# BRUCE LEE ....Way Back in '73



## RonPrice (May 5, 2014)

*BRUCE LEE*
*....Way Back in '73
*
Part 1:

After sleeping for 3 hours this evening, I had some toast, marmalade and coffee, then turned-on the TV. *The Bruce Lee Story* had just started.[SUP]1[/SUP] I watched about 10 minutes of this film, but was sufficiently stimulated to write this prose-poem.

Bruce Lee(1940-1973) was a master of the martial arts and considered the father of mixed martial-arts. He was a man in pursuit of mental and physical perfection, a legend among young men, so I was informed in a *New York Times* review which came out in the weeks after the film was first release in 1993.  Lee's mysterious death, twenty years before, in 1973, at the age of 32, made him an icon, a mythic-figure, in the same pop-cultural-tradition as: Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.

Lee is now, in the 21st century, widely considered by commentators, critics, media, and other martial artists, to be one of the most influential martial artists of all time.  He is often credited with helping to change the way Asians were presented in American films. He appeared in 5 films from 1971 to 1973.  At the time, I had just moved to Australia in my mid-20s. I was in the first years of my marriage and my teaching career. During those same years,  I was also secretary of two local Baha'i communities, one in Ontario and one in South Australia; in 1973 I became a chairman of a third Baha'i community in Australia's Barossa Valley, the same year as Lee's death.

Part 2:

I knew nothing of Bruce Lee back then.  I've never became one of his fans and, until this evening, I had seen none of his story on film.  In addition to his Dean-like early death, and limited filmic output--of which the $100-million-plus worldwide grosser *Enter the Dragon*, released three weeks after his death, is the only first-class production--Lee did much to popularize martial arts in the West. 

I did not know all this until this evening. Lee had a life-story that became the basis of this movie, *Dragon*.  I watched some 10 to 15 minutes of this TV quasi-doco this evening in Tasmania, as the autumn season was entering its last month.  The film was based on the 1983 book *Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew* by Linda Lee, Bruce Lee's widow. The book was, I am informed, a major source of the movie's script.   Other sources included *Bruce Lee*, a book by "Enter the Dragon" director Robert Clouse.   
Part 3:
Linda Lee's book tells of the San Francisco-born, Hong Kong-raised actor's unruly adolescence which included a passion for the cha-cha and incidents of public brawling.  It records his struggles as an Asian actor in the Hollywood of the '60s, particularly the bitterly disappointing loss, post-"Green Hornet," of the lead in the "Kung Fu" series to the white David Carradine. This loss prompted Lee's return to Hong Kong, where he quickly achieved film fame.[SUP]2 [/SUP]-Ron Price with thanks to [SUP]1"[/SUP]The Bruce Lee Story", *7Mate TV,* 11:30 to 2:00 a.m., 5 May 2014; and [SUP]2[/SUP]*Wikipedia*, 5/5/'14.

I learned most of the above
at several internet sites after
my curiosity was aroused in
the first minutes of watching
this quasi-Bruce-Lee-bio-pic.

Lee came into the public gaze
in my first years Downunder.
I was as busy as a proverbial 
beaver back in the early '70s,
rarely went to the movies, had 
no TV, & my life was swamped
by wall-to-wall people: teacher
in the day-time....people filling
my house in the evenings, & at
the weekend as the Baha'i Faith
went red-hot in a dog-biscuit of 
a town, Whyalla, back in 1972.

My marriage went cool & I skirted 
on the edges of a bipolar disorder 
that I did not know I had, as my 
career went on to higher & higher 
heights. Fame was writ-large in the
little rooms at the end of the Earth, 
as Bruce Lee went to the heights, & 
then to his early death: my marriage
died that same year/I was not yet 30!

Ron Price
5/5/'14


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