by Meyers, Ric
All three men would become influential in the American martial arts movie market, but it would be Bruce who created the market the other men would enter. The man who put Lee’s foot in the door was Ed Parker. He had filmed Bruce’s performance at the internationals, and showed them to his student, Jay Sebring, who, in turn, showed them to William Dozier, who needed a “Kato” for the show he was planning to produce in 1966. Dozier was riding high with the success of Batman (1966-1968), a series that camped up Bob Kane’s famous comic-book character. The ABC-TV network wanted another silly superhero to follow on the “Caped Crusader’s” heels, and Dozier chose George W. Trendle and Fran Striker’s popular radio character — the somewhat generic masked master crime fighter known as The Green Hornet.
Behind the mask was Britt Reid, created by Trendle and Striker as the grandnephew of John Reid, better known as the Lone Ranger (also created by Striker and Trendle). Fortunately for Bruce Lee, Dozier did not eliminate the character of Britt’s Asian manservant and chauffeur, Kato (originally Japanese but made Korean in movie serials produced during World War II). Kato piloted the Green Hornet’s heavily armed and high-octaned supercar, “The Black Beauty,” through battles against crime. Dozier wisely decided to downplay the camp aspects of the Batman show for his new baby, but the network had other ideas.
Much to Bruce’s satisfaction, he passed a now-famous screen test and was cast as Kato — forever changing the character to Chinese. The Green Hornet (1966-1967) began production with high hopes and good intentions, but it soon became clear that ABC wanted a brightly colored, cutsie clone of the popular series it had already begun to beat into the ground. The only time the new show took off was when Bruce Lee did. More than the Green Hornet’s guns (which shot gas and needles) and his armor-plated car, what sold the show to its young audience was Lee’s kung fu.
Whenever Kato got out from behind the wheel and started kicking, the show started clicking. But as Mike Stone noted, “They had to restrain Bruce as Kato, because there was a star.” That star was Van Williams, made famous by two previous TV detective series: Bourbon Street Beat (1959-1960) and Surfside Six (1960-1962). Ironically, however, it was Williams who was Lee’s most vocal advocate.
“Both Bruce and I wanted Britt and Kato to be more like partners,” Williams told me. But the network turned a deaf ear. Neither campy nor serious, The Green Hornet series was cancelled after only one season. But, by that time, Lee had developed his own form of kung fu — Jeet Kune Do — the Way of the Intercepting Fist. What many saw as pure egoism was actually a time-honored tradition of personalizing kung fu to your own personality and physiology. Jeet kune do was only a name, as far as Bruce was concerned — a label which seemingly came to annoy him.
At first it was known as jun fan gung fu. Then it became the Confucian “Bruce Lee’s Tao of Chinese Gung Fu — Using No Way As Way, Having No Limitation As Limitation.” By any name, it was Lee’s unique, effective method of fighting, which stressed continual improvement and the joy derived there-from. “Practice seriously,” he said, “but don’t seriously practice.” In other words, work for the love of it, and stay flexible.
By the time The Green Hornet’s stinger was removed in 1967, Lee had experienced a series of both setbacks and breakthroughs. His father had died in 1965, but his son Brandon had been born the same year. He attended his father’s funeral in Hong Kong but returned to Los Angeles to pursue stardom. There he attracted a notable stable of students for jeet kune do, leading to schools in L.A., Oakland, and even Seattle. His fame as a teacher led to more television roles, on the likes of Ironside (1967-1975), and movie jobs (technical advisor on The Wrecking Crew (1969), a 007 satire starring Dean Martin as American secret agent Matt Helm.
He suffered through a somewhat degrading guest-starring role in the 1969 movie Marlowe, in which he played a Chinese villain paid to intimidate private eye Philip Marlowe (James Garner) with his superlative kung fu skill — culminating in Bruce doing a kick, straight up, to destroy a light hanging from the ceiling. His demise in the movie was as imbecilic as the lamp kick was impressive. After having his manhood taunted by Marlowe from a precarious position on a balcony ledge, Lee irrationally launches a flying kick, then plummets to his death when Marlowe merely steps aside.
