10 Fascinating Things You Didn't Know About Bruce Lee

Image via Complex Original

For Asians, Bruce's films hit a nerve—they tap into a raw mixture of aggressiveness and ethnic pride. Reportedly, one particular scene in The Chinese Connection inspired spontaneous applause from Chinese audiences. It's the scene when Bruce's character comes across that nasty sign outside Huangpu Park—the one that reads "No Dogs and Chinese Allowed."

Rather than submit himself to humiliation at the hands of the Japanese, Bruce kicks their asses and then breaks the sign with a flying kick. This scene had its basis in real history—Chinese citizens really were restricted from this Shanghai park during the years of British and Japanese occupation.

Here's a weird fact, but it makes sense if you think about it. Bruce was a decorated cha-cha dancer— apparently, being light on your feet can translate to a wide variety of disciplines. He was the 1958 Hong Kong champion. On the boat over to America in 1959, Bruce taught the cha-cha to fellow passengers. Although he started the voyage sleeping in the bowels of the ship, he got upgraded to first class for his teaching efforts. Now that's resourcefulness.

Bruce severely injured his back in 1970—he was performing a weight lifting move called a 'good morning,' and he tweaked his sacral nerve. As a result, Bruce could not perform many of the aerial moves that he is famous for in Enter The Dragon, such as the forward flip in the O'Hara fight scene. Instead, stuntmaster Yuen Biao (who was also close friends with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung) performed these acrobatic moves. Yuen Biao would later double for Bruce in the posthumous Game of Death as well.

It's an iconic moment in Enter The Dragon: after what might be the most lopsided fight in the history of kung fu, Bruce Lee, with an incredible, running side kick, knocks karate master Bob Wall flat on on his ass. They ran several takes of this, and Wall, a consummate professional, encouraged Bruce to make it look and feel as real as possible. On the sixth or seventh take, Bruce kicked Wall so hard that when he fell back, he broke an extra's arm. One can only imagine how Wall's torso felt for the next several days.

Could you afford to be trained by the Master? Bruce took on very few pupils—according to screenwriter and friend Stirling Silliphant, he had a training center in Los Angeles, with no signage or outside decorations. Stirling claimed that Bruce charged $250 an hour—that's close to $1,500 per hour in today's money.

"He didn't charge these prices just for the sake of charging, but to place value on his instruction," Silliphant said. "It was an Asian attitude—a way of showing that the lesson has worth, and the fee is merely the token of this, not the point of it." Among Bruce's most famous clients was Chuck Norris, who convinced Lee that high kicks could be valuable in combat.

Bruce was an ass-kicking machine, but don't let that fool you—the Dragon was more than a pair of legs and a pair of arms. Bruce was born in San Francisco's Chinatown, and even though he spent the majority of his childhood in Hong Kong, he moved back to his home country to attend college. He enrolled in the University of Washington, where he majored in Philosophy and was, according to his art teacher, a talented sketch artist.

This knowledge would come in handy when he published his first book, Chinese Gung-Fu: The Philosophical Art of Self Defense—a hybrid of martial arts instruction and philosophy. A second book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, was compiled from his notes and published posthumously.

The Bruce Lee 'facts' that you find on the Internet—that he could catch rice midair with chopsticks, that he could snatch a coin out of a person's palm before it closed—are unverified, and seem too unreal to be true. This fact, however, has been confirmed, and is no less unbelievable. One of Bruce's first Hollywood roles was as Kato in The Green Hornet—a role he came to dislike because he was playing a supporting character instead of the lead.

When Bruce first started filming his fight scenes, he had to do several retakes—he was simply too quick for the cameras. "At first, it was ridiculous. All you could see were people falling down in front of me," Bruce said. "Even when I slowed down, all the camera showed was a blur." In film, Bruce was recorded at a higher frame rate, to ensure that his moves could be followed by the human eye.

Bruce's last film, Game of Death, was released five years after his death, and it was a disaster. The plot was a stock, 'crime syndicate' narrative, and the real Bruce didn't even appear for most of the film. Instead, several lookalikes and stuntmen pulled acting duties, and old footage from earlier Bruce films was interspersed throughout. In a particularly tacky moment, the filmmakers incorporated real footage of Bruce's funeral into the storyline. The only 'new' material was at the very end, when Bruce fought Dan Inosanto, Han Jae-Ji, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the Red Pepper Restaurant.

Bruce's original conception of the film was much better. He envisioned a five-level pagoda, where each level would be guarded by a different martial arts master. The original Game of Death would have been a philosophical endorsement of Bruce's freestyle, Jeet Kune Do style—Bruce would conquer each level of the pagoda, until only he was left standing. Unfortunately, Bruce was only able to film the top three levels of the pagoda—the Inosanto, Jae-Ji, and Abdul-Jabbar fights—before his death. Such a pity—what we wouldn't give to see this original concept brought to life.

We all know about "Kung Fu"—the cult '70s TV series about Kwai Chang Caine, a kung fu master who 'walked the earth' in the old American West. What a lot of people don't know, however, is that Bruce Lee was considered for the lead role. Unfortunately, even though Caine was an Asian character, the studios weren't willing to take a risk on an Asian male lead. So, the role of Caine went to a white man, David Carradine.

In her memoirs, Bruce's widow Linda makes an even more inflammatory accusation—that Bruce had been developing "Kung Fu" as "The Warrior," and that it was stolen from him by Warner Bros. Creator Ed Spielman, however, vehemently disputes this, claiming that the similarities between his idea and Bruce's are a total coincidence.

It's the classic argument amongst kung fu fans—who would win a fight? Bruce or Jackie? Jackie or Jet? Well, we might know the answer to one of those questions. Early in his career, Jackie performed as a stuntman in a couple of Bruce's films—he got kicked through a door by Bruce in The Big Boss, and he got his neck snapped by Bruce in Enter The Dragon. It was on the set of Enter The Dragon, however, that Jackie got to know his idol a little more personally.

They were filming in Han's underground base, and during the climactic fight scene, Bruce whacked Jackie upside the head with a staff. When the director yelled 'cut,' Bruce ran over to Jackie to see if he was alright. Jackie, seeing a golden opportunity, oversold his injury, and this got him a couple extra moments of being cradled by the Master. For the rest of the shoot, Bruce knew Jackie by name, and continually checked in on him.