TV URBAN LEGEND: Bruce Lee came up with the idea for a TV series that became the hit show, Kung Fu.
In 1972, the ABC TV series, Kung Fu, about a former Shaolin monk who traveled the Western United States in the latter half of the 19th century looking for his half brother, debuted.
There continues to be a persistent legend that the concept for the series was stolen by Warne Bros. Television (the studio behind the show) from the legendary martial artist and actor, Bruce Lee.
From an article a couple of years ago, "Around this time, Lee wrote a few treatments for films he wanted to produce. Among them was a pitch for a TV series call “The Warrior”, which follows a martial artist in the Old West starring himself as the lead. Surely, after all his success in Hong Kong and the subsequent legion of global fans to follow, Hollywood was ready for its first Asian TV lead.
Unfortunately, it was rejected. Even with Bruce Lee’s star power, the executives believed viewers were still not ready for an Asian lead on the big screen. Lee was forced to table the project.
In the year that followed, Hollywood released “Kung Fu” starring white actor David Carradine, who plays a half-Chinese monk fighting bad guys in the Old West. The show is identical to the show Lee pitched just a year before, so some couldn’t help but speculate that Lee’s idea was stolen and his character whitewashed."
Similarly, a few years earlier, Complex counted down the most racist TV shows of all-time and included Kung Fu, "There's nothing really racist about the story of a half-Chinese, half-American Shaolin monk roaming the countryside in search of his half-brother. OK, there's the fact that the very Caucasian-looking David Carradine is presented as a paragon of martial arts. There's that, plus his character's penchant for spouting weird fortune-cookie-style aphorisms like "Become who you are." All that, and, lest we forget: The whole idea for the show was straight jacked from Bruce Lee. So, what were we saying? Yeah. RACIST."
So clearly, the idea that Lee's idea for a TV series, The Warrior, was stolen by Warner Bros. Television and turned into Kung Fu is a common belief. But is it true?
The source of this legend is almost assuredly the memoirs of Bruce Lee's widow, Linda Lee Cadwell, who wrote in her biography, “Even before this [Longstreet], Warner Brothers had suddenly caught on to the fact that kung fu itself had captured the public’s imagination and decided to launch a TV series. Bruce himself had been working on the idea of a Shaolin priest, a master of kung fu, who would roam America and find himself involved in various exploits. The studio contacted him and he was soon deeply involved. He gave them numerous ideas, many of which were eventually incorporated in the resulting TV success, Kung Fu, starring actor David Carradine.”
However, I think that people have misread her statements, almost assuredly because they don't know the facts of the situation. Once you see them all, you'll get that while Cadwell still has a beef (whether fair or not) with Warner Bros., it isn't over the network actually stealing Lee's idea for a TV show.
Ed Spielman was a comedy writer who became fascinated with Asian culture growing up (he took Chinese as a language during college, he learned Japanese karate and Chinese kung fu). He began work on a screenplay about a Shaolin monk. He eventually showed it to his comedy writing partner, Howard Friedlander, in 1967 and it was Friedlander who suggested that they make it a Western (it is important to note just HOW popular Westerns still were in American popular culture in 1967. The idea might sound unusual now, but it would have been taken as pretty normal at the time). Eventually, they got their movie treatment, titled The Way of the Tiger, The Sign of the Dragon, about a half-Asian/half-White monk that Spielman had modeled after himself, to a William Morris agent, Peter Lampack, who was intrigued by the treatment.
The treatment was given to Warner Bros. executive Fred Weintraub, who loved the idea and paid Spielman and Friedlander to come up with a screenplay, which they finished in early 1970. Weintraub then met Bruce Lee and wanted him to star in this film. However, other Warner Bros. executives were not into it (or Lee) at all and the project fell by the wayside.
In 1971, Weintraub had the idea of doing the movie as a TV show, instead, and a deal was struck with Warner Bros. Television in July of 1971. They began casting the show in December of 1971, but once again, studio executives did not want to hire Lee for this role, either, and instead ultimately decided to make the character not Asian at all, which led to David Carradine being hired.
However, they still wanted to be in business with Lee, who had just filmed The Big Boss, and studio head Ted Ashley offered Lee a development deal and one of the TV concepts that Lee was working on was a Western. His notebook had the following ideas:
“Western: (1) San Francisco sheriff (partner of a blind man?). Modern: (1) bounty hunter, (2) agent, (3) detective, (4) embassy intrigue?”
On the next page, he expanded a little on the Western idea: “San Francisco: (1) Sheriff X, presiding, (2) Ah Sahm, a ronin (unofficial deputy of Sheriff X— take care of office for room and board).”
Ah Sahm was what he worked up for a TV pitch, only eventually renamed The Warrior. This would be all before Carradine was even cast as Caine, so roughly October 1971. That project did not move forward and Lee went to focus on his movie career before tragically passing away in 1973 at the far too young age of 32.
So Kung Fu was not based on The Warrior, however, if you read Cadwell's words above, she doesn't seem to be really saying that the idea for Kung Fu came from The Warrior, but rather that Warner Bros. took a number of the concepts that Lee had for The Warrior and adapted them for their other Western martial arts program. I don't know if that's true, either, but that's a lot different than saying that the original concept for the show was taken, which it was not.
The legend is...
STATUS: False
Thanks to Richard Bejtlich's exhaustive look at the development of Kung Fu at the Martial Journal. He goes into much further detail about this story than me.
Be sure to check out my archive of TV Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of TV.
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com.