Bruce Lees One Western Role Explained (& How It Was Different)

Bruce Lee’s One Western Role Explained (& How It Was Different)

Bruce Lee only had one Western role in his acting career. Here’s what it was, and why it stands out from all his other movie and TV appearances.

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Bruce Lees One Western Role Explained (& How It Was Different)

Despite his interest in the genre, Bruce Lee only had one Western role in his acting career, which was his guest appearance in Here Comes The Brides. The TV series was one of a handful of American shows that the actor appeared on between 1967 and 1971. This period represented a phase in Lee’s life where he was struggling to break into Hollywood movies.

Years after moving on from his days as a child actor in Hong Kong and relocating to the United States, Bruce Lee landed the part of Kato in ABC’s The Green Hornet, a show which allowed him to showcase his martial arts skills on a weekly basis. It was Lee’s first big break, but it didn’t last for long. The show was canceled after only one season, forcing aspiring movie star Bruce Lee to look for work once again. Lee’s ultimate goal was to become a Hollywood star in the vein of Steve McQueen, but studios didn’t seem to be interested in casting him in any big projects. While waiting for his chance, Lee accepted offers to guest star in various TV shows, including Ironside, Blondie, and Longstreet, the latter of which being a series where he was in a total of four episodes.

One of the shows Lee appeared on during this time was ABC’s Here Come The Brides, a comedy-Western about a group of women from the New England area who are sent to Seattle in the era of the American Wild West to keep the male workers happy. In a 1969 episode, titled “Marriage, Chinese Style,” Lee played Lin Sung, a Chinese immigrant who tried to avoid an arranged marriage. When his fiancée fell in love with one of the show’s main characters, Lee’s Lin Sung was pressured into hunting him down in an effort to redeem his stolen honor. However, he was unsuccessful in his attempts to defeat the hero.

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From watching Lee’s Here Come The Brides episode, it’s clear that his Lin Sung character contrasts greatly with all other roles that Lee had as an adult as it didn’t draw on his martial arts expertise. In fact, it was the first (and only) time since his child actor days that he played a character who wasn’t a martial arts expert. Even his Marlowe, Longstreet, Ironside, and Blondie characters were distinguished by their kung fu skills, but this wasn’t the case for Here Come The Brides’ Lin Sung. His portrayal of Lin is well-remembered by Bruce Lee fans for how it demonstrated a bit more of his range as an actor. Instead of playing a “tough guy,” Lee was able to show a certain sense of vulnerability, and to a degree, cowardice.

Here Comes The Brides also marks the only time Bruce Lee has been seen on horseback or in a Western setting. The actor, who reportedly had a difficult experience riding a horse on set, never returned to the genre. Bruce Lee biographer Matthew Polly wrote in his book, Bruce Lee: A Life, that the actor could have landed similar roles, but the actor disliked the “degrading” pigtail hairstyles that male Chinese actors had to wear in Western movies and shows. However, he did have a long-held interest in producing his own Western story. He even had two different kung fu Westerns he wanted to star in, The Warrior and The Silent Flute, but neither came to fruition during the actor’s lifetime.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/bruce-lee-western-role-here-come-brides-explained/

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