8 Gone Too Soon

Chapter 7 Gone Too Soon In the fall of 1972, Bruce was working on another movie in Hong Kong called Game of Death (with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the basketball star) when he was contacted by Warner Brothers. The big Hollywood studio wanted Bruce, who was then thirty-one years old, to make a motion picture called Enter the Dragon. It would be the first time Hollywood and Hong Kong worked together to produce a movie. Bruce's dream of bringing Chinese culture to Americans was coming true. Bruce believed that people would learn to appreciate the martial arts from his movies, and if they appreciated the martial arts, they also would appreciate Chinese culture. That made Bruce a hero to the Chinese people. Even though Bruce was living in the United

States, his Chinese heritage was still very important to him. He remained close to his family, too. Bruce's father died shortly after Brandon was born in 1965. His mother moved to Los Angeles several years after that to be near Bruce and his family. Bruce's older brothers and sisters were already living in the United States. His younger brother, Robert, was a popular musician in Hong Kong before he, too, moved to Los Angeles. Bruce knew that Enter the Dragon was a great opportunity to "let the outside world in on some of our Chinese culture." He felt an awesome sense of responsibility because of it. If Enter the Dragon was going to showcase Chinese traditions and customs, he felt he had to honor them. Bruce always had worked hard, putting all his boundless energy into his training and films. But now his schedule was incredibly hectic. He was working around the clock. He was writing the Enter the Dragon script, acting, training, and choreographing fight scenes.

In May 1973, when working in Hong Kong on the sound for Enter the Dragon, Bruce collapsed. He was exhausted. It was a scary incident, but he recovered. Then, on July 20, while working on the script for his next movie, Game of Death, Bruce complained of a headache. So he took some medicine and went to sleep.

When it was time for dinner, one of his costars in Game of Death couldn't wake him up. Neither could Raymond Chow. They called an ambulance. The ambulance took Bruce to the hospital, and he was declared dead on arrival. He was only thirty-two years old. The cause of Bruce's death was a cerebral edema, or brain swelling. It was the result of a reaction to the pain medicine. The news was devastating to Bruce's fans in Hong Kong. Bruce was so popular that a reported twenty-five

thousand people turned out for his funeral in Hong Kong. They crammed the city streets as his funeral procession drove past. They strained police barricades to get a glimpse of their fallen hero. Then they respectfully walked by his casket to pay their final respects.

Bruce's widow, Linda, wanted him buried in Seattle. That's where she planned to live with their children, Brandon and Shannon. So another funeral was held in Seattle, Washington. Actors Steve McQueen and James Coburn helped carry his coffin. Thousands of people still visit Bruce's gravesite in Seattle each year.