Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly Book Summary (Best Biography)

Matthew Polly wrote the best Bruce Lee biography of all time, Bruce Lee: A Life (affiliate link).

Here are the highlights from the book:

• Bruce was 5/8th Han Chinese, 1/4 English, and 1/8th Dutch Jewish, born in California, raised in Hong Kong until 18.
• While Chuck Norris said Bruce was a workaholic who never rested, he wasn’t a hard worker for the first half of his life. He skipped school, fought a lot, joined minor gangs, watched movies, went on dates, practiced martial arts, danced a lot at clubs, and got hooked on soap operas. It was only when he had his child that he became a hard worker to provide.
• He stuttered in English for certain words and never fully mastered the English language. He was insecure about it but would never let anyone make fun of him for it. He always would fight, even seeking out fights. Later on, he surgically removed his arm pit sweat glands because he didn’t like how he looked when his sweat stained the pits of his shirt. This surgery may have contributed to his death through possible heat exhaustion.
• He was the first to teach an African American martial arts when asked, even though it was severely frowned upon. Bruce said he’d do it after much contemplation but made sure this man, Jesse Glover, wouldn’t tell anyone.
• When practicing Wing Chun at Ip Man’s school, his classmates would try to get Ip Man to expel Bruce because he wasn’t a pure Chinese.
• His braggadocious attitude would provoke fights. He would provoke fights to practice out moves when he studied with Ip Man. One time, he would dress up in traditional Chinese attire to provoke people in public to react so he could fight people. He bragged about how good his wife’s spaghetti sauce was to his family to offset their disappointment for marrying a white woman. His wife, Linda, ended up cooking burnt spaghetti to 20 of Bruce’s closest relatives he invited for the event because Linda didn’t have the right spices in China, had only cooked for five people, and never used a gas stove. He also bragged to studio executives that he would be the most famous Chinese American actor so they better sign him before he got too pricey, which partially worked.
• His father was always disappointed in him, called him useless, he was horrible in school, held back twice, expelled, and sent to America to get disciplined as a last resort. His older brother was a model student who always got the best grades. His father beat him and got addicted to opium, becoming an absentee father. Later in life, his father managed to quit opium even though it has some of the nastiest withdrawal symptoms.
• Bruce grew up in a middle class Chinese family. His family had two servants, many pets, and a tailor.  His father wanted his children to have respectable professions, like banker, doctor, or lawyer and stay away from the unpredictable entertainment industry. But Bruce loved starring in movies; he would get invites to star as supporting characters given his father’s involvement in the industry. His dad would suspend him participating as the only way to make him behave.
• Bruce went on many dates with women. His eventual wife, Linda, had a half
• Japanese boyfriend in high school until her mom found out and forebad it. There was clear racism back then.
• Bruce seemed to use Oriental jokes to put American reporters at ease because they used them often in the papers themselves. He said he didn’t smoke or drink but did chew gum because “Fu Man Chu.”
• Although rebellious, violence
• prone, and proud, he was able to put aside his ego to learn and grow when he ran into someone better than him. He submitted to another gang leader when he was beaten to study under him and learn as much martial arts as possible to beat him. He was very clear in wanting to do this, even asking constantly when he would learn enough to beat him. He was often impatient with how fast he was progressing, always not happy he wasn’t #1 even to classmates at his master, Ip Man’s Wing Chun school that were many years his senior.
• His great uncle was the richest man in Hong Kong and his grandfather was the second richest. That said, his mother who was related to these men was excluded from the family when she chose to marry Bruce’s father, from a historically poor family, out of love rather than an in an arranged marriage.
• Bruce’s father was asked to participate in a Japanese film when the Japanese occupied China. He courageously refused, which saved his career later in life. Any Chinese who participated were blacklisted in the film industry afterwards.
• Of the films his father allowed him to participate in as a child, he made on average of $2000 (2017 inflation adjusted) per flick for the big ones. This flush of cash spurred his habit of spending a lot when he had money.
