In Memorium: Bruce Lee the Greatest on the 70th Anniversary of His Birth

There were and are great martial artists. There were and are great action stars of world cinema. Then, there was the one and only, Bruce Lee (李小龍). Unmatched.

He was born in San Francisco, California, 70 years ago (on November 27, 1940) as Lee Jun-fan/Li Zhen-fan (李振藩), to parents of Chinese and Chinese/German heritage. I won't provide a bio or filmography in this post--there are more than enough out there written by experts and commentators with far more experience and insight than me. The temporal world lost him on July 20, 1973, when I was soon to turn 9 years old. Too soon. (A gross understatement.) Despite his only 32 years in this life, we lost him after his nearly life-long career on screen--though he only made seven major films, he was in countless films in cameo parts since he was a child, and appeared in numerous television programs.

Remembering Shih Kien 1913-2009

(Photo credit: Copyright by Warner Bros Inc © 1973. All Rights Reserved. Consent is hereby given to newspapers and magazines to reproduce country of origin U.S.A.)

On June 3, 2009, the world learned the news that one of the greatest of all Chinese-language cinema actors had passed away--the 96 year-old Shih Kien (石堅; Cantonese: Shek Kin), star of countless films, television shows and a renowned martial artist.

Donnie Yen is the great Ip Man

I have been a passionate follower of Chinese-language martial arts cinema for most of my life. Though I have learned the chronology of martial arts cinema and have seen many films in the genre from the 1930s to the present, in terms of my own chronology, I fell in love with this type of film as a New York kid in the 1970s. This was, of course, the start of the golden era of martial arts motion picture production, with films from the Shaw Brothers (邵氏片場) and Cathay (國泰) dominant and prolific, the emergence of new production powerhouses such as Golden Harvest (嘉禾娛樂有限公司), and with stars like the one-and-only Bruce Lee (李振藩; Li Zhenfan). My dad took me to see poorly-subtitled versions of these films in crusty old 42nd Street movie theaters -- dodging hookers, drug dealers and other such characters en route -- where they would play as double-features with a bad, American exploitation flick. I can't even remember the exploitation movies; all I wanted to see were the Hong Kong action pictures.