Bruce Lee’s life fascinates 45 years after his death
When Matthew Polly began research for his biography of the late, great Chinese American martial arts icon Bruce Lee, he made a wish list of people to interview. Near the top was Chuck Norris, who co-starred with Lee in the classic 1972 fight film Way of the Dragon. Polly was offered an introduction to the former Hollywood star, but was cautioned that his request would probably be turned down.
“Chuck won’t talk because he hates the fact that 45 years later Bruce is still more famous than he is, and is sick of answering questions about him,” says Polly, with a laugh. “Wherever he goes, people ask him about Bruce.”
Norris’s reaction only makes Polly’s Bruce Lee: A Life all the more remarkable. Despite the fact that Lee — who died suddenly in1973, a year after Way of the Dragon was released — remains an enigmatic figure, Polly’s book is the first comprehensive biography of the action hero. Not just for fight fanatics, Bruce Lee is a singular portrait of a complex family man whose mastery of martial arts was almost topped by his cha-cha moves on the dance floor.
As Polly pored through existing articles, legal documents and other media, a friend joked that the author had been researching Lee his entire life. Growing up in Topeka, Kan., during the 1980s, as a “skinny, bullied kid, who was terrified on the playground,” Polly’s life changed after a friend’s older brother brought home a tape of Lee’s film Enter the Dragon, which had been released in 1973, six days after Lee’s death. “We didn’t know what it was. We didn’t know who Bruce Lee was,” says Polly. “We had never seen a kung-fu movie. He jumped into my imagination and became my childhood hero.”
While many kids leave their idols behind, Polly’s obsession with martial arts never waned. He dropped out of Princeton to train with the Chinese Shaolin monks, who are famously credited with inventing kung fu. Polly chronicled his journey to becoming the monks’ most unlikely disciple in his first book, 2007’s American Shaolin, followed in 2011, by Tapped Out, which follows his middleaged attempt to become a MMA fighter.
Polly says, “Writing this book was my way of paying back what I feel is my debt to Bruce for changing my life for the better.”
For three years, Polly interviewed more than100 of Lee’s friends, family members and colleagues. He spent half a year in Hong Kong (Lee was born in the U.S. but his family moved back to Hong Kong when he was little), and several months in Lee’s adopted homes of Seattle and Los Angeles.
While biographers of some of Lee’s closest pals — such as actor Steve McQueen — were easy to access, it took some convincing to secure Lee’s widow, Linda Lee Cadwell. Polly speculates that she agreed to an interview after discovering that he had already spoken to Taiwanese actress Betty Ting Pei, who was Lee’s mistress at the time of his death and in whose apartment his lifeless body was found.
Although the mysterious circumstances surrounding Lee’s death are still the subject of wild speculation, Polly was more interested in how his early years influenced his career.
Lee was born in San Francisco in November 1940, but grew up in Hong Kong. His father was a Cantonese opera singer, who met his mother while performing for her affluent family. Sue Carter is the editor of Quill and Quire.