 |
Bruce LeeActor and athlete
Date of Birth: 27.11.1940
Country:  USA |
Content:
Biography of Bruce Lee
Actor and athlete Bruce Lee lay back on the couch cushions, while a desperate woman tried to wake him up, hitting his cheeks and rubbing his temples. He was just sleeping, but she couldn't wake him. The doctor who entered the room immediately knew that the kung fu master was no longer in this world. They called his wife, who gasped and clutched her heart - her husband often told Linda that he was cursed... Deep down, she had long been waiting for trouble. And Bruce slept, slowly drifting away to a place from which there is no return, with the ending of his life playing out before his eyes like a Chinese painting on a long silk cloth.
Early Life in Hong Kong
Over a hundred years ago, the English king took the Jyulun Peninsula from the ruler of the Celestial Empire. The war was called the "Opium War"; it was short, brutal, and hopeless for the Chinese armed with crossbows and axes. The city of Hong Kong was built on the peninsula - a center filled with white European mansions and a spicy local cuisine-smelling outskirts. In 1942, the Japanese captured Hong Kong and carried out a grand massacre, then the British regained their colony. After Mao won in China, refugees flooded into the city... It was 1949, and the boy Lee Jun Fan, the son of Chinese opera actor Lee Hoi-Chuen and a half-Chinese, half-Dutch mother Grace Lee, celebrated his ninth birthday. Strictly speaking, he wasn't really Lee Jun Fan (which translates from Chinese as "returning back"): the child was born in San Francisco, and his mother wanted him to return to America. When the boy grew up, he was given the name Li Yen Kam ("never sitting still"); after his first film shoot, he became known as Li Sui Lung ("little dragon"). And on his birth certificate, issued in a Chinese hospital in San Francisco, his name was Bruce Lee. Not everyone believed that he was actually a boy. Evil spirits knew for sure that Grace had given birth to a girl. Grace and Lee spent a lot of effort to confuse them, even giving the child a girl's nickname, Little Phoenix. Their first son died, and they believed they had angered the gods; in China, it is believed that the second child in the family must be a girl, so Grace and Lee adopted a poor girl. Then their son Peter was born, and then Grace became pregnant again and couldn't find peace of mind: according to Chinese beliefs, the second son was also in danger. The newborn Bruce had his ears pierced and was called by his girl's name - it seemed that they managed to deceive the evil spirits. The boy grew up and caused trouble for everyone in the neighborhood: there was no other troublemaker like him in Hong Kong. He ran through the city, made friends with anyone, took apples from street vendors' stalls, and didn't listen to his parents - a great sin for the respectful Chinese. However, Bruce's father was not an exemplary father either. He was a good actor and an excellent playboy, loved by friends and women, but he didn't care about his children. By Hong Kong standards, Lee was a wealthy man (he owned several apartments that he rented out), but the way the family lived would horrify an unemployed Chicagoan. A large table where they ate, played, and read; the only room where Lee, Grace, their children, grandparents, servants, and a huge German Shepherd slept; a ceiling fan that lazily circulated the hot air... Water was supplied to the house once a week for a few hours, and they filled it in every available container. The Lee family took their showers like cats, splashing water on their faces and making a mess - they didn't know what a bathtub was, and forty-degree heat in Hong Kong was the norm... But everyone who lived under this roof believed that such comfort could only be found in the governor's palace: most Chinese lived in cramped, miserable huts. As the children grew up, they had to be educated - Bruce and his brothers were sent to a Jesuit college. The Jesuits had been doing missionary work in China for several centuries and knew more about the aborigines than anyone else, but even they couldn't handle Bruce Lee. Small, skinny, agile, he couldn't sit still, didn't want to bother with arithmetic and English grammar, and only found pleasure when he managed to break someone's nose. His former teacher, Brother Henry, remembered him many years later, claiming that he was an unusual child - lively, receptive, and smart. He had to be treated very gently, constantly engaging his imagination - then he behaved like a good boy... Apparently, Brother Henry rarely succeeded: years passed, and Bruce Lee was expelled from the Jesuit school. He had a great desire for self-assertion, and street fights boosted his self-esteem. He was small, agile, and fearless. Any little thing could provoke a fight, like if another boy didn't look at him right, didn't sigh in the right way, or didn't apologize respectfully enough. Bruce didn't pay attention to the size and weight of his enemies, and they beat him twice a day. Lee Hoi-Chuen, of course, was not an exemplary father, but his son's bruised face and constantly torn clothes bothered him. The lamenting Grace washed the bruises and mended his torn shirt, and every evening, Lee read notations to Bruce until he was exhausted. He eventually got tired of it. Lee didn't give money to his children on principle, but when Bruce asked him to pay for kung fu lessons, he unexpectedly agreed - he had a faint hope that this misery would end someday. Bruce Lee chose the tough and aggressive Wing Chun style - according to legend, it was created by a nun who lived in the 15th century. (She invented it while watching a fight between a snake and a crane.) The nun taught it to her student Yim Wing Chun, who then taught it to her future husband, who also had students... And so the line reached Ip Man, a former police inspector in the town of Namhoi, who fled to Hong Kong from Mao Zedong's forces. In Hong Kong, Ip Man opened his own school and made a living by turning troublemakers like Bruce Lee into real fighters.
Life in the United States
Bruce Lee had nowhere else to go: he worked around the clock, barely finding time for training, warming up in the back yard of the restaurant and rushing to the kitchen at Ruby's call. He broke his own pride, learned to get along with people, and devoted all his free time to kung fu - it became his only solace. Alone in a foreign country, with a funny Hong Kong accent (he pronounced "r" as "v"), Bruce finally felt the need to connect with other people. Gradually, he made friends and began teaching them martial arts, and then one of his new acquaintances became his manager - the lessons became more expensive, and more and more respectable people joined. Bruce Lee was becoming a well-off man.
Career and Marriage
He still worked at the University of Seattle, and now he rented his own small gym, which soon became popular among Hollywood stars - kung fu was becoming trendy. Overweight producers and aging screenwriters were proud of themselves and told their friends about the extraordinary little Chinese man - the name Bruce Lee became known in Hollywood. He was lucky: at that time, America was engulfed in a craze for all things Eastern - Chinese painting, Japanese tea ceremonies, and Zen philosophy. It was now kung fu's turn: Bruce Lee became the embodiment of the mysterious and terrifying "Chinese boxing".
Soon, he became a movie star. This happened quite by chance: television producer William Dozier was looking for an actor for a role in a new series, and Bruce happened to be nearby. The rest is history. They auditioned and cast Bruce as the lead role in "The Green Hornet." This marked the beginning of his successful film career.
