Bruce Lee could flow like water and spin nunchucks like no one else.
Thanks to his mind-blowing kicks and lightning-fast speed, the man became a star in the span of
just a few years.
But in an unfortunate twist of fate, Bruce Lee never lived to see his big moment.
Here's the truth behind Bruce Lee's tragic death.
Bruce Lee was practically made for the movies.
As a kid growing up in Hong Kong, Lee was a prolific child actor, playing in around
20 films.
And when he moved back to his birth country of the United States, he opened martial arts
schools, taught stars including Steve McQueen, and even donned a black mask and started fighting
crime.
Playing Kato on The Green Hornet, Lee introduced kung fu to the American mainstream.
Unfortunately, the series only lasted 26 episodes and failed to launch him into the big time.
Frustrated by Hollywood executives passing him over or giving him bit parts, Lee packed
his bags and returned to Hong Kong, where he discovered he was the most famous man alive.
The Green Hornet was so popular in his homeland that it was known as The Kato Show, and soon
Lee was getting leading man parts in Hong Kong films.
Lee's first film as a lead actor was The Big Boss, which became the highest-grossing movie
in Hong Kong history.
It held that record until Lee's second film, Fist of Fury, came along.
Soon after, Lee even got a chance to direct, working on both sides of the camera for Way
of the Dragon.
After just three films, Lee was suddenly the king of Asian cinema, and Hollywood finally
decided they wanted to be in the Bruce Lee business.
When Bruce Lee started breaking Asian box office records, Warner Brothers gave him a
call.
This was Lee's big Hollywood moment — and Enter the Dragon was what resulted.
His first English-language movie, Enter the Dragon was the perfect film showcase for Lee's
philosophy, charisma, and fighting abilities.
The plot finds Lee playing a Shaolin warrior tasked with sailing to an island fortress,
joining a martial arts competition, and busting the drug lord running the show.
With on-screen backup from uber-cool Jim Kelly and a groovy score from Lalo Schifrin, Lee
crafted a kung fu flick that is still counted as one of the best action movies ever made.
And when the film hit theaters in August 1973, it became a box office smash, nabbing $20
million and earning the top spot internationally.
Bruce Lee had finally hit the big time — but by that point, he wasn't around to enjoy his
newfound fame.
With his bulging biceps and incredible abs, Bruce Lee was what you might call a "physical
specimen."
Whether he was skipping rope, circuit training, or doing isometric exercises, Lee was constantly
working on his superhero physique.
"As an actor, as a martial artist, as a human being
all these I have learned from martial arts."
The man seemed absolutely unstoppable, but despite his amazing build and unbelievable
speed, the Little Dragon was actually suffering from some major health issues.
On May 10th 1973, an exhausted Lee was working on the post-production of Enter the Dragon.
He was doing some dubbing in a Hong Kong studio booth when he suddenly keeled over and began
shaking and vomiting.
Lee was rushed to the hospital, and it took him a couple days to regain the ability to
speak.
After he was feeling better, Lee got an extensive checkup, but doctors weren't sure what had
happened.
They knew he'd suffered from a cerebral edema — which is when fluids build up around the
brain, causing it to swell — but they weren't sure what had caused it.
It was a shocking moment for the 32-year-old Lee, who always looked nigh-on invincible
on the big screen.
Sadly, it was a harbinger of things to come.
Bruce Lee died on July 20th 1973, at just 32 years of age.
But how did he spend his last day on Earth?
Lee was busy with his upcoming film, Game of Death, and he was meeting with George Lazenby,
hoping to get the James Bond actor on board.
After talking with Lazenby, Lee did some hash with a buddy, and then drove to his mistress
Betty Ting Pei's apartment.
The two spent the next couple hours in bed and getting high, only pausing when Lee's
producer, Raymond Chow, showed up at the door — and Lee began eagerly acting out scenes
from Game of Death.
That's when things took a tragic turn.
Lee started feeling dizzy, and his head began hurting.
So Ting Pei offered Lee an Equagesic pill — a prescription drug that's part painkiller
and part tranquilizer — and after taking it, Lee went into Ting Pei's bedroom to rest.
Chow took off, leaving the two alone, and Ting Pei let her lover sleep for a few hours.
Unfortunately, when she finally went to wake him up, the Dragon was unresponsive.
Freaked out, Ting Pei called Chow for help, but even though a doctor and paramedics rushed
to the scene, they were too late.
Bruce Lee, the great movie star and martial artist, had died in his sleep, about a month
before Enter the Dragon would hit theaters and turn him into an international star.
Bruce Lee's death sent shockwaves around the world — but what exactly killed him?
After an autopsy at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, doctors discovered that Lee's brain had swollen
by nearly 13%.
According to the official report, Lee had died of, quote, "congestions and edema [eh-DEE-ma]
of the brain," the same exact thing that had hospitalized Lee in May 1973.
The edema was originally blamed on the cannabis in Lee's system.
However, that theory was called into question when Donald Teare showed up.
A forensic expert recommended by Scotland Yard, Teare had earlier performed the autopsy
of Jimi Hendrix, so he knew a thing or two about drug overdoses.
And after Teare finished his investigation, he concluded that Lee had an allergic reaction
to the Equagesic pill that Betty Ting Pei had given him to help with his headache.
