THE LIFE AND TRAGIC DEATH OF BRUCE LEE

Some words from people he knew
‘The last time I saw Bruce, which was just before his death, he was just beginning to
settle in the atmosphere of fame, which is a hard one to get used to . . . It wasn’t a
question of him competing with anybody. It was a question of everybody else
competing with him because he was like the beacon, the source of the energy that
everybody got something from.’JAMES COBURN

‘Bruce was an amalgam. He had a kind of reserve, a very becoming modesty and
dignity – almost a softness of manner. On the other hand, there was that inevitable
sparkle of the occasional living room demonstration. During the course of an evening,
someone would want to know what he could do. To be accommodating, he would
snatch a fly out of mid-air or do some trick with his hands that was so quick it would
take everybody’s breath away . . . Above all was Bruce’s really lovely, bright
personality, which made him very attractive as purely a human being.’
TED ASHLEY, Chairman of Warner Brothers
‘Bruce was a genius at creating new ideas. This is what amazed me about him – his
inventions, the new things he would create and develop . . . I feel he accomplished
more in his lifetime than most people will accomplish in seventy or eighty years.’
CHUCK NORRIS, the Karate Champion.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my indebtedness to those who have helped and supported me
in the writing of this book, and who have contributed their time and effort and their
memories: To Max Caulfield and Alan Shadrake, without whom this book would not
have been written. And to the following friends and family whose hearts were truly
touched by Bruce: Grace Lee, his mother; Robert Li, his brother; Phoebe Ho, his
sister; Vivian McCulloch, my mother; Adrian Marshall, our lawyer; Taky Kimura, Dan
Inosanto, Ted Wong, Herb Jackson, Peter Chin and James Coburn, his students;
Jhoon Rhee and Al Dacascos, Bruce’s fellow martial artists; and Fred Weintraub,
producer of Enter The Dragon.