Lee was treated better back on television, as his student, scripter Sterling Silliphant, wrote an episode of the series Longstreet (1971-1972) specifically for him. Titled “The Way of the Fist,” it portrayed Lee’s character teaching the hero, a blind insurance investigator, how to defend himself against a bunch of muggers. Lee spoke eloquently of kung fu and the mental composure necessary to master it. The two portrayals were perfect bookends — one all flash and the other all substance. While few in the United States were overly impressed, Hong Kong was buzzing.
The Green Hornet had premiered there three years after its premiere in the United States, and Lee took the opportunity to promote himself to the Chinese audience. Legend has it that a kung fu display during a HK talk show so impressed Raymond Chow, head of Golden Communications Company Limited (otherwise known as Golden Harvest) that he signed Lee to a contract to do a movie called The Big Boss, directed by Lo Wei. The legend was a bit misleading. The more credible story is that almost every major Hong Kong film company bid for Bruce’s participation, but after almost a year Raymond Chow secured the actor-teacher’s services to make the movie, on location, in Thailand.
Thailand was a warning location. When American producers want to save money, they film in Canada or Mexico. When Hong Kong producers thought they had an iffy proposition, they trundled the cast and crew to Thailand. After all, director Wei had seen better days. Starting his career in the early 1950s, by the time he got saddled with Bruce Lee, he had settled comfortably into the status quo.
The nicest thing you could call mid-60s kung fu films was moribund. Female stars portraying male flying swordsmen were still the order of the day, and, while Huang Fei-hong was still in there kicking, he was doing so less and less. If actual kung fu was being used on screen at all, it was the artificial, unconvincing, sort reviewers Bill and Karen Palmer termed “swingy arms.” And, to Lo Wei’s mounting frustration, Bruce Lee refused to play along. The director was credited with the script about a young man banished to Thailand to work in an ice factory after his mother had exacted a promise from him not to fight. The Big Boss (1971) turned out to reflect many Lee images that would recur throughout his painfully short career.
The “Big Boss” of the title, played by Han Ying-chieh (who was also credited as the kung fu choreographer, a position he held on many of King Hu’s classics) is using the ice factory as a front for drug running. When Lee gets too close to the truth, the bosses first try to buy him off, then seduce him with wine and women, and finally try to kill him. But instead of taking on the bad guys with loads of swingy arms and low, awkward kicks, Bruce adamantly refused to do more than just a few moves. Wei angrily summoned Raymond Chow to Thailand, complaining that the crew had derisively nicknamed Bruce “three kick Lee.” Bruce’s explanation: “No one would survive more than three of my kicks.”
Chow watched the footage. He returned to Hong Kong after instructing Wei: “Do it Bruce’s way.”
Although Wei and Han still had on-screen credit for the direction and action, the best portions of The Big Boss are clearly accreditable to Bruce. After the bad guys kill all his friends, Lee explodes with a barely controlled rage that thrilled audiences. The scene is now considered a classic. Lee finds the drugs embedded in ice. He is surrounded by about twenty knife-, club-, and chain-wielding thugs in the eerie, red-lit icehouse interior. With mounting anger clearly etched on his face, he takes the villains apart in a battle that combines dramatic action with nearly cartoon-like violence (the latter of which Lee only reluctantly acquiesced to).
From that climactic scene, Lee created an uncharacteristically cathartic one. Upon finding his dead friends, he takes a scene to comprehend his heartbreak and responsibility, making the fight
-filled finale all the more effective. Lee races to the Big Boss’ palatial estate to take on the main bad guy and all his minions. It is on the lawn of the mansion where the two antagonists have a knife fight, showcasing two more Lee trademarks — the wounds that inspire Lee on to greater heights of heroism, and the tension-building pauses that add to Lee’s ground-breaking on-screen style.
When Lee is cut by the Big Boss’ blade, he stops, tastes the blood, and moves forward, always letting the tension build. And The Big Boss represented the first time moviegoers heard Lee’s now trademark animal screeches. All three main filmmakers — Chow, Wei, and Lee — were happy enough with the results to immediately start on a follow-up. The trio were already at work on a second movie when word came in: The Big Boss was a gigantic, galvanizing success. Made for only $100,000, it earned five times that much in Hong Kong alone. Bruce Lee was now, officially, a star, and he fully intended to take advantage of it.
