The Mystery of Bruce Lee's Death

The Mystery of Bruce Lee's Death

The History Channel continues its flight from history with "How Bruce Lee Changed the World" (8 p.m., History).This two-hour profile offers a thorough look at the famous movie star and martial-arts master who died at 32 in 1973.

Much like James Dean, Lee's premature exit burnished his growing reputation and catapulted him from mere movie star to cultural legend.

Bruce Lee (Lee Hsiao Lung), was born in San Fransisco in November 1940 the son of a famous Chinese opera singer. Bruce moved to Hong Kong when he soon became a child star in the growing Eastern film industry. His first film was called The birth of Mankind, his last film which was uncompleted at the time of his death in 1973 was called Game of Death.

Bruce was a loner and was constantly getting himself into fights, with this in mind he looked towards Kung Fu as a way of disciplining himself. The famous Yip Men taught Bruce his basic skills, but it was not long before he was mastering the master. Yip Men was acknowledged to be one of the greatest authorities on the subject of Wing Chun a branch of the Chinese Martial Arts.

Bruce mastered this before progressing to his own style of Jeet Kune Do. At the age of 19 Bruce left Hong Kong to study for a degree in philosophy at the University of Washington in America. It was at this time that he took on a waiter's job and also began to teach some of his skills to students who would pay. Some of the Japanese schools in the Seattle area tried to force Bruce out, and there was many confrontations and duels fought for Bruce to remain.

He met his wife Linda at the University he was studying. His Martial Arts school flourished and he soon graduated. He gained some small roles in Hollywood films - Marlowe- etc, and some major stars were begging to be students of the Little Dragon. James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Lee Marvin to name but a few.

He regularly gave displays at exhibitions, and it was during one of these exhibitions that he was spotted by a producer and signed up to do The Green Hornet series. The series was quite successful in the States - but was a huge hit in Hong Kong. Bruce visited Hong Kong in 1968 and he was overwhelmed by the attention he received from the people he had left.

Bruce Lee, dressed in the traditional Chinese outfit he wore in the movie Enter The Dragon, was laid to rest in Lakeview Cemetery in Seattle in late July of 1973. But long before Lee's sudden and tragic death in a Hong Kong apartment at age 32, rumors were rife throughout the Orient that he had been wounded or killed in fights.

"One day, I got a long-distance call from Hong Kong's largest newspaper," Lee recalled. "They asked me if I was still alive. 'Guess who you are talking to?' I replied."

Thus, when Lee actually did die, speculation abounded as to the cause. The rumors ranged from Lee being killed by Hong Kong triads (gangsters) because he refused to pay them protection money - something that was common for Chinese movie stars to do at that time -to his being killed by an angry martial artist's dim mak (death touch) strike.

Some people claimed Lee was cursed-he had just bought a house in Hong Kong that was supposed to be haunted-or that he had died while mking love to actress Betty Tingpei, or that he had angered the Chinese martial arts community by teaching foreigners, and that he had been killed in a challenge match.

Many Chinese believed Lee was the victim of too much gum Ilk (intensity) in his training, while others cited drug use as the cause for his sudden demise. Still others believed that Lee's fate was sealed at birth, that it was in the stars. And, finally, there are those who think Lee's death was staged, and that he is merely waiting for the right time to return to society.

The facts of the case are this: Lee died after falling into a coma. The coroner's report was inconclusive, and medical authorities came up with five reasons for Lee's untimely death. However, they all agreed that it was caused by a cerebral edema (a swelling of the brain caused by a congestion of fluid).

But what caused the edema became a matter of speculation. For the most part, the course of events on that fateful July day in 1973 can be pieced together. According to Lee's wife, Linda, Bruce met film producer Raymond Chow at 2 p.m. at home to discuss the making of Game of Death. They worked until 4 p.m., and then drove together to the home of Betty Tingpei, a Taiwanese actress who was to also have a leading role in the film. The three went over the script at Tingpei's home, and then Chow left to attend a dinner meeting.

A short time later, Lee complained of a headache and Tingpei gave him a tablet of Equagesic-a kind of super sapirin. Apart from that, Lee reportedly consumed nothing but a couple of soft drinks.

At around 7:30 p.m., Lee lay down for a nap and was still asleep when Chow called to ask why he and Tingpei had not yet shown up for dinner as planned. The actress told Chow she could not wake Lee. The ensuing autopsy found traces of cannabis in Lee's stomach, but the significance of this discovery is debatable. Some believe the cannabis caused a chemical reaction that led to the cerebral edema, but the coroner's inquiry refutes this theory.

In fact, one doctor was quoted as saying that the cannabis being in Lee's stomach was "no more significant than if Bruce had drunk a cup of tea that day."