by Steve James on Mon Jan 08, 2018 8:36 am
Well, there were no official "gong fu" schools in NYC in 1966, but there were certainly people who were teaching. I'm sure that is the same in any city with a "Chinatown" after WW2/Korea. I know there were several people teaching on the west coast. But, this all was the result of post-war immigration. I wasn't born before the war, but I don't think many people in the States knew or had ever seen TCMA.
One of the first MA books I bought was Ed Parker's; his "kenpo" had been taught in Hawaii since the 40s. We called it "Chinese karate" for some reason, probably because it wasn't strictly Japanese --almost no one knew of William Chow. That's really my point. It's not that BL brought CMA to the US. It just so happened that he brought it to the attention of the greater public through the Green Hornet tv show and his HK movies. Btw, before the tv series, the character of Kato was never portrayed as (or by a) Chinese.
BL was dead when Enter the Dragon premiered. His theories on MAs, cross-training, Jeet Kune Do, etc., all came out because of his death and the movie. That was 1973. The term "kung fu" had been announced to the American public in late '72, and Carradine's show. The fact that the show idea was probably Lee's, but the producers didn't use a Chinese actor to introduce the Shaolin temple and Buddhism is another indication of why Lee was so influential. I.e., it's not just about his ability as a martial artist.
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