• What was fascinating was Bruce’s jumps to a owning a profitable martial arts studio he taught at from just a school club that was almost out of members to pay for rent to practice and his second jump from that Seattle studio to publishing a book with the nation’s most respected martial artists in the Bay area. Based on the biography, I’d attribute these jumps to consistently doing a fantastic job teaching, doing all sorts of marketing and media to get in the paper, Bruce’s ability to win over reporters, plant stories, and position his lessons as useful for all sorts of areas of life (health, confidence, spirituality, etc.), teaching cha
• cha lessons, and finally slowly letting his excellence spread through word of mouth. The Bay area martial artists heard plenty of great things about Bruce through word of mouth and through cha cha lessons. He gave martial arts demonstrations and exhibitions by himself or with his students at all local festivals to market his martial art. He was quick to spot boredom and skepticism, change his demonstration, interact with the audience, and prove viability to people by calling big tough people up to the stage to demonstrate.
• Bruce was as much a salesman and marketer as he was a martial artist. He gauged the crowd and re
• adjusted his exhibitions to be more controversial, interactive, or eye
• popping when he detected boredom from the audience.
• At the time, martial arts was not popular. It was mainly a reminder of old feudal times that China wanted to forget. Mainly bouncers and gang members wanted to learn more. But Bruce championed gung fu, teaching it and starting a club and eventually a school. It helped him meet his wife, establish credibility, form a “gang” of followers and friends, build a business. All he talked about was gung fu, philosophy, and cha cha.
• Bruce played a trick on his classmates once to get more personal coaching time with Ip Man. He got early and told Ip Man to please stay inside because he had to do something. He would wait outside and tell the classmates that Ip Man left and wouldn’t have class that day. The Wing Chun students were competitive and withheld info from eachother because they always to be top dog. When Bruce left for America at 18, he was ranked sixth in his Wing Chun class.
• In America, he lived and worked part
• time as a dishwasher for Ruby Chow, a family friend, at her restaurant in Washington. They had a contentious relationship, but spending three years with her turned Bruce from a spoiled rebel to someone who had some discipline and goals. Bruce didn’t respect Ruby and saw what he did as servant work. He managed to graduate high school in 18 months with a 2.7GPA, far from a perfect student like his older brother but unheard of for Bruce in China.
• Differences between him and I: he would spend for the now on flashy stuff rather than save, a suit with purple dress shirt. He immediately spent his inheritance after his father’s death on three tailored suits, jewelry, a wedding ring, and a purse. It’s not like that I don’t like spending but I’m more about saving and investing to be able to spend a lot more in the distant future. He blew through his exclusive signing deal cash quickly, thousands of dollars when he was making 100 a week from his martial arts studio. Throughout his life, he bought houses and a mansion he couldn’t afford and four expensive cars, including a Rolls Royce, Ford convertible, and Porsche, and a mink coat whenever he got a windfall of cash from a movie or TV deal.
• Bruce had a cocky body language that attracted attention, especially since he would go to places Asians weren’t welcome. He got into a fight in an all black event, a cowboy honky tonk in Montana, and almost fought four white guys following him and calling him  a chink because they say him with a white date but his date dissuaded him. You didn’t have to ask Bruce twice to fight.
• Bruce got into the University of Washington, which was a big deal for his parents since only the best Chinese got into Colleges in the UK and US. That said, Bruce only got a 1.7GPA, got a C in gymnastics, only took two philosophy classes, and ended up dropping out and saying he majored in philisophy.
• Bruce dated many women but not for long. He was a bit of a player. When he first came to America, he wrote lots of letters to his high school sweetheart telling her how much he missed her. These letters eventually became less frequent and the girl fly to visit him. Bruce forgot to pick her up and she waited hours at the airport. She flew to San Francisco in outrage and ignored his calls of apology.
