Bruce Lee

Брюс Ли (англ. Bruce Lee)

Martial arts master, American and Hong Kong film actor, director, producer, screenwriter, philosopher.

Born on November 27, 1940 in San Francisco (California, USA), in the family of Chinese opera actor Lee Hoi Chen and half-Chinese half-German Grace Lee.

Strictly speaking, he is Lee Jan Fan (translated from Chinese — "come back": the child was born in San Francisco, and the mother wanted her son to return to America again), When the boy grew up, he was given the name Lee Yen Kam ("never sitting still"): after the first filming, the name Lee Sui Lung ("little dragon") appeared. And the name Bruce Lee was on the birth certificate issued at the Chinese hospital in San Francisco.

Not everyone believed that Bruce Lee was actually a boy. The evil spirits knew for sure that Grace had given birth to a girl: the mother and father spent a lot of effort to confuse them, and even gave the child the girly nickname Baby Phoenix. Their first son died, and they decided that they had angered the gods in some way; in China, they believe that the second child in the family should be a girl, and Grace and Lee adopted a poor man's daughter. Then their son Peter was born, then Grace got pregnant again and was restless with worry: according to Chinese beliefs, the second son is also in danger. Newborn Bruce Lee had his ears pierced and was called by his maiden name — it seemed that evil spirits had been deceived.

The children were growing up, and they had to be taught — Bruce Lee and his brothers were sent to a Jesuit college. The Jesuits had been doing missionary work in China for several centuries and knew more about the aborigines than anyone else, but even they could not cope with Bruce Lee.

Small, thin, nimble, Bruce Lee could not sit still, did not want to puzzle over arithmetic and English grammar, and felt great pleasure only when he managed to smash someone's nose. Bruce Lee's former homeroom teacher, Henry's brother, remembering him many years later, assured that he was an unusual child - lively, receptive, intelligent. It was necessary to treat him very gently, to occupy his imagination all the time — then he behaved like a good boy... Apparently, Brother Henry rarely succeeded: several years passed, and Bruce Lee was kicked out of the Jesuit school.

Bruce Lee had a huge craving for self-affirmation, street fights elevated him in his own eyes. He was skinny, shifty and absolutely fearless: the reason for the fight could even be that the boy he met looked at him the wrong way, sighed the wrong way, spat the wrong way, apologized not respectfully enough. Bruce Lee did not pay attention to the height and weight of his enemies, and they beat him twice a day. Lee Hoi Chen, of course, was not a model father, but the bruises on his son's face and the ever-torn clothes got on his nerves. Wailing Grace washed the abrasions and darned the torn shirt, and La lectured Bruce Lee every night: in the end, he was immensely tired of it. Lee Hoi Chen did not give money to the children out of principle, but when Bruce Lee asked to pay for his kung fu lessons, he unexpectedly agreed to himself — he had at least a faint hope that this outrage would ever end.

Bruce Lee chose a tough and aggressive wing chun — according to legend, the creator of the style was a nun who lived in the XV century. (She invented it when she was watching a snake fight with a crane.) The nun taught him the girl Yum Wing Chun, she taught her future husband, he also had students... So the turn came to Yip Man, a former police inspector in Namhae city who escaped to Hong Kong from Mao Zedong's troops. In Hong Kong, Yip Man opened his own school and made a living by making real fighters out of street scamps like Bruce Lee.

Running for five kilometers and hundreds of push-ups, endless blows on a sandbag, acrobatics, fights in full contact when the fist of the enemy with all its strength falls on your unprotected ribs... Training at Ip Men's school shackled his body in impenetrable muscle armor, taught him almost perfect fighting techniques. Bruce tried it out on his classmates, and the results were more than satisfactory.

Soon his parents sent him to another school — there it turned out that classes with Ip Men were good for the child. Of course, he did not become an excellent student, but the senseless mischief that plagued the Jesuit fathers greatly diminished. Young Lee no longer had the strength for leprosy: after practicing wing chun, every bone ached - lightness came only in the fifth year.

But now Bruce Lee has calmed down. He became the king of the school — he was always accompanied by a respectful retinue on the street. Having dealt with his classmates, Bruce Lee took up the English boys: they constantly fought with little Chinese and, as a rule, beat them for nothing. The British were much larger, besides, boxing was taught in their schools, but blows with a knee to the chin, forehead to the nose and elbow to the ear turned out to be a crushing surprise for them. One by one, the rulers of the seas went into a deep knockdown, and with every black eye and bloody nose, Bruce Lee's authority grew: in Hong Kong, they remembered well about the "opium war", looted Beijing and the inscriptions "Dogs and Chinese are not allowed to enter", which had recently disappeared from the central part of the city.

Life smiled on Bruce Lee, and by the age of eighteen he felt almost happy. When he was very young, his father taught him to dance, and now he has won the Hong Kong cha-cha-cha championship, played several children's roles in action movies. No one argued with him on the street. In his free time from fights and training, Bruce Lee took dance lessons. Now he looked like a dandy — carefully slicked and oiled hair, an immaculately ironed black suit (he ironed it himself, not trusting his mother), a narrow tie with an even knot. Either a student of a missionary school, or a dancer from a variety show is an ideal target for a street hooligan who wants to have fun.

Mama's boys were treated unkindly on the streets of Hong Kong. It was nice to spit on a patent leather shoe, pull on a tie. But after that, the impudent man received Bruce Lee's sau-do—favorite blow when the palm of his hand, hardened by many hours of training, falls on the attacker's throat. One day, he regaled three members of the Hong Kong Triad with it, two of whom were hospitalized.

Seventy years ago, the first batch of Chinese was brought to the United States. America was rapidly becoming covered by a network of railways, cheap labor was needed for their construction — poor, hardworking and unrequited Asians were the best suited for this. The best argument in the dialogue with them was considered a right hook: poor peasants from remote Chinese villages, who had never studied martial arts, endured such treatment with Confucian patience. Time passed, morals softened, but laundries and cheap restaurants remained the lot of Chinese Americans — Bruce Lee got a job in one of them.

Bruce Lee soon turned into a movie star. It happened, in general, by chance: TV producer William Dozier was looking for an actor for a role in a new series, a man who studied with Bruce turned out to be next to him — and he got the role. Then he was given a new role, and then bypassed for the sake of an American actor. Bruce Lee was worried — it seemed to him that his film career was not going well, but when he arrived in Hong Kong, his countrymen were ready to carry him in their arms. It turned out that he was wildly popular at home — Lee Jan Fan returned to his hometown in the halo of an American movie star and at the same time a warrior who beat the "white devils".

The wife is Linda Lee Cadwell.

Son - actor Brandon Lee (1965-1993).

Daughter - Shannon (1969).

Bruce Lee died on July 20, 1973 at the age of 33 in Hong Kong.

The actor is buried at Lake View Cemetery in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Bruce Lee died suddenly after taking a headache pill, not having had time to finish the next film "The Game of Death". As the autopsy showed, the swelling of the brain was caused by a hypersensitive reaction to a headache pill. His death was a shock for the whole of Hong Kong — no one could imagine that this man, who was improving his body day and night, could die. After his death, rumors began to spread that he had died in his mistress's bed, but they were not confirmed. Bruce Lee's funeral turned into a citywide, and then all-Asian mourning. Thousands of friends and fans went to pay their last respects to him. Bruce Lee's body was then transported to Seattle, where his family said goodbye to him, and where he was buried. Martial arts fans who stay in Seattle still go to the grave of Bruce Lee to worship. And his last film was shot five years later with the help of understudies, was a huge success and caused a new wave of interest in kung fu and oriental martial arts.