Fist of Fury (1972) is again credited to Lo Wei as writer/director and Han Ying-chieh as choreographer … but there’s no mistaking who the real big boss was (in fact, Lee made a habit of working on films with directors who never again made anything nearly as good as the movie they made featuring Bruce). This time the crew had the Golden Harvest Studios as home base and a budget befitting their star’s talents. Allegedly Lee even called on the services of the great I Kuang, a stunningly prolific and polished film writer, to punch up the script (all puns intended).
The Chinese usually made movies the way some people make cars — on an assembly line. With such a gigantic population to supply, Hong Kong filmmakers in the early 1970s could wrap up a normal production in seventy-two hours, a “big-budget extravaganza” in a week. Fist of Fury premiered in Hong Kong less than five months after The Big Boss, but proved to be at least twice the picture. It may have cost twice as much, but it made at least twice as much as well.
Lee makes it clear from the very outset that a new age of filmmaking, fight choreography, and screen acting had dawned. When the audience first sees him — playing the now legendary character of Chen Zhen, student of kung fu sifu Huo Yuan-jia — he is so overcome with grief at the death of his master that he leaps into the grave and onto the coffin, clawing and crying. From then on, his body becomes an extension of his character. Set in the Shanghai of the late 1920s, the film depicts a society in which the Chinese are all but spit upon by the occupying Japanese. Using a series of disguises, including a rickshaw driver and, in a delightful turn, a grinning, mincing phone repairman, Lee discovers the murderers and takes them apart.
Within the seemingly simple story, Lee invested a wealth of invention and imagination. But what truly set the film apart was the fierce sense of identity Lee infused the movie with. As great as so many scenes are, the one that changed everything for Hong Kong kung fu films takes place outside a park. There, Chen Zhen is prevented from entering, and made aware of a sign reading “No Dogs or Chinese.” A kimonoed Japanese (played by Sammo Hung and Jackie Chan’s Peking Opera school classmate Yuen Wah) offers to escort him in … if Chen crawls between the Japanese’s legs like a dog.
Lee levels him, then does a Marlowe-esque kick to shatter the “No Dogs or Chinese” sign. I’ve been told by those lucky enough to have seen the film’s original run in Hong Kong cinemas that they had never sensed such a mass triumphant psychological release before or since. But Lee wasn’t done with them yet. The climatic moment in a movie filled with climatic moments came when Lee destroys a calligraphy that reads “The Chinese Are the Weaklings of Asia.”
The icing on the cake was Bruce’s introduction of the nunchaku — two small clubs joined by a short length of chain. Lee supposedly learned the particular nunchaku skill with his star student Daniel Inosanto. However he learned it, he had chosen a particularly cinematic, esoteric weapon with which to dazzle viewers. To see Lee swirl and spin the sticks with ridiculous ease was to experience pure enchantment — despite the fact that the nunchaku is one of the least effective martial art weapons in the arsenal (given its difficulty of true control). It sure looks great though, doesn’t it?
Fist of Fury ends by freeze-framing on a tremendous leap by Lee, seemingly right into his persecutors’ bullets, defiant to the end. To say the Hong Kong audience went crazy would be an understatement. Unlike Huang Fei-hong, Lee did not turn the other cheek or remain humble and unassuming. He stood up and shouted, “I’m Chinese and proud of it!” Then, perhaps even more importantly (certainly to his eventual international audience), he backed it up with on-screen kung fu skill hitherto fore unseen by anyone.
Seeing even Kwan Tak-hing take on his movie adversaries with rhythmic certainty couldn’t compare with Bruce’s electric power. No one could. It was like comparing a dancing bear to Fred Astaire. Bruce’s kung fu clout, control and command was instantly identifiable as the real deal, and once audiences saw the real deal, they wouldn’t settle for less. Seemingly overnight, kung fu cinema convulsed into its first real era.
Lee was not about to rest on his laurels. No more Wei or Han. After creating his own Concord Productions, he struck a deal with Golden Harvest to co-produce his next film — which Lee would star, direct, write, and choreograph (officially). Way of the Dragon (1972) opened in Hong Kong just nine months after Fist of Fury. Essentially, this is Bruce Lee’s last film. It is certainly the only film he completely controlled, and the only film in which his approach was primary. In it he played unassuming, but fiercely patriotic and surprisingly clever, Tang Lung, who travels to Rome to help relatives run a Chinese restaurant.