• Bruce met a Japanese American girl called Amy that he won over with persistence and chivalry, fonding every excuse to talk to her and help her. They had an on
• and
• off relationship for many years. Bruce proposed to her many times and offered his grandmother’s sapphire ring. Amy thought Bruce was too controlling of her and always needed to know where she was.
• Amy marveled at Bruce’s kinetic talent. He could see a movement and duplicate it. Amy was a ballet dancer and taught Bruce the pirouette. He learned it in one try. She also made fun of him for how stiff his cha cha was. She taught him to add funk to it by playing R and B. He added funk to his dance moves, something she remarked was hard to teach.
• In an era when Chinese Americans were trying to convince themselves they were white, Bruce was proud to be Chinese.
• He was asked to audition for and landed the very first role as a main Chinese character in a TV show.
• He didn’t consider Hollywood despite his childhood experience in the film industry because Hollywood barely even cast Asians at the time; they would hire whites to play Asians. He did try to get a quick flick in during his return to China from university but his connections dried up.
• Bruce wanted to make a name for himself instead of live in the shadow of the success of his parents back in Hong Kong.
• He made a clear distinction between martial arts and screen fighting, learning more fancy martial arts moves for film because he knew viewers liked it more.
• He would show off his moves on set and jump kick people’s ear lobe without them noticing until a set director turned when he was doing it and he dislocated his jaw.
• His ego fueled a lot of his behavior. He wrote a 30+ script for the show he was in, The Green Hornet, where he traveled around and saved the day as the sidekick after his partner got poisoned. He argued to the media that his character, Kato, was just as powerful, if not more, than his partner because he had real martial arts move to finish foes while his partner only had single American punches. He argued vehemently that he refused to lose to Robin in the Batman and Green Hornet crossover episode that was a last ditch effort to save the show. This changed the original script so it ended in a draw. He made the choreography seem as if Kato was better than Robin even though it was supposed to be a draw.
  —He had an affair with a blonde German actress for months until it was found out by the actor she was on and off again with. He didn’t tell his wife.
• He read philosophy books constantly, carried them around where he went, and could read in loud environments. In his 2500 book library, he had books by Miyamoto Musashi, Lao Tzu, Descartes, and Socrates.
• The Green Hornet had poor ratings, but was a hit in the martial arts community because it was the first time they saw their art on screen. This made Bruce Lee an icon in that world, and gave him many opportunities to headline for events.
• his teaching attracted Kareem Abdul Jabbar who was the highest paid college athlete as a UCLA student. Bruce didn’t know anything about sports but taught Kareem personally and even prescribed a workout routine for gaining muscle in the NBA.
• Bruce subscribed to all the muscle and fitness magazines, always trying and buting all the latest fad supplements and diets, even drinking raw blended beef.
• Someone in the karate industry had already privately taught A
• list actors to influence the masses in the film industry and promote karate before Bruce ever thought about doing it.
• Bruce tried to get private clients for $25 an hour while filming but couldn’t secure one. Someone told him that he was charging too little rather than too much. Rich actors wouldn’t perceive something as valuable unless it was pricey and had money to blow. He didn’t thinj he could charge $50 as it would be too much but ended up testing $150 and got his first client.
• He befriended some of the top karate champions by offering to work out with them and give gung fu tips. It also helped that many athletes wanted to get into the film industry and he had that connection. He could charm anyone. He thought karate was inferior to gung fu but realized how popular he competiive scene was.
• one event where he disarmed a massive man (who he thought was attacking him but was just waving) quickly while having dinner blossomed into one of the most popular but exaggerated stories in Hollywood about Bruce demonstrating to Frank Sinatra with two body guards that he can beat them both and kick a cigarette out of one of their mouths. The myth was better than the original and its virality helped Bruce become the most sought after martial artist in Hollywood.
• Bruce was often the center of attention at any social gathering, demonstrating his martial arts prowess or knowledge of philosophy.