However, Ting Pei has said this wasn't the first time she'd given Lee an Equagesic pill,
and obviously, the drug didn't kill him on those occasions.
Still, Teare's version of events is widely accepted.
Sadly, however, whenever any major celebrity dies under strange circumstances, some truly
mad conspiracy theories are bound to show up — and there are still plenty swirling
around about Bruce Lee.
Raymond Chow made a big mistake after Bruce Lee's death.
Hoping to protect Lee's image, Chow's production company claimed the actor died at home with
his wife, Linda.
But once the press found out the truth, the tabloids got going.
In fact, a lot of people pointed the finger at Betty Ting Pei, claiming she was responsible
for Lee's death, with some suggesting she'd even poisoned him.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the only rumor involving foul play.
One of the most popular theories says other martial artists were angry at Lee for teaching
their secrets to Westerners, so they decided to bump him off.
Some imaginative folks say ninjas were responsible, and others claim Lee was killed with the "Dim
Mak," a mythical martial arts move that supposedly kills a victim in one blow.
Some believe he was killed after refusing to pay protection money to the Triads, while
others claim the Mafia did the deed because Lee wouldn't let them control his career.
The more mystical conspiracy theorists even say there's a family curse that took the life
of both Bruce and his son, Brandon Lee.
But despite all this wild speculation, Lee wasn't killed by a mob boss or poisoned by
his lover.
The master of the one-inch punch was almost certainly taken out accidentally by a tiny
pill.
Game of Death could've been the greatest martial arts movie ever made.
Starring Bruce Lee in all his jump-suited glory, the movie would've followed the head-kicking
hero as he battled his way up a pagoda, searching for a valuable treasure and fighting a new
boss at every level.
Each bad guy would be the master of a particular martial art style, and Lee would have to display
different tenets of his philosophy Jeet Kune Do to defeat his foes.
Unfortunately, Lee only filmed 40 minutes of footage for the movie before passing away,
so to complete the film, a Bruce Lee double was hired to play the main character.
Worse still, during one scene in which the double looks into a mirror, the filmmakers
taped a cardboard cutout of Lee's face on the mirror to serve as a reflection.
And that's not even counting all the times the movie cuts to scenes from other Bruce
Lee films.
The plot was also completely shaken up, with the hero becoming a movie star whose girlfriend
is kidnapped by the mob.
Perhaps the worst moment of all, however, comes when the movie uses footage from Lee's
actual funeral — even showing the actor's corpse.
Adding insult to injury, the theatrical version of Game of Death only uses 11 minutes of Lee's
original footage.
Fortunately, the 40 minutes Lee shot are still out there, and at the very least, the film
gave us the iconic image of the Little Dragon trading punches with NBA giant Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Immediately after Lee's death, Hong Kong filmmakers seized the moment, birthing an entire genre
called "Bruceploitation."
Hoping to capitalize on Lee's posthumous stardom, studios hired actors who vaguely resembled
the movie star, gave them off-brand names like Bruce Le with just one "e" and Dragon
Lee, and tossed them into knock-off movies that weren't exactly tasteful.
For example, there's Bruce Lee and I, a sleazy softcore drama about Lee's relationship with
Betty Ting Pei, in which Ting Pei plays herself.
One of the truly bizarre Bruceploitation flicks was The Clones of Bruce Lee, where an evil
scientist forces three Lee clones to fight to the death.
And in Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger, we learn the so-called "real Bruce Lee" was a
reluctant drug mule for the Triads and eventually murdered, so now, a successor named Bruce
Li wants revenge against the gangsters.
But without a doubt, the weirdest Bruceploitation flick was The Dragon Lives Again, where a
recently deceased Bruce Lee wakes up in the afterlife and fights pop culture characters
like James Bond and the Man with No Name.
Popeye also makes an appearance, while Dracula later shows up with a gang of mummies.
Obviously.
Bruce Lee's son, Brandon, was more than a little reluctant to take up his father's mantle.
Brandon was just 8 when his father died, and for a while he refused to have anything to
do with martial arts.
Evidently, Brandon found himself dealing with a lot of anger, and he was kicked out of two
high schools before dropping out of a third.
"I remember when I was a little kid, a lot of my friends
didn't want to come over to the house because
there were always these men out in the back yard screaming
and breaking things, ya know?"
Brandon admits he felt a lot of pressure to live up to his dad, and at the time, he had
no intention of following in his father's footsteps.
As he put it:
"I was like, 'Hey!
Wait a minute!
Where was my vote in this?
So I blew it off."
His mother, Linda Lee, acknowledged being Bruce Lee's son wasn't easy.
She told The New York Times:
"It was a blessing because Bruce was a wonderful father.
But for Brandon, it was also a burden to live up to what other people expect of you because
of who your father is."
However, Brandon was eventually bitten by the acting bug, and thanks partly to his martial
arts training from his dad and partly to the Lee family name, he nabbed his first role
in the TV movie, Kung Fu: The Movie.
His first feature film was the 1986 Hong Kong flick Legacy of Rage, and in 1991, he teamed
up with Dolph Lundgren for his first American movie, Showdown in Little Tokyo.
Obviously, the movie that made him big was The Crow, but tragically, Brandon died on
set before the film was completed, due to a mishap with a prop gun.
Brandon Lee died on March 31st, 1993 at the age of 28, passing away right before he was
about to become famous, just like his father.