The San Francisco-born, Hong Kong-raised master of martial arts would have been sixty-nine years old today. Here’s a brutally effective scene from “Fist of Fury” a.k.a. “The Big Boss” — sorry about not very good dubbing in the set-up, but this is how almost every one of my generation in the States first saw these films.
And’s here’s a brief clip from of one of Lee’s small roles in mainstream American films. Watch as the young actor does a number on the office belonging to James Garner as Raymond Chandler’s legendary P.I. in 1969’s “Marlowe.”
Looking at these scenes, it’s clear that Lee had several times the presence of many superstars. It would have been interesting to see how far he would have been allowed to go as an Asian-American if he’d survived the see the release of “Enter the Dragon.” Even today, it seems like the glass ceiling for Asian-American actors is borderline impenetrable and doubly so, for whatever reason, if they’re male and not already superstars in Asia, but that’s another blog post.