• Bruce leaned into what people discriminated against him for and was proud of it. In America, he showed off that he was Chinese when people pointed it out, and he showed off that he was American when people discriminated him in China for his tendencies and lack of genetic purity
• and people definitely discriminated. Bruce was able to grow a full beard, which most Chinese can’t. While overworking, he grew out his beard and a paparazzi got a shot. The media and public disliked his beard because it exposed him as not fully Chinese and reminded them of the bearded Mongols that invaded Han China. Bruce shot back that there will now be three times more people in China with full beards because people want to be like him.
• Bruce trained Steve McQueen as a client who was the highest paid actor in Hollywood. Steve would never give up, training for hours until he got something even once with a sliced open toe.
• Steve taught him that image in your personal life was just as important. You needed to dreas successful to be seen as successful.
• A stunt double did all his flips in his movies.
• Bruce was always the perfectionist, not happy enough he rose up to the rank fo fourth when coming back to Hong Kong to his Wing Chun class. He also obsessed over defeating someone who challenged him in a fight by a few minutes because it should’ve only taken a few seconds.
• Robert, his little brother, became a popular teen idol in China with his boy band, more popular than Bruce was as a child actor. But then, he went to school in America for his future.
• He had a long dry spell after the green hornet. If he had landed one TV wall in a Hawaii TV show, his career would have taken a much different direction than it did. Some of the people on the show stayed on for 10 seasons.
• Bruce was a practial joker, kid, and showman between shots on movie and TV sets, showing off his moves and tricks.
• He had a big temper and ego that he had trouble to control. He ended friendships if someone offended him.
• He injures his fourth back nerve from doing 125 pound good mornings. He didn’t warm up properly that day. The doctors said he would never be able to kick high again despite recovery and rehab. He couldn’t move for weeks, which was tough given his nature. He eventually managed to do everything the doctors said he could never do again but maintained back pain for the rest of his life.
• Since Bruce never saved any money and he had staked all his future on an ambitious movie script, The Silent Flute, that starred him, he was in a desperate situation emotionally, physically, and financially from his surprise injury.
• His wife decided to work to support the family, which Bruce fought against because of the patriarchal culture he came from. To make ends meet, he let her do it but he kept it secret to save face.
• Bruce wrote many notes when he was bedridden. Some of Bruce’s notes were turned into a book, The Tao of Jeet Kun Do, by his wife after his death. The book became the best selling martial arts book of all time.
• Some of Bruce’s close movie friends and an heir to the Folger coffee fortune were murdered near his house in the most gruesome ways by the Manson family to frame black people and spark a white
• black war.
• Their film script was approved but they had to use Warner Brother’s tied up funds in India because the law required that they can only use the money they made there in movies to make other movies and couldn’t withdraw it.
• Bruce didn’t like alcohol and avoided it but smoked a lot of marijuana because he thought it would raise his awareness.
• Steve McQueen gave Bruce the advixe to not worry too much about acting classes, but instead, make sure he meet and wow the right people.
• Bruce got opportunities that helped him succeed in Hollywood by teaching many well connected men in Hollywood.
• He had a dry spell of many years where he couldn’t find an acting gig after the Green Hornet.
• The Silent Flute project eventually died after his partner came back from India saying the place wasn’t fit to film despite Bruce trying to make it work. Bruce got another project from a Hollywood executive who thought gung fu was the next big thing, and the project made it all the way to the top after the executive’s appeals before getting smacked down because they didn’t think the public would like an Asian male lead.
• He learned about the perfect swagger and charisma by studying Steve McQueen, the king of cool.
• When Bruce Lee returned to China after five years, he was shocked to find a mob waiting for him at the airport. The Green Hornet was a success in China. People saw him as “making it” in Hollywood, which seemed like an untouchable, mysterious place. Bruce laughed at the dubbing they did of American actors because he thought it was ridiculous. The success of the show in China did not make him a star though. While some people were excited to see him, Hong Kong studio executives were not swayed much by his appearance in the TV show. They still saw him as more of a child star who returned and wanted to do action films.
