in Hollywood helped him get guest appearances on Ironside, Blondie, and Here Come the Brides television shows. Bruce waited for word on The Warrior while his guest star roles kept a little money coming in. Over lunch one day, Green Hornet assistant director Charles Fitzsimon suggested Bruce teach students privately instead of relying on the $22 monthly fee he was still charging at his studio. Bruce began teaching Steve McQueen, Sterling Silliphant, and James Coburn. Roman Polanski flew him to Switzerland for private lessons. Bruce also began teaching karate men Mike Stone, Joe Lewis, and Chuck Norris. During their training with Bruce, they won every karate championship in the United States. Bruce later began teaching Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Blake Edwards, James Garner, and Lee Marvin.

Meanwhile, Bruce became a father again on April 19, 1969, when Shannon was born at the Santa Monica General Hospital. There wasn't much of a market in Hollywood for Chinese actors, even a break-out star like Bruce Lee. Linda writes (in Bruce Lee: Tao of the Dragon, p. 36) "I don't think we experienced a great deal of racism or prejudice, except when it came to Bruce breaking into Hollywood ... They didn't think he was a bankable personality." Bruce refused roles that portrayed Chinese stereotypically in any way. Sterling Silliphant, who wrote the script for the movie Marlowe, (1969), hired Bruce to play a cameo role in it. In this, his first Hollywood full-length movie, Bruce plays the hired-killer who destroys private eye Marlowe's (James Garner) office with his bare hands in a memorable scene. Bruce was hired to choreograph the fight scene for The Wrecking Crew (1969), and Silliphant hired Bruce to do fight choreography for his next movie, A Walk in Spring Rain, (1970).

Silliphant stated that two of the large stunt men on that movie were giving Bruce a hard time. They had difficulty believing that this small Chinese man (5'7," 135 lbs.) was the master they were told he was, and they resented that Bruce had been brought in to do the fight scenes. Silliphant suggested Bruce "give them a little sample" and Bruce handed one of them his air shields and told them to brace for a kick. Silliphant recalls: "[I told him to] make it really interesting and do it beside the swimming pool ... So with no movement -- no run, nothing, just standing there -- he kicked the guy up into the air and out into the middle of the pool. Then the other guy had to prove himself, too. So he braced really low -- and sshhp ... again! Bruce lifted him off his feet, up into the air and out into the deep end. Well, those guys stumbled out of the pool Christians! And from that moment on, those guys loved Bruce (Lee)." On August 13, 1970, Bruce injured his back while training at home.

Doctors said he had damaged the fourth sacral nerve and he would never fight again. Being a believer in the power of positive thinking, he refused to accept that prognosis, but his injury was severe enough that he spent the next three months in bed and then three months only moving around the house. During this time of enforced rest, he read books from his collection and took personal notes that applied to or helped explain Jeet Kune Do. After his death, Linda took the eight two-inch volumes of Bruce's notes and compiled them into The Tao of Jeet Kune Do (Black Belt Communications, Inc., 1975). After six months, Bruce slowly resumed working out, but his back gave him pain throughout the rest of his life. The Silent Flute is Silenced James Coburn and Sterling Silliphant began working with Bruce on a script for the "definitive martial arts movie." Warner Brothers stipulated that the film had to be made in India. (The studio had money their films earned in India that the Indian government wouldn't allow them to take out of the country.) Bruce, Coburn, and Silliphant flew to India to scout locations. The movie was titled The Silent Flute.

Warner Brothers gave it a below-par budget and hoped martial artists could be found in India to act in the film. No one there was up to speed, and eventually, Warner Brothers cancelled the project. Years later the film was made starring David Carradine and titled Circle of Iron, (1979). It bore little resemblance to the concept Bruce, Coburn, and Silliphant intended. Silliphant came through with a guest-star role on the television show he scripted: Longstreet. The first episode was so popular that Bruce was asked to repeat his role and did three more episodes. Returning to Hong Kong a Super Hero Before the scheduled filming, Bruce took a trip back to Hong Kong with Brandon to make arrangements for his mother to come back to live in the United States. Upon his arrival, fans mobbed him. He had no idea how famous he had become there. They had been running dubbed re-runs of The Green Hornet shows -- but under the title Kato. The media hounded him for interviews and the films he'd made as a child were being run on the Hong Kong's two television stations. Bruce was the quintessential showman and appeared on TV in demonstrations, telethons, and interview programs.

After he returned to the States, Hong Kong media kept in touch by telephone, and Hong Kong producers offered him many movie roles. Raymond Chow, owner of Golden Harvest Productions in Hong Kong, came through with an offer that Bruce accepted: $15,000 for two movies. In July 1971, Bruce flew to Hong Kong and then to Bangkok to begin filming The Big Boss (1971), (titled Fists of Fury in its US release that same year). The movie location was in a little village north of Bangkok called Pak Chong. Mosquitoes and cockroaches dominated the terrain and Bruce found it hard to expend energy in the stifling heat with the limited protein that could be found in the village. Golden Harvest Productions set up the family with a home in Hong Kong's Kowloon district during the contract, so Bruce moved his family out from L.A. Brandon started attending La Salle College, the same school his father had been kicked out of years before. The Big Boss was a smash hit. It broke the previously held box-office record for films in Hong Kong (The Sound of Music), and was a big success throughout Asia.

