On July 20 legendary martial artist and actor Bruce Lee’s family members and his fans celebrated 48th death anniversary of Bruce Lee, but with a sorrowful mood as it was an unfair, untimely death. Shannon Lee, the daughter of Bruce Lee, as always broadcast her commemorating message for the fans around world. She said that, though Bruce Lee is no more, his teachings and values are still with us.
Last year, she published a book titled Be Water, My Friend: The True Teachings of Bruce Lee, to mark the 80th birth anniversary of her father. Shannon Lee, an actress, businesswoman and mother, is now running the Bruce Lee Foundation established in 2002, to promote the works and views of her father, especially among youngsters. So, it is noteworthy to discuss the life of Bruce Lee’s family after his tragic death on July 20, 1973.
Mystery of Death
The first challenge Linda Emory Lee, wife of Bruce Lee and her family faced after Bruce Lee, was to find the truth behind the death of her husband. Initially, there were so many rumours circulated about the death, the most prominent one was that he had been poisoned by either the Chinese mafia or powerful members of the Hong Kong film industry. Others said Lee’s purchase of a house in Hong Kong had angered neighbourhood demons, who then placed a curse on him to last for three generations. But according to the autopsy report the reason was “death by misadventure”, albeit inconclusive; doctors found Lee’s brain had swollen considerably, from 1,400 to 1,575 grams (a 13 percent increase).
When death occurred Bruce Lee was at the home of his colleague Betty Ting Pei, a Taiwanese actress, in Hong Kong. An actor George Lazenby, a producer Raymond Chow and Bruce Lee went over a script out of which they were going to make a movie and suddenly Lee complained of a headache. Ting Pei, the actress gave him the painkiller Equagesic, which contained both aspirin and the tranquiliser meprobamate. After he went to lie down for a nap following the taking of the pill, he couldn’t wake up.
A September 1973 report about the tragedy said that maybe he had a “hypersensitivity” to the pill. BruceLee.com, run by The Bruce Lee Family Company, also accepted it saying, “The determination was that Bruce had a hypersensitive reaction to an ingredient in the pain medication that caused a swelling of the fluid on the brain, resulting in a coma and death.”
Meanwhile, a new book, Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly published in 2018, offered yet another explanation for the death: a heatstroke. Finally, Linda stated that “I myself do not hold any person or people responsible for his death. Fate has ways we cannot change. The only thing of importance is that Bruce is gone and will not return.”
Meanwhile, it was revealed that Betty Ting Pei, a Taiwanese actress was one Bruce Lee’s many mistresses. However, Linda and Shannon who are not ready to distrust Bruce Lee just ignored this revelation.
New Chapters in Life
Linda Lee contributed immensely to the success of the movie Enter the Dragon by which Bruce Lee was catapulted into the legendary. However, after her husband’s death she herself became a movie director and an actress, known for Dragon (1993), A Night in Heaven (1983) and Saturday Night Live (1975).
Meanwhile, she started to write for newspapers too. She became an editor and writer for The New York Times and frequently contributed to the Style, Arts and Leisure, and Business sections.
The article she wrote for the Education Life supplement in 1998 entitled What’s the Rush? Why College Can Wait? generated an enormous amount of mail.
In addition to the more than eighty articles she has written for The Times, Linda Lee is the author of several books as well. The most notable and best selling book among them was Bruce Lee: The Man Only I Knew which was later adapted into a biopic called Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.
Marrying Again
Linda Lee married a second time in 1988. The groom was Tom Bleecker. But the partnership was short lived, they divorced in 1990. It was during this time (in 1989) that Linda Lee Cadwell wrote a memoir titled The Man Only I Knew. In 1991, she married third time. He was stockbroker Bruce Cadwell. They settled in southern California and still are together.
Brendon’s Departure
The next most tragic incident Linda Lee faced was his son Brendon Lee’s sudden death. Brandon Lee had begun a career in Hollywood in late 80s. Like his father, he starred in action movies that made use of his martial arts prowess. Brandon reportedly met with a Hollywood director Stan Lee who felt the young actor would be ideal casting for Shang-Chi. However, at that time comic book movies were far from the juggernauts they are now, so Brandon Lee fatefully turned that role down in favour of starring in The Crow. But that role cost him his life — when a stunt gone wrong saw him shot dead with what had appeared to be an unloaded prop gun on March 31, 1993.
Linda Lee Cadwell was devastated by this tragic death and took years to reconcile with what had happened to Brandon. According to media reports, she sued 14 entities regarding the death and accused various crew members of not following standard protocol to ensure the safe use of firearms on the set. Her lawsuit alleged that after they ran out of dummy bullets, crew members used live ammunition to create a dummy bullet of their own instead of waiting a day to buy a new pack. Nonetheless, she threw her full and immediate support behind the ramshackle reshoots necessary to finish the film and see it released.
Though Brendon Lee took different path in film industry, his sudden death still haunts Linda Linda. “It is beyond my realm of cosmic thinking to think that it was meant to be,” she said. “It just happened. I’m not beginning to make sense of it. I just think we were fortunate that he had as many years as he did. They say time cures anything. It doesn’t. You just learn to live with it and go on.”
The Bruce Lee Foundation
When died in 1973, Bruce Lee (according to celebritynetworth) had a net worth of some $10 million. It was likely that most, if not all of that, went to his widow Lee. However, she, at the beginning of the millennium, embarked on philanthropy with her daughter, Shannon Lee and jointly established the Bruce Lee Foundation (BLF), a not-for-profit organisation, in 2002. Since then, the BLF has created online and physical exhibits to educate people about Bruce Lee, provided financial assistance to students and families within the United States to attend college, provided martial arts instruction for underprivileged youth, and created and runs our Camp Bruce Lee summer program for kids to encounter Bruce Lee’s mind, body and spirit practices. Now the president of it is Shannon Lee, and they have given away more than $80,000.00 in scholarships over the years.
Meanwhile, Shannon started to write books as well, and as mentioned earlier, her latest was published last year titled Be Water, My Friend which illuminates her father’s thinking and gives the reader real-life examples of how we can incorporate it into our lives.
Live with Bruce Lee’s Vision
Linda Lee Cadwell, aged 76, albeit married to another man, is still living with the vision of Bruce Lee. Perhaps, that’s why she put it like this in 2018:
“Life changes as you go along, and as Bruce always used to say, ‘To change with change is the changeless state.’ So it’s like that water flowing – you never step in the same water twice in a river. It’s always flowing. So you always have to go with the change.” (The Greatest Escape Games, 6 July, 2021)