• Bruce was out of money after the Silent Flute project failed, so he took an offer with a start up company in Hong Kong that was poaching talent from the big player on the industry.
• The film was called The Big Boss and Bruce butted heads with the director for wanting to choreograph his own fights. The director was used to deciding, but Bruce was used to calling the choreography shots based on his Hollywood experience. It almost ended the movie as Bruce fought for realistic but short fights while the director preferred old school, flashy fighting.
• The Big Boss broke box office records in Hong Kong, beating the #1 film of all time there, The Sound of Music. The success was just what was needed for the studio’s success. Bruce tried to negotiate big demands for a Hollywood TV show plus merchandising deals that he would be the main lead in called Tiger Force, but at the last moment, it fell through.
• He split ways with the director that had made his movie a success in Hong Kong because he didn’t like the entire script for his next movie. When the director found a replacement when he didn’t hear from Lee in a month and the media caught wind, he got angry because it caused him to lose face. He accused the director of trying to make hin look bad. He went on to make his own movie with the same studio, Way of the Dragon.
• In movies, Bruce’s nunchucks he used was actually derived from Japan and his taekwondo high kicks from Korea. Despite that, Chinese actors eat it up. Bruce appealed to a deep sense of patriotism, first in the big boss, and much more in Fists of Fury, appealling to how Chinese were not the scum of Asia. This appeal won over China men.
• Like when he was a child, he was rebellious against the people above him (his bosses) and kind to the people below him. He wanted things done a certain way. Bruce made sure to take care of the stunt men he filmed with. He told people not to give him special food and he ate and hung out with the stunt man even though he was the boss and didn’t have to. Like a gang member boss in his youth, he won over people by being generous, loyal, and kind.
• From his Hong Kong filming days onward, he never engaged in fight challenges. He would claim that one has to fight his underlings, his stunt men. before fighting him.
• He refused American roles that put him in a subserviant, pony
• tail role. The ponytail that some Chinamen wore was due to Chinese political agenda to force certain men to look like women to show that they were lower class.
• He went to Run Run Shaw, owner of the biggest studio in China, when Golden Harvest was cautious about his next movie script, after Way of the Dragon with Chuck Norris was a big success. He often played studios or Hollywood and Hong Kong against each other to get his script into a film.
• Bruce wanted to work wih Kareem Abdul Jabbar since he first taught him because of how tall he was. He finally got a chance for his next film Game of Death after Kareem had just won the NBA championships. He knew the Chinese audience would eat it up.
• Bruce was inspired by how Clint Eastwood used spaghetti westwerns filmed in Italy to get into movies from TV when no one would take him. He used the same strategy in the Way of the Dragon, filming part of it in Rome.
• When Bruce became super famous after Fists of Fury, he was initially happy with the fame and success he had been striving for. But he soon disliked the fame because he couldn’t go out to eat or shop without being mobbed in Southeast Asia. He described it as living like a monkey in a cage in an interview, but claimed fame didn’t change him.
• Bruce became paranoid and precautionary from his fame. He didn’t trust anyone knew he met, stuck with childhood friends, and carried a gun. People, including his taxi driver, challenged him to fights everywhere. One stalker broke into the lawn of his house while his children were playing to challenge him, which enraged him. Members of the Triad gave him big checks for no reason, one being as large as 200,000 in Hong Kong dollars. He was suspicious of it being just a gift and tore them all up, but it wasn’t easy.
• In Way of the Dragon, there was speculation that Bruce and another female costar had done something intimate ate by what people saw of their body language one morning. People saw him blatantly going on dates with a female costar throughout the filming of Game of Death.
