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    Bruce Lee Words of the Dragon: Interviews, 1958-1973
    Bruce Lee Words of the Dragon: Interviews, 1958-1973
    Bruce Lee Words of the Dragon: Interviews, 1958-1973
    Ebook259 pages4 hours

    Bruce Lee Words of the Dragon: Interviews, 1958-1973

    By John Little

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    About this ebook

    Here they are, available for the first time in one collection, Bruce Lee's conversations with the press from 1958 to 1973.

    Words of the Dragon is an anthology of rare newspaper and magazine interviews with Bruce Lee, many not previously published in the United States, revealing new words and explanations of Bruce about himself, his art, and philosophy.

    Interesting and insightful, Words of the Dragon provides the reader a means to understand the real Bruce Lee, offering us a unique keyhole through which to view the private life and personal struggles of the late martial arts superstar. These interviews provide us with Lee's own interpretations of life, the martial arts, international stardom, and his cross-cultural marriage during a time of racism.

    John Little is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on Bruce Lee, his training methods, and philosophies. Little is the only person who has ever been authorized to review the entirety of Lee's personal notes, sketches, and reading annotations. He is currently the Associate Publisher of Bruce Lee magazine and the managing editor of Knowing Is Not Enough, the official newsletter of the Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do Nucleus. Little's articles have appeared in every martial arts and health and fitness magazine in North America. He is the author of The Warrior Within:The Philosophies of Bruce Lee, and co-author of Power Factor Training, The Golfer's 2-Minute Workout, and Static Contraction Training For Bodybuilders.

    This Bruce Lee Book is part of Tuttle Publishing's Bruce Lee Library which also features:
    • Bruce Lee's Striking Thoughts
    • Bruce Lee's The Tao of Gung Fu
    • Bruce Lee Artist of Life
    • Bruce Lee: Letters of the Dragon
    • Bruce Lee: The Art of Expressing the Human Body
    • Bruce Lee Jeet Kune Do

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTuttle Publishing
    Release dateNov 7, 2017
    ISBN9781462917877
    Bruce Lee Words of the Dragon: Interviews, 1958-1973

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      Book preview

      Bruce Lee Words of the Dragon - John Little

      Part 1

      THE SEATTLE YEARS

      (1958–1964)

      Seattle Scene (newspaper article), ca. 1959

      A BUDDING STAR OF CHINESE MOVIES

      by Frank Lynch

      HEY LOUELLA! You be interested in a young star from the Hollywood of the Far East? Lee Shiu Loong¹*—Bruce Lee in the U. S. of A.—is a student at Edison. A protégé of Ping Chow,² the noted restaurateur (Broadway and Jefferson). He is 18, born in San Francisco, taken to Hong Kong when he was three months of age.

      His father, Lee Hoi-Chuen, was a star of the ancient Chinese opera. Perhaps that background is what tipped the scales for Lee when they were looking for a six-year-old to play the lead in a moom picture called The Beginning of a Boy.

      Lee’s screen father was an honest, hard-working clerk. His screen mother flighty—in addition to that, she gambled away the family’s savings at mahjong.

      The screen Lee was a bit on the precocious side. Always the nose in the comic book. We are going to assume that the Chinese comic book is a notch or two above the ones favored by our grandchildren, for Lee was fascinated by this particular story:

      Far, far away there stood a mountain. A bandit gang or two lurking along the way and maybe the odd hungry tiger. The road to the top was steep and strewn with boulders. Yet he who reached the top would come down with the strength of ten. So the six-year-old set out for the mountain, eluded the bandits, and escaped the tigers and arrived, cold, hungry and afraid, at a monastery halfway to the summit. The monks took him in, fed him, let him warm himself at their fires and set him to chopping wood and running errands and things like that.

      In some vague way, the screen Lee knew that if he kept at same he would become strong and wise and maybe rich. Only it would take a long, long time. He fled down the mountain. Returned to his home city. Joined up with some no-goodniks and became a pickpocket. Came the day, he lifted a sucker’s poke as per usual. Victim looked at thief and thief at victim. There was mutual recognition. Father started chasing son down the street. Son took off on a crossing against the red. Into the path of an impatient motorist. Oh, too bad, too bad.

      Mother and father were shown, then, over the bed of the dying boy. The father said if he had worked harder, and put his son in a good school, it might not have happened at all. The mother said no, that it was all her fault. That she was away at mahjong when she should have been teaching her son right from wrong. That when she lost she took her temper out on him and that is why he ran away. With that, the screen Lee died. Everybody in the audience cried—then hurried out to tell everybody else what a hell of a picture it was.

      Stills from the Cantonese language film The Orphan, in which Bruce Lee had his first starring role, at age seventeen. Before this film, Lee had appeared only in co-starring or supporting roles.

      In his second picture Lee portrayed a doorstep baby. Ignored by his wealthy father, abandoned by his serving-girl mother. Taken in by a gambler. Sold into servitude. To escape—to find a noble benefactor. The end of this finds Lee—played by an adult, of course, a celebrated doctor. He operates on the sweetheart of his youth and restores her sight, even as he promised. His real father and his several foster fathers fawn upon him. He ignores them. The people who saw this bawled and cheered.

      Lee’s latest picture—made last spring and to be released presently—is known as The Orphan. It is a sort of blackboard jungle thing. Based on the activities of Hong Kong’s two main juvenile gangs, the 14Ks and the Wo Sing Wo. (There is a moll gang too—the 18 Sisters).

      The Orphan (Lee) is separated from father, mother and sister with the Japanese invasion. He survives the flying lead, bombings, hunger and disease to grow up to be a pickpocket too. A high-thinking man befriends him. The Orphan spurns his offers of aid. Continues to spurn them until he makes the bucket and is given this choice—school or seven years.

      His pals talk him into one last caper. A snatch. He cops out from his pals and they, in turn, remove his ears from his noggin. We shall leave him earless and purified to tell you that just before he left he was named the cha-cha champ of all Hong Kong. That if the people at Edison can teach him some git-tar to go with the dancing he might reach the top of the real-life mountain. A couple of million bucks instead of the strength of ten, but what’s the

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