In around 1956, Bruce Lee entered St. Francis Xavier’s College (high school) in Hong Kong, where he was mentored by Brother Edward — a Catholic monk originally from Germany who spent his entire adult life in China and Hong Kong — as a teacher and coach of the school boxing team. Bruce Lee was drawn to the man and his teaching of the art of the fists. It could be said that Brother Edward is the “Man Behind the Man,” as mentor and guide of a willful and brute adolescent with both aristocratic and gymnastic roots.
In the spring of 1959, Lee got into yet another street fight and the police were called. Confirming the police’s fear that Bruce Lee’s fighting opponent this time had organized crime background and a possible contract was out for his life, in April 1959 his parents decided to send him to the United States to meet up with his older sister Agnes, who was already living with family friends in San Francisco. And the rest is history.
After moving to Seattle, Bruce worked for three years toward his degree at the University of Washington, but quit to move to Oakland. He was in pursuit of his own degree — black belt and global domination in the burgeoning martial arts industry. Surprisingly, Bruce struggled initially to gain prominence, as his fighting style and lack of self-discipline created error-prone matches filled with frustrating results. Gaining entrance as a guest at 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships, Bruce Lee’s name as an otherworldly physical creature began to take prominence in and out of the martial arts arena — two-finger pushups, one-inch punches, speed displays, and strength demonstrations stunned and wowed the crowds of onlookers. The legend of the Dragon had begun.
One note of sadness in the Bruce Lee legend is the initial cold-shoulder Bruce Lee received from Hollywood power-brokers in his efforts to gain work as an action star. According to statements made by Bruce Lee — and also by his wife, Linda Lee Cadwell after Bruce’s death — in 1971 Bruce pitched a television series of his own tentatively titled “The Warrior.” According to Cadwell, Lee’s concept was retooled and renamed Kung Fu, but Warner Brothers Studios gave Lee no credit. Instead, the role of the Shaolin monk in the Wild West, was awarded to then non-martial artist David Carradine because of the studio’s fears that a Chinese leading man would not be embraced by the public. Books and documentaries about the show Kung Fu dispute Cadwell’s version. According to these sources, the show was created by two writers and producers, Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander, and the reason Lee was not cast was in part because of his ethnicity but more so because he had a thick accent.
Bruce Kicking Seven-Foot Kareem.
Regardless, for his efforts as a Chinese-American to establish his race and ethnicity in the New America, and his incredible courage and spirit, Bruce Lee is a hero. He was described by Governor Arnold Schwarznegger — then Mr. Olympia — as the “most physically fit man I’ve ever seen, with the lowest body-fat percentage of any athlete I know.” The following quote is taken from the famous Bruce Lee documentary, Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey (2000):
“Be formless… shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle; it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot; it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend…“
Bruce Lee — badass hero. View the Official Bruce Lee Website.
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