• People used his childhood friend Unicorn Chan to leverage Bruce. They promised Unicorn the lead role in a film if he can get Bruce Lee involved. Bruce refused because he didn’t want to be part of a small independent film, but he helped with fight choreography for a day and agreed to promote the film as an individual. They used hidden cameras to film him that day and promoted the film as if he directed and starred in it. Bruce sued the studio and was furious he let himself get tricked
• Bruce started off very patient with paparazzi, but got tired of them when they would keep snapping photos after taking hundreds. When he smacked a camera out of one photographers hands to get away, the media printed that he was mean to cameramen. The media constantly and gleefully exploited him in this way, printing about when he sued a company for exploiting his inage for marketif and a news station for libel. They also printed that he failed to attend his master Ip Man’s funeral because he was too busy making money, a giant insult in Asian culture. Many of Ip Man’s disciples spoke out in the press about how dishonorable it was, but in reality, they prevented Bruce from finding out about it. The only way Bruce could’ve found out at that time is if he read the local town paper, which he didn’t, or if one of the disciples told him, which they refrained to do. It was their revenge for speaking bad about traditional gung fu and breaking away from Wing Chun. Bruce was furious, but couldn’t do much or call them out publically except show his respects after the funeral because he wanted a public image of a harmonious image with his old Wing Chun school and master.
• Bruce made an assistant play and song Guantamaniera over a dozen times in a row while he prepped on set because it was his favorite song. By the end, the assistant hated the song.
• By this time, Bruce was offered a lead role in his first Hollywood film by Warner Bros. But it turned out, despite Bruce writing a letter to show off his success in Asia, the chief executive only was willing to offer $250,000 in budget, which was nothing. To give reference, the film The Exorcist released during this time was given $11 million. They ultimately got Raymond Chow of Gilden Harvest to pony up another $250k to get the minimum amount to make the movie. During filming, they made it so that Bruce was once again the side kick to a white male. He demanded directive control of fight choreography and the script, which they refused. He boycotted  filming, which forced them to film b
• roll for days. They finally compromised by giving him choreography control and a first look at the new script and scenes. He wanted the film to appeal more to Chinese than Americans. While Hollywood had no problem casting Bruce as the Asian James Bond in the original script, the Chinese despised the British and British spies for oppressing them and would’ve called Lee a sell out to Americans if he took that character role, something Lee was well aware of.
• Towards post production of Enter the Dragon, MGM offered him to costar with his childhood idol, Elvis Presley.
• Bruce fought for his film to be called Enter the Dragon instead of Blood and Steel to make it clear he was the star of the movie. The executives were against it until the end of filming when they had already commissioned two sequel scripts and Bruce said he’d walk out if the film wasn’t called what he wanted. The branding of Enter the Dragon would be good for the sequels too. They countered with naming it Han’s Island after much discussion before letting Bruce have the name he wanted.
• Bruce would erupt in anger and refuse to speak to people when he lost face or someone lied to him. He told the Chinese press he fired a script writer who had a script he didn’t like to show he was in charge of running trhe Hollywood movie. In reality, he had threatened to walk out to someone who had the real power to fire this man, who was fired for different reasons so It wasn’t linked to Bruce. When Bruce bumped into this man by accident in front of a Chinese crowd and saw him wave warmly, he saw himself as losing face because the public would’ve seen that he was lying. He canceled the contract, called to tell Warner Brothers he was withdrawing, and erupted at everyone at Golden Harvest for lying to him. Eventually, Hollywood was able to cajole Bruce to return after many days by mentioned breach of contract, but he refused to talk to the executive who fired the script writer for much longer.
• Before getting a Hong Kong film, Bruce went to Steve McQueen to get into the movie business but Steve saw him as a personal trainer who had forgotten his place. They had a falling out, and Bruce vowed to one day be more succcessful than Steve. When Bruce’s Hong Kong films were a success, he kept trying to contact Steve when he returned to Hollywood but Steve evaded attempts and eventually sent a signed autograph photo back, addressing Bruce as “his biggest fan.” Bruce was trying to show off to Steve and he didn’t like this, claiming Steve knew he was just as big a star now.
