MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: Bruce Lee left Hollywood for Hong Kong after he lost out on the lead role in Kung Fu.
Last year, I did a TV Legends Revealed about Bruce Lee and his involvement in Kung Fu, vis a vis whether Warner Bros. stole the idea for the TV series from Lee, who had also created a show, The Warrior, about a martial artist in the Old West of the United States in the 19th Century. My ultimate conclusion there was that while Warner Bros. might have very well lifted some concepts from The Warrior for its Kung Fu series, the series concept itself predated Lee's The Warrior pitch. Still, I'm not saying that he was treated totally fairly or anything like that, just simply that Kung Fu was developed separately as a series from Lee.
However, there's also another interesting legend involving Lee and the effects of his disappointment over both his show idea being turned down, the knowledge that there was another show out there with the same basic concept and that he could not even get hired to star on this other show, with Warners choosing to hire a White actor, David Carradine, instead.
This legend involves whether that incident was what drove Lee to leave Hollywood period.
WHAT IS THE LEGEND OF BRUCE LEE'S DEPARTURE FROM HOLLYWOOD?
As an example of this legend, let me quote a Vulture article discussing Bruce Lee's influence on the Netflix series, The Get Down:
In the 1960s, Bruce Lee was best known in Hollywood for playing Kato in The Green Hornet, the sidekick to Britt Reid. It wouldn’t be until the early ’70s that Lee would enter the cultural Zeitgeist by way of China. After the show ended in 1967, Lee shopped around his passion project, a television show called The Warrior, which his wife Linda Lee Cadwell later said was stolen by Warner Brothers and repackaged as Kung Fu starring David Carradine. So instead, Bruce Lee left for Hong Kong, where he made a string of classic kung fu films starting with The Big Boss in 1971, before his sudden death just ahead of the release of Enter the Dragon, a Hong Kong-American production, in 1973. That’s when he became an international legend.
This same basic concept has also tied into a story about Fred Weintraub, who was an executive vice president at Warner Bros. at the time and was instrumental in Kung Fu becoming a TV series and was also a big booster of Bruce Lee, in specific. From the earlier legend, I discussed how Kung Fu came about:
Eventually, [Ed Spielman and Howard Friedlander] 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.
Okay, so when you pair that with the fact that it was Weintraub that recommended that Bruce Lee move to Hong Hong to pursue a film career there before returning to the United States with proof of concept that he could work as a movie star, then it sure seems to fit the idea that Lee left for Hong Kong after his starring role on Kung Fu did not pan out.
However, that was not to be the case.
WHEN DID BRUCE LEE LEAVE FOR HONG KONG TO BECOME A FILM STAR THERE?
You see, as noted, Weintraub met with Lee about the possible film version of Kung Fu in 1970. When that didn't fail, it was THEN that Weintraub recommended Lee move to Hong Kong to pursue a film career there.
Thus, it was 1970 when Lee visited Hong Kong, where he was shocked to learn that his supporting role on the Green Hornet TV series had been a big deal and that he was a major celebrity in Hong Kong. He later recalled, "Whenever I have to go to public places like a restaurant, I try to sneak in without being detected. I'll go directly to a corner table and quickly sit down, facing the wall so my back is to the crowd. I keep my head low while eating.... You see, if I'm recognized I'm dead, because I can't eat with the hand that I have to use to sign autographs. And I'm not one of those guys that can brush people off."
Here is doing a martial arts demonstration on Hong Kong TV in April 1970...
Lee then workedo out a deal with Golden Harvest Studios and Lee then filmed his first Hong Kong film, The Big Boss, in July 1971...
It was released in Hong Kong in October 1971. Lee did not audition for the Kung Fu TV series until December 1971. Therefore, Lee's disappointment at not being cast in Kung Fu could not have been the driving force behind him moving to Hong Kong, since he had already moved there!
The legend is...
STATUS: False
Be sure to check out my archive of Movie Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film.
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com.