About this time, Bruce got news that The Warrior, the concept he'd come up with, was being made in the United States without him. Studio executives and producers didn't think a Chinese man would be accepted by American audiences and gave the role to David Carradine. The show was renamed "Kung Fu." The second film for Bruce's two-film contract was titled Fist of Fury (1972), (renamed The Chinese Connection for US release). It was shot in six weeks, and Bruce and the director, Lo Wei, had some differences of opinion during its filming. Lo Wei didn't like Bruce's input, viewing it as impertinent. This film broke the box office records of The Big Boss, and with its completion, made Bruce free to do whatever he wanted. Raymond Chow wanted to hold onto him, but there were offers coming in from all over the world. In talks, Chow agreed to a joint deal where Bruce and he partnered for a new company, Concord Productions. Bruce used his newfound power to immediately announce to the press, "No way, Lo Wei," and said the next film he would direct and write himself.

He began working on two scripts for new films, The Way of the Dragon, and The Game of Death. Game of Death After the filming of The Way of the Dragon, (renamed Return of the Dragon, [1972] for U.S. release), Bruce began to shoot scenes for his film, The Game of Death. Friend and student, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, told Bruce that he was going to be in Hong Kong, so Bruce met with him and asked him to be in his new movie. He agreed. Bruce was intrigued with shooting a fight scene with an adversary who was almost two feet taller than him. Fight scenes with Jabbar, his friend Dan Inosanto, and hapkido 7th degree blackbelt, Ji Han Jae, were filmed from August to October 1972. Filming was halted in November when talks were held with Warner Brothers to co-produce The Game of Death. It was going to become the first movie the U.S. and the Hong Kong Film industry ever co-produced. Bruce took a hand in all aspects of the filming, dialog, directing, choreography, editing, and design of both his movies.

In Return of the Dragon, he even played percussion in part of the movie soundtrack, and starred his own cat in a close-up in the Coliseum fight scene with Chuck Norris. Banking on future profits from Return of the Dragon, Bruce used money from Concord Productions to move into a house instead of the apartment they were living in. Filming for Enter the Dragon began in January 1973. Enter the Dragon Because of Hong Kong's loud street noise, all dialogue in Enter the Dragon outdoor scenes (and those of most other films made in the city) had to be dubbed over. During one such recording session on May 10, 1973, Bruce fainted in the restroom. It was sweltering hot in the studio, and the fans had had to be turned off during the recording. Upon return to the studio, Bruce collapsed again, vomited, and went into convulsions. He was taken to the hospital and given tests. A neurosurgeon gave him Manitol to help reduce brain swelling, which brought him back to consciousness. Another doctor said blood tests showed a possible kidney malfunction. Bruce flew to L.A. the following week for medical tests.

The doctors found absolutely nothing wrong and told him he was as healthy as an 18-year-old. It was decided Bruce had suffered a cerebral edema (swelling of the brain) in Hong Kong with an unexplained grand mal seizure. Bruce made plans to publicize Enter the Dragon on its release, including scheduling an August appearance on the Johnny Carson show to plug the movie, and then returned to Hong Kong. Exit the Dragon On July 20, 1973, Bruce was working with Raymond Chow on The Game of Death, and they drove to Betty Ting-Pei's apartment, the actor who would be playing the lead female role in the movie. They discussed the script together, then Chow left. Bruce complained of a headache, and Betty gave him an "Equagesic" pill, a strong prescription aspirin. At 7:30, Bruce said he didn't feel well and lay down in a bedroom. Chow called and asked them why they were late for dinner, and Betty said she couldn't wake Bruce. Chow came back to her apartment and tried to wake Bruce himself, but he could not. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for not being able to wake him.

A doctor was called to the apartment, and after 10 minutes of trying to bring him to consciousness, Bruce was taken to the hospital. Despite all efforts to revive him, including heart massage, he died there. Linda agreed to an autopsy. The only foreign substance found in Bruce's body was the Equagesic, but traces of marijuana were also found in his stomach. Bruce's brain was very swollen, but there were no blocked or broken blood vessels. The autopsy report concluded that the most likely cause of the brain swelling was a hypersensitivity or allergic reaction to aspirin, meprobamate (the Equagesic) or both. It stated that to ascribe the death to marijuana would be irrational. Coming Home to Seattle A funeral ceremony was held in Hong Kong on July 25, 1973, and 25,000 people crammed the streets and balconies outside the funeral parlor. Bruce Lee's body was displayed in an open coffin covered with glass to prevent anyone from touching him. Linda decided to bury Bruce in Seattle because she intended to live there. Most of Bruce's relatives were living in the United States by this time.

She flew with the casket back to Seattle and a second funeral was held at Butterworth's Funeral Home on East Pine Street. Bruce was buried in Lake View Cemetery (1554 15th Avenue E) on July 30, 1973. Bruce's pallbearers were Taky Kimura, Danny Inosanto, Peter Chin, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, and Bruce's brother, Robert Lee. James Coburn eulogized: "Farewell, Brother. It has been an honor to share this space in time with you. As a friend and a teacher, you have given to me, have brought my physical, spiritual and psychological selves together. Thank you. May peace be with you" (Lee). Coburn then removed the white gloves he had worn as the pallbearer and dropped them in the open grave. All the pallbearers did the same. Linda remained in Seattle for about a year, then returned to Los Angeles, where she worked as an elementary school teacher. Tragically, Brandon Lee died on March 31, 1993, on the set of The Crow (1994), killed by an improperly loaded stunt gun.

He is buried next to Bruce at Lake View Cemetery. Bruce's Seattle friend and student, Taky Kimura, maintains the gravesite. Enter the Dragon premiered on August 24, 1973, at Graumann's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. (Game of Death was released by Raymond Chow in 1978 with a badly disguised stand-in for its original star.) With this film, Bruce Lee became the "biggest Chinese star in the world," according to his plan, and he would become an "immortal" legend around the world. Sadly, he did not live to experience it. Bruce Lee, photo on book cover, ca. 1972 Courtesy The Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975) Bruce Lee's grave at Lake View Cemetery, 1992 Photo by Alan Stein

Question: In what city did Bruce Lee grow up?
Answer: Hong Kong