Although the first part of the movie chronicles largely humorous “stranger in a strange land” confrontations with the locals (including a child and a prostitute), Lee slowly strips his character of his surface naiveté to reveal a supremely capable hero beneath. First Tang Lung shows the other restaurant employees the superiority of “Chinese boxing” in an alley behind the restaurant. But when racketeers arrive looking for protection money, the lessons become more pointed. He teaches the derisive, arrogant thugs a comparative lesson in a nicely structured fight that culminates with the reappearance of the nunchaku. Probably the sharpest moment here is when the hoods’ leader manages to grab it. At first he seems to think that it will imbue him with some sort of magical power, but he winds up knocking himself out with it.
All this is achieved, essentially silently, and is a mark of Lee’s skill as a film director (as is his use — obvious in the Hong Kong edition, but steamrolled by subsequent U.S. dubbing — of different languages … the Chinese and Italians literally can’t understand one another). The next major step forward Way of the Dragon takes is in allowing the appearance of guns. Guns could sound the death knell of kung fu movies because no matter how skillful one is, no martial artist can fight a bullet (a lesson the Boxer Rebellioners learned the hard way). Lee confronts that problem in this movie, Kato-style, by having his character make wooden darts that he hurls into his enemies’ hands. It is the most unlikely technique in the picture, but at least Lee attempted to deal with this particularly sticky genre drawback.
Tang Lung repeatedly stymies the Mafioso’s takeover attempts, so the big boss decides to fight fire with fire — calling in one Japanese and two American martial artists. Two of them, played by Wang Ing-sik and Bob Wall, pretty much take care of the restaurant employees. The final American is flown in especially to take on Tang Lung. It is Lee’s old California friend Chuck Norris, in his first major screen role. The two face each other in the Roman Coliseum, using their real skills, with all the graciousness and solemnity of honor-bound warriors, in the most realistic empty-handed martial art fight ever filmed to that date.
Lee smartly infuses this serious, yet exciting, scene with small humorous touches, supplied by a mute kitten that witnesses the fight, and Norris’ own abundant body hair. Another change in Lee’s approach is in the ending — he is neither arrested nor killed. Instead, it looks as if he will settle down with the romantic lead (played in all three Lee films by the lov
ely Nora Miao), only to suddenly pack up and go.
“In this world of guns and knives, wherever Tang Lung may go, he will always travel on his own,” is the last line. And travel Bruce Lee did. All the way back to America. There, two projects were being created just for him. One was Enter the Dragon (1973), produced by Fred Weintraub, who had seen some of the those “swingy-arm” kung fu films, and “loved the last ten minutes, when the hero would take on an army of crooks and defeat them all bare-handed. I was certain a hugely successful American movie could be made.
“I went to Hong Kong and saw Bruce’s films,” he told me, “and brought one back to show Ted Ashley [then chairman of the board at Warner Brothers]. If it wasn’t for Ted, the movie would have never gotten made. I had half the money, but everybody else had turned me down — including other executives at Warners. But Ted asked me what I needed, and then said, ‘Go ahead.’”
Weintraub and co-producer Paul Heller cut a deal with Lee’s Concord Productions, then worked with Lee and novice screenwriter Michael Allin on the script. Robert Clouse was chosen as director on the strength of the thrilling, brutal fight scenes in the otherwise mishandled Darker Than Amber (1970), and, because, in Weintraub’s words, “Nobody else wanted to direct the picture except him.”
The story was James Bond by way of Fu Manchu. An unnamed espionage agency asks a Shaolin Temple teacher named Lee to compete at a martial-arts tournament in order to infiltrate an island off Hong Kong lorded over by a Shaolin renegade. Lee goes to the island in the company of Williams, a cocky black fighter, and Roper, a gambler — both of whom are in trouble with the law. Once on the island, they face the evil Han (named after Han Ying-chieh, perhaps?) — a stereotype with a fake, interchangeable hand, a small army of guards, and a jail filled with drug addicts, slaves, and white slavery victims.
