To mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Bruce Lee, Paul Bowman, author of a new book on the kung fu star of Enter the Dragon, pays tribute to a man who changed the face of films.


Forty years ago this month, two events combined to change the world and create a legend: the film Enter the Dragon was released, and the film’s star, the 32-year-old Bruce Lee, died in unclear (verging on mysterious) circumstances.
The significance of the movie is that Enter the Dragon brought martial arts films – indeed martial arts themselves – out of the shadows and into the mainstream of global popular culture. There had been martial arts films before, of course: Hong Kong cinema was defined by them. But these were mainly ‘sword and sorcery’ wuxiapian – films whose modern versions include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers. However, at the start of the Seventies, Bruce Lee (below) burst in and popularised an alternative genre: the unarmed kung fu film.
The success of his Hong Kong films (The Big Boss, Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon) made Hollywood sit up and take notice. They had known about Bruce Lee before: he had played Kato in The Green Hornet, and earned a living by teaching kung fu to the Hollywood glitterati, choreographing film fight scenes and taking bit parts in TV shows.
Unfortunately, the stigma attached to Asians in the era of the Vietnam War meant no Hollywood producer would risk casting Lee in a major role.