Above is a cover of Martial Magazine from Hong Kong featuring Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris. Save for their devotion to martial arts, it’s very possible that two people could not be more different—Bruce Lee was a philosophical atheist who wrote poetry and preached peace, while Norris is a fundamentalist science skeptic. Strange bedfellows indeed. The photo is from the climactic battle of 1972’s The Way of the Dragon, a pretty cool movie set mostly in Rome.

Above you see a prized part of our collection—five vintage Bruce Lee promo posters produced in Hong Kong from 1971 to 1973. We still have probably ten more Lee posters, which we’ll get uploaded sometime in the near future. 

We found something quite cool yesterday—six Enter the Dragon lobby cards produced in Hong Kong and featuring the one and only Bruce Lee. Looking at them, we aren't sure they're all actually from Enter the Dragon, but that's the way they were packaged. Five of the cards are printed film frames and feature him in full ass-kicking action, but the last one, at bottom, is the true winner, showing a smiling Lee during a break in filming