Bruce Lee

A dragon is born: From San Francisco to Hong Kong

That Lee was born on American soil was happenstance. His father, a Cantonese opera singer and part-time actor, was touring the U.S. as part of a troupe to fundraise for China’s war effort during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), and he was accompanied by his wife on a temporary visa. She gave birth to Lee in San Francisco in 1940—the fourth of five children the couple raised. Predominantly Han Chinese, Lee also had Dutch Jewish and possibly English ancestry on his mother’s side.

Before he was five months old, Lee and his parents returned to Hong Kong, whose streets he would call home until age 18. From an early age, Lee began appearing in films—sometimes alongside his father—frequently cast as a juvenile delinquent or street urchin. Lee’s first leading role came in the 1950 film My Son A-Chang (also known as The Kid), which was based on a comic book. He had acted in more than 20 films by 1960.

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A hell-raiser on the streets

As a teenager, Lee took up with local gangs and often engaged in street fights—a habit that worried his parents and caused trouble at school. Enthralled by outlawed, informally organized rooftop fights between kung fu schools, he took it upon himself to learn Wing Chun, a style that emphasizes close-quarters combat and quickfire punches, under martial arts teacher Ip Man. However, because some students took objection to a person of Eurasian ancestry being taught the Chinese art form, Lee was given solo lessons by an older student, Wong Shun Leung, for some time. Lee also took dance lessons, which further refined his footwork and balance. In 1958 Lee won a school-level boxing title and the Hong Kong cha-cha championship.

Return to America and the jeet kune do style

Lee’s incessant street fighting led to run-ins with the police, alarming his parents. They decided he needed to leave Hong Kong lest he end up in prison and sent him to live in the United States shortly after he turned 18. He lived with family friends in Seattle, earning his keep by working odd jobs at a Chinatown restaurant.

While in Seattle he opened a martial arts school, the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute, after informally teaching martial arts for a while. In the meantime he finished high school and studied philosophy and drama at the University of Washington, though he dropped out in 1964 to relocate to Oakland, California, where he founded a second school with a business partner.

It was about this time that Lee publicly championed the superiority of his Wing Chun-inspired techniques, which he viewed as better suited to practical street fights than the comparatively extravagant movements of classical kung fu. He publicly demonstrated the effectiveness of some of his moves, including his power-packed one-inch punch. Traditionalists were so incensed that a group of young martial artists challenged Lee to a duel, resulting in a much-mythologized fight between Lee and Wong Jack Man, a recent immigrant from Hong Kong who was well-versed in conventional kung fu. Though accounts vary on who won the fight, Lee was unhappy with the quality of his own performance. This motivated him to refine his style into what he termed jeet kune do (“the way of the intercepting fist”), a blend of ancient kung fu, fencing, boxing, and philosophy—which he began teaching instead of traditional martial arts. In Lee’s words, it was “the style of no style” that stressed economy of movement and the direct expression of emotion.

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The Green Hornet and celebrity classes

Lee’s kung fu demonstration at a Los Angeles-area karate tournament in 1964 drew the attention of a television producer, who cast him as the sidekick Kato in the television series The Green Hornet (1966–67). Though the show lasted only one season, it marked the first time Western audiences got a taste of serious kung fu onscreen, and Lee’s Kato was a huge hit among youngsters and budding martial artists in the U.S. Lee had difficulty finding acting jobs after The Green Hornet’s cancellation, and he began supplementing his income by giving private jeet kune do lessons to Hollywood stars, including Steve McQueen. In the 1969 film Marlowe, Lee received notice for a scene in which he destroyed an entire office through kickboxing and karate moves. He also appeared in a recurring role in the TV series Longstreet (1971–72), to which he also contributed fight choreography and writing.

Enter the Dragon: A winning run in Hong Kong and Hollywood immortality

The struggle to find suitable roles in Hollywood frustrated Lee, and he moved back to Hong Kong in 1971. He had found, to his surprise, that The Green Hornet had won him a fan following in the city, which opened doors for him in Hong Kong cinema. Lee starred in two films that broke box-office records throughout Asia. The first was Tang shan da xiong (1971; The Big Boss [Hong Kong English title], or Fists of Fury [U.S.]), which catapulted Lee to overnight fame as audiences embraced its realistic martial arts, including some choreographed by Lee. More than a quarter of Hong Kong’s estimated four million residents watched the film at the time. The next was Jing wu men (1972; Fist of Fury [Hong Kong English title], or The Chinese Connection [U.S.]), a nationalistic film that also featured a young Jackie Chan as a stuntman and extra.

Lee used his sudden box-office clout to form his own production company with producer Raymond Chow, who had also produced Lee’s first two Hong Kong films. Lee coproduced, directed, wrote, and starred in his next film, Meng long guo jiang (1972; The Way of the Dragon [Hong Kong English title], or Return of the Dragon [U.S.]). The film’s standout sequence had Lee squaring off against actor Chuck Norris, a top American karate champion and Lee’s close friend. Lee’s following film, Enter the Dragon (1973), was the first joint venture between Hong Kong- and U.S.-based production companies, and it became a worldwide hit, thrusting Lee into international movie stardom.