Against All Odds: My Story

by Norris, Chuck

  Priscilla Presley called one day saying she wanted to study karate. I knew that Elvis was one of Ed Parker's black belts in kenpo karate, so I asked Priscilla, “Why would you not want to study with Ed?”

  “Ed can't teach me because he is Elvis's private trainer, as well as his personal bodyguard,” she explained.

  That didn't make sense to me, but I wasn't going to argue with Elvis! I happily took Priscilla as a student. Priscilla came to her first lesson wearing a gi but looking like she had just stepped out of a women's fashion magazine, nonetheless. She was beautiful even when she perspired! She worked hard and was serious about her training, which usually started with stretching lessons to loosen and warm up the muscles. Then I taught her some basic kicks. Priscilla had studied ballet and was able to execute high kicks with ease, force, and precision.

  When we began free-style sparring, I put a boxer's head guard on her. Priscilla took it off. “I won't have one of these on in the street,” she said.

  “Good point.”

  Once she even insisted upon going out into the alley behind the studio to work out with high-heeled shoes because, she said, that was what she usually wore, and if she were ever accosted, that's probably what she'd be wearing. She was amazingly practical about her studies in martial arts, and she learned quickly and well; she is definitely not a woman to be trifled with!

  By now I had received enough publicity as a karate fighter and teacher to attract some attention in the press, which resulted in more new students, some new friends, and even a new relative! One evening, my assistant told me that my cousin Neal Norris from Houston, Texas, was on the phone.

  “I'm at Santa Monica Hospital,” Neal said. “I was in town competing in a rodeo, and I got hurt riding a bronc.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that,” I said politely, as I tried in vain to place him in my memory.

  “Is there any chance of you coming by to see me?” Neil asked.

  I said that I would drop by the hospital after I finished teaching. When I arrived at the hospital, Neal was waiting for me in the lobby. He walked up to me and hugged me. “Hey, Cuz!” he said, with his arm still around me.

  Even after seeing Neal, I still couldn't place him, but I have a lot of cousins, and he did look like a Norris, so I asked him what his plans were.

  “I'm going to find a cheap hotel room, spend the night, and fly home in the morning.”

  “Why don't you spend the night at our house, and I'll take you to the airport tomorrow?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Not at all. My wife will be happy to have you stay with us, and you can meet our kids.”

  We arrived home just as Dianne was putting Mike and Eric to bed. As soon as they learned that their cousin was a real cowboy, the boys asked if they could stay up a little longer. They listened wide-eyed as Neal mesmerized them with stories about his life as a bronco rider.

  Dianne finally got the boys to bed and had prepared the guest room for Neal, when Mom called.

  “Hey, Mom. Guess what? Cousin Neal is visiting.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Yeah, he took a bad spill at the rodeo and needed a place to stay.”

  “Oh, really? Can I talk to him?”

  “Sure, Mom. Here he is.” I passed the phone to Neal, and he began talking with Mom. After about two minutes of conversation, Neal handed the phone back to me. We said good-night, and Dianne showed him to our guest bedroom. I picked up the conversation with Mom after Dianne and Neal had gone upstairs.

  “I don't know who that man is, but he's not your cousin,” Mom said.

  “What?”

  “You don't have a cousin named Neal,” Mom informed me.

  When I relayed the news to Dianne, she freaked. “Get him out of the house immediately!” she cried.

  “Dianne, it's late,” I said. “We can't just throw him out.”

  “But he's an imposter!”

  “I know, I know. But let him spend the night, and I'll drive him to the airport in the morning.”

  Dianne reluctantly agreed, but she insisted on bringing the boys into our bedroom for the night and locking the door. Great, I thought, now we're prisoners in our own home.

  The next morning, as I drove Neal to the airport, I told him that I knew he wasn't a cousin.

  “You're right,” he admitted, “but my last name is Norris, and I feel like we really are related.”

