He went on to be slightly more famous than this early role.....

waspiflab wrote on Feb 24^th, 2009 at 4:40pm:



Yep, must have been difficult for him to play that role, the stereotyping they did back in the 60's was very demeaning to someone of his talent.....

Wow, I butchered that post title..... ....fixed it.....sheesh......  

Romulus111VADT wrote on Feb 24^th, 2009 at 5:48pm:

I've heard he was basically OK with it, as it allowed him to, well, whoop ass every episode.

He was a little annoyed that he couldn't get a leading TV role (he almost got Carradine's role in the Kung Fu series, but the producers were too timid to try it), but he took great satisfaction in making Kato as cool as possible. Kato was hardly the passive flunky in that show, the GH had a lot of respect for his assistant. And he couldn't fight worth a damn compared to Kato, LOL.

When I was a kid watching that show, Kato was the guy I looked up to, not the Green Hornet.  I thought he was awesome.

Alejandro Rhodes wrote on Feb 25^th, 2009 at 7:48pm:

I don't take that curse stuff seriously. If anything, Lee's introduction of chinese martial arts to Americans was in a way that de-mystified all the "ancient secrets"- his Jeet Koon do incorporated a lot of Western stuff, and was mostly just a more "practical" form of kung fu. A lot of chinese teachers were unhappy with his decision, but a curse? My first kung fu teacher, grandmaster Alan Lee (no relation), had a similar problem with the stuffy traditionalists when he started teaching "white devils|" (and worse, in their minds, black folks!!)  in the New York area , but nobody ever "put the whammy" on him.

The most plausible theory on Bruce Lee's death that I've heard was hehad a reaction to the meds he was taking for his back injury, which caused an edema (swelling and fluid buildup) of the brain. Maybe he was poisoned with some old chinese herbal thing that the coroner couldn't detect, but I doubt it.

Brandon was killed by an improperly-rigged prop gun... not a curse, just a freakish movie-set accident., that sadly could have been prevented with just a little more caution on the part of the weapons handler.

This story seems very plausible to me:



"Detectives say that the gun was loaded with the dummy bullet for a close-up shot. When the gun was unloaded, the slug could have been dislodged from the dummy shell casing, with the tip remaining in the cylinder or barrel. When the blank round was inserted, the pistol could have been discharged like a loaded firearm.

"Feb 2002, Findadeath.com friend Tony Williams sends this:  'Ever wonder how the bullet got stuck in the gun? I saw a show that explained how it happened. It seems they didn't have any ammo for the close up scene so the prop guy went out and brought some real ammo and removed the bullets and emptied the powder and removed the primers from the cases and then put the bullets back in the cases and loaded the gun for the scene but it seems he forgot one of the primers and during the taping of the close up scene the gun was fired. People said they heard a small bang but nothing happened. But in fact the bullet had lodged itself in the barrel of the gun.' "

So it turns out there was a bullet (just the lead "slug" part, the part that comes out and kills you) still in there, and nobody knew until the trigger was pulled.