• After Enter the Dragon, he was offered million dollar deals from European companies, the Silent Flute project, revived as an offer, and merchandise offers. Warner Brothers offered to pay him and his family $100,000 a year for the rest of their lives if he signed a five movie contract, which still let him film other movies. He said in an interview that he was seriously considering this offer for financial security for his family. He wrote to Run Run Shaw, the head of the near
• monopoly Chinese film studio, that he will reserve three months to film with him and they’ll iron out the details when he gets there. He refused the Silent Flute project out of resentment because they passed when Bruce’s family were starving and were now only offering it thanks to his new success. He was booked to go on Johnny Carson to promote his new movie. He was in discussion with the male actor who played James Bond to stitch him into the Game of Death film after it had already been filmed.
• While filming Enter the Dragon, he took out two life insurance policies. The second one was after offers came flooding in and was based on his future earning potential, not his current income. He wanted to protect his family in case something happened to him.
• Bruce was overworking himself and fainted twice in rapid succession, convulsing, sweating, and having a high fever. Luckily, plenty of doctors were at the hospital he was at and they managed to prevent what was a brain edema (swelling) from killing him. He went from being unable to talk and  recognizing his wife to slurred speech to eventually joking over a couple days. After getting every standard test, including an EEG, the doctors in America diagnosed him with a clean bill of health, saying he had the body of an eighteen year old
• Bruce’s seizure may have been from a head stroke, which is spurred by factors Bruce was experiencing, including sleep deprivation, overwork, excessive heat, weight loss (he lossed 15% of his weight from working), and alcohol (he developed a deep love of sake).
• He was hanging out with another fling Betty Ting Pei and acting out all the scenes for Game of Death in enthusiasm. This caused him to get a little tired and thirsty, which resulted in a strong headache. Betty gave him a common pain reduction pill to take. He undressed and took a nap. They were areanged to go out with Raymond Chow for dinner but Betty canceled because Bruce was still napping. Late at night, Betty tried to wake Bruce to no avail. She franticaly called Raymond who discovered Bruce was already dead when he arrived. Raymond knew the media scandal if the most famous actor in Hong Kong was found dead with two witnesses, so completely dressed him and had the building’s doctor treat him rather than take him to the local hospital three miles away. The doctor failed to revive Bruce and, for some reason, called to take Bruce to a hospital twenty five miles away where injections, CPR, and other methods were used to try to revive him.
• The doctors diagnosed his death as caused by brain edema but couldn’t determine why it started, concluding it was likely cannabis overdose based on what was found in the stomach. But recent research shows you can’t overdose from cannabis because the brain lacks THC receptors.
• After his death, the press spread rumors of every reasonable imagineable for his death, including a curse, bad feng shui, the gods punishing him, hard drugs, and too much sex. The public was outraged and speculated immensely. Fake bombs were planted as revenge for Betty Ting Pei killing Bruce. Because of political reaskns, real bombs were planted with the fake ones, which spurred the government to have an official investigation for Bruce’s cause of death to placate the crowd, even though it was more about manipulating the findings than finding the truth.
• The trial was conducted, and additionally, the life insurance companies used the trial to evade paying the insurance costs for Bruce’s death. They tried to get evidence that he used illegal drugs (cannabis), which would prove he lied that he didn’t take illegal drugs on the application. Insurance companies hate paying money, especially millions after a couple months since the application.
• Betty Ting Pei, during the filming of Enter the Dragon, reconnected with Bruce and continued the affair. Some incident occurred which caused Bruce to cut off contact with her and ban her from Golden Harvest, the movie studio he worked for. Betty took sleeping pills as a suicide attempt, but the hospital saved her by pumping her stomach. Bruce claimed that she had threatened to kill herself if he didn’t take her as a wife.