  I just rolled my eyes. At the airport Neal told me he was flat broke. I gave him twenty dollars and then pulled away from the curb, never expecting to hear from Neal again.

  A few hours later, while I was teaching at the Los Angeles studio, my brother Aaron called from the Santa Monica school. “Cousin Neal is here, and I'm taking him to lunch,” he said.

  “I don't think you want to do that.”

  When I told Aaron about my experience with “Cousin Neal,” and that Neal Norris wasn't really a relative, he retorted, “Why don't you ever tell me what's going on?” Aaron ran Neal off the premises.

  But that wasn't the end of the story. About a week later I began receiving bills from various stores where Neal had charged clothes to me. Soon after I straightened that mess out, John Robertson called from his school in San Diego to tell me that Cousin Neal had dropped by and signed autographs for all the students!

  Is this never going to end? I asked myself. Fortunately it did because I never heard from or about Neal again.

  (Neal, if you're reading this … don't even think about it!)

  Besides turning up long lost “relatives,” my martial arts reputation resulted in some interesting requests for my expertise. David Glickman, a close friend of mine and one of the top trial attorneys in the country, was asked to defend a man who had come home from work one day and caught his wife in bed with another man. The husband went to a dresser drawer and got out a gun. The lover jumped out of bed. The husband, who knew that the lover was a black belt in karate, shot and killed him.

  David planned his defense along the lines that a black belt practitioner's karate skill is considered to be a deadly weapon, and the husband acted in self-defense. David called me, and I agreed to be a professional witness for the defense.

  On the day of the trial, I was called to the witness stand for cross-examination by the assistant district attorney.

  “Do you expect the court to believe that a black belt in karate would have a chance against a man with a gun?” he asked me.

  “It's possible,” I said. “It would depend on the distance.”

  “How about ten feet?” the DA asked.

  “If the gun was not already cocked and aimed, I believe it is possible.”

  The attorney asked me to step down from the witness stand and wait in front of the jury. He walked over to the bailiff and asked him to remove the cartridges from his gun and give it to him. The DA joined me in front of the jury with the empty gun in his hand. He made a show of pacing off ten feet and then faced me, saying, “I'd like you to stop me before I can cock and fire the gun.”

  Holy cow! I thought. What have I gotten myself into? I was wearing a suit with tight-fitting trousers and street shoes, not an ideal outfit for demonstrating karate kicks! I looked at the district attorney standing rather arrogantly at the front of the courtroom. OK, I thought. You asked for it.

  The DA held the gun at his side and instructed the bailiff to tell us when to begin. The bailiff shouted, “Now!”

  Before the DA could cock and fire the gun, I had my foot on his chest. I didn't want to follow through with the kick because I didn't want to hurt him.

  The DA was nonplussed. “Let's do it again,” he said. “My thumb slipped.”

  The bailiff gave the word. Once more I had my foot on the DA's chest before he could cock and fire the gun.

  Bob Wall and I then broke some boards right there in the courtroom to demonstrate the power of karate kicks.

  The defendant was convicted of manslaughter instead of first-degree murder.

  I
n mid-July 1973, Bruce Lee called to tell me he was in Los Angeles for the day and wanted to get together for lunch. He'd been living and working on films in Hong Kong, so I was excited to see him and catch up. Bob Wall and I met Bruce in Chinatown at one of his favorite restaurants.

  Bruce seemed to be his usual ebullient self, but in our conversation he revealed the real reason for his being back in LA. He had mysteriously passed out several times while working on a movie in Hong Kong. The doctors there couldn't determine what was causing the problem, so Bruce had scheduled a checkup at a well-known hospital in Los Angeles. “I passed with flying colors,” he crowed. “The doctors said that I have the insides of an eighteen-year-old.”

  I had to admit that Bruce looked great. Slender and strong, at thirty-two years of age he looked to be in perfect physical condition. But I was puzzled. “Well, if you're doing so well, what do the doctors think caused you to pass out?”

  Bruce stopped short between bites. “Stress, I guess,” he mumbled. “Overworked, overtired. What's new?”

  Bruce passed off my inquiry and turned the conversation to the enthusiastic reception his soon-to-be-released movie, Enter the Dragon, was receiving. “This is going to be big,” Bruce said, “and I've already received offers from several studios for more movie projects. They're offering me blank checks. ‘Just fill in the amount and cash them,’ they're saying. Can you believe it?”

  I could believe it. I'd always believed that Bruce was going to be a superstar. I had no idea that he'd soon become a legend.

  Bruce flew back to Hong Kong, and four days later I heard the devastating news that he had fallen over dead. I didn't want to believe that. I had just seen him so vibrantly alive, the picture of health, excitement, and happiness. How could it be?

  Rumors regarding the mysterious nature of Bruce's shocking death flew back and forth across the Pacific faster than the jets that could carry them. Some reports claimed that Bruce had died with marijuana in his system, prompting questions about drug usage. Others suggested that Bruce's well-known experimentation with steroids may have led to his death. More outlandish stories hinted that Bruce may have been murdered, deliberately dealt a mortal blow by a hired killer, an expert in Oriental assassination techniques. Some of the proposed explanations for Bruce's demise seemed plausible; most were ridiculous. Perhaps the rumor mill was simply the world's way of trying to come to grips with the reality that none of us is guaranteed the next five seconds. Life is a gift from God.

  At the time the official cause of death presented by the coroners in Hong Kong was “cerebral edema caused by a hypersensitive reaction to a headache-tablet ingredient,” similar to the rare but all-too-real reaction that some individuals have to bee stings. American doctors regarded the cause of death as a brain aneurysm.

  Bruce was buried in Seattle, and because of his strong affinity with the Chinese community, a funeral service was also conducted in Hong Kong, attended by more than twenty thousand grieving fans. I attended another memorial service held in San Francisco, flying to the service with Bob Wall, Steve McQueen, and James Coburn, who had stared in the film Our Man Flint. James was one of Bruce's private karate students, and he delivered a moving eulogy of his teacher.

  Following the service, Bob, Steve, James, and I flew back to Los Angeles together, but the trip home was extremely quiet. Each of us seemed immersed in our thoughts, pondering the message to us in Bruce's death. There he was, in prime condition, at the top of his career, and suddenly, it was over. Sure, he had accomplished his goal of becoming the most recognizable martial artist in the world, as well as his goal of becoming a major film star, but so what? Tell that to his wonderful wife and two young children he left behind.

  To me Bruce's death was a powerful reminder of the fragility of life. More than that, it was a wake-up call for me. It reminded me that as much as I believed in self-determination and fulfilling my own destiny, I was not the person in charge. God was. More than ever I wanted my life to be about things that mattered not merely for a moment but for eternity.

  “God has plans for you,” I could hear my mom saying.

  CHAPTER 14

  POWER UNDER CONTROL

  Sometimes knowing when to walk away from something is almost as important as knowing how to get started. At thirty-four years of age, I had held the world karate champion title for six consecutive years. I didn't have the intense desire needed to fight again, so I decided to pour myself into teaching martial arts. Whether my decision was greatly influenced by Bruce Lee's death or simply the desire to go out on top, I can't say for sure, but I officially retired from karate competitions in 1974. I stepped out of the ring as the six-time World Professional Middle-weight Champion.

  I loved teaching, but I missed the constant challenges I faced in my opponents. Even in the teaching studio, though, I sometimes had to deal with challenging situations off the mat as well as on.

  While teaching a class one night, I noticed a husky, powerfully built man enter the school. He looked to be in his mid-twenties. He sat down in a chair and pinned me with his eyes, giving off hostile vibes. I nodded to the man to let him know that I was aware of his presence, but he continued to glare at me. I felt a problem might be in the offing.

  I asked one of my black belts to take over the class, walked over to the visitor, stuck out my hand and said, “Hi, my name is Chuck Norris.” He shook my hand reluctantly. I sat down next to him and said, “I'm in the middle of a class right now, but if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them when I'm finished.”

  He grunted something, and I went back to take over the class. But his eyes never left me. I was certain he had come in looking for an altercation. When the class was over, I returned to him and casually resumed our conversation.

  Although his eyes were still cold and hostile, I kept mine warm and friendly. I believe in making eye contact with people because they can read you. Usually you get what you give, and if your body language is nonthreatening, you can usually avoid a conflict. We talked further, and I could sense his animosity slowly dissipating.

  Finally, he said, “You know, you're really a down-to-earth guy, Norris. I thought you were going to be a real jerk. But I'm glad to see you're cool.” He reached for my hand, shook it, and left.

  Had I gone to him and said, “What's your problem, buddy?” there probably would have been one.

  I have always felt that it's just as easy to make a friend as it is to make an enemy. I believe that if I can avoid a potential problem situation, life is a lot better for all concerned. If you pit negative force against negative force, there will always be a collision. Even if you win, you still lose.

  Ideally martial arts training should help a person avoid physical altercations and other adverse confrontations. Studies have repeatedly shown that muggers and other social predators study potential victims for signs of weakness, some indication that they can be taken advantage of. Usually this has to do with the way a person carries himself or herself. But someone adept at the martial arts moves and walks with a certain confidence. They seem to exude a physical and psychological attitude of strength, awareness, and preparedness. This attitude has little to do with the size or physical appearance of the person. It is power under control.

  Personally, I have never had to use martial arts in a dangerous, life-threatening situation. My friends tell me that part of that can be explained by the look that I get in my eyes when I get angry. I'm not aware of doing anything differently, and I'm not even sure that I could reproduce that look under ordinary circumstances, but I've lived with it long enough now to know that my friends are right. I'm a really easy-going guy most of the time, but when someone pushes me too far and hits that anger button, apparently I get a certain look that says, “You better back off.”

  I don't feel it, but my friends tell me, “It's a look that you give, a look like you are going to kill.”

  In the few times in my life when I've been in potentially dangerous situations, that look alone has c
aused challengers to back off. Apparently they pick up on that look in my eye and decide that they better start working their way out of the confrontation, and I always give them a way out. Consequently I've never had to use my martial arts abilities to hurt someone or to defend myself in an attack.

  I think Jesus exhibited a similar power under control. Although Jesus was never a martial artist that I know of (although that scene when he chased the money changers out of the temple comes pretty close!), Jesus exuded a confidence that came from inner strength; he is the ultimate example of power under control. Reading the records of his activities, it's obvious that even when he was being accosted or attacked, he was always in charge. All the way to the crucifixion, he willingly allowed the soldiers to take him to the cross. They didn't take his life; he gave it up. That is power under control.

  Ironically Jesus described himself as “gentle and meek”; he was a truly humble person. In our society today many people misconstrue meekness as weakness, humility as a lack of power or strength. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  Having a humble and gentle spirit does not mean that a person is weak. It means that a person does not have to put up a fake wall of arrogance or aloofness, trying to give the impression that they are “tough.” Many times their veneer of toughness is a façade, a thinly disguised attempt to hide their insecurities and fears of failure.

  True humility results from an inner strength and a faith that give you the confidence to display that quality without your self-esteem suffering. A Christian can have a humble spirit yet also have a compelling drive to succeed in his or her endeavors.

  My mom is a prime example of a person who combines a strong faith in God with a humble, gentle spirit. Mom never preached at her family or at anyone else that I know. But she modeled true Christianity—in the best of conditions and in the worst of times. She demonstrated her faith on a daily basis. To this day people often go to my mom with their problems because they know she cares. To Mom each troubled person with whom she talks provides her the opportunity to share what God has done in her life. Mom's life is a true example of strength and power under control.