• Every possible test of every poison or chemical was done on Bruce’s body. The trace amounts of cannabis found in his body was nowhere near enough for an overdose.
• A overlooked diagnosis, overreaction to  the painkiller pill, was posed in the case.
• Bruce’s goal was to have Enter the Dragon outsell Steve McQueen’s new film. It outsold Steve’s film in every region.
• Before Bruce Lee, there were 500 martial arts students in the country. Thanks in part to his influence, there are over twenty million.
• Elvis Pressley saw Enter the Dragon several times and conducted a self
• funded project for his own martial arts film, which never got published.
• A whole film industry exploded thanks to Bruce Lee, chop sooey kung fu flicks. Tons of films exploited his image with lookalikes and similar names.
• Bruce never wrote a will, which created a lot of problems, since he earned a lot of money. Linda went to many meetings that year in Hong Kong to sort out insurance and assets.
• Linda got many deals after Bruce’s death, including a film bio, merchandise licensing, and two book deals writing about Bruce.
• Chuck Norris lived two houses away from Linda. His kids often played with Linda’s and the kids enjoyed an upper middle class lifestyle.
• Shannon Lee, Bruce’s daughter, decided to take over the Bruce Lee foundation in adulthood. Her goal was to have Bruce crack the Forbes top ten dead celebrity earners list, which remained steady with Michael Jackson and Bob Marley at the top. In 2013, this was accomplished. Bruce was the first Asian to crack the list at seven million a year, one spot below Steve McQueen. The next year, he equalled McQueen.
• Bruce stopped his Jeet Kun Do school in the 70’s because he feared the art becoming a doctrine like other martial arts. He made his students swear to never teach at a commercial school and only informally in back yards. Therefore, all the fans who were inspired by martial arts from Bruce’s folms flocked to karate, judo, and taekwondo schools. One of Bruce’s students eventually broke this vow and started a commercial school, which made the biggest figurehead for Jeet Kun Do.
• Jackie Chan starred as the lead in a film in America called the Big Brawl to replicate Bruce’s success. A lot of the executives involved in the film were people directly involved with Lee’s films from Golden Harvest. The film did not do well, and Jackie didn’t come back to America and make it big until the late 90’s with Rush Hour.
• Bruce’s films did so well after his death that it broke up the film monopoly that Run Run Shaw had in China. Bruce made the independent, small studio, Golden Harvest, a success.
• Bruce was the first Asian to star in a Hollywood film. It took a quarter century for the next man to do so, Jackie Chan. The supporting Asian characters at the time were effeminate, non
• confrontational, and gay. They were the model minority Charlie Chan type or the Fu Man Chu villain type. He smashed stereotypes by being masculine, attractive, and violent. Men wanted to be him and women wanted to be him. Lee introduced a new film genre, and inspired Asians to grow balls. Prior to Bruce’s films, the barrel
• chest was the Hollywood ideal, then people flirted with the Arnold Schwarzennegger body before going to the six pack fit look Bruce had.
• A statue of Bruce was built in Bosnia after a Catholic
• Muslim war to symbolize peace. Bruce Lee was chosen in a poll over Ghandhi and the Pope because he was the only man who both sides respected as a symbol of solidarity, racial equality, and justice.
• Bruce’s diet consisted of Linda’s cooking, usually spaghetti, and Chinese restaurant food, like Peiking duck. There were also all the fad supplements and vitamins he bought from the popular American magazines he subscribed to. He also smoked a lot of weed and ate edibles.
• In 1972, a year before his death, he told a Hong Kong reporter, “Even though I, Bruce Lee, may die someday without fulfilling all of my ambitions, I feel no sorrow. I did what I wanted to do. What I’ve done, I’ve done with sincerity and to the best of my ability. You can’t expect much more from life.”
• Linda didn’t expect Bruce to become so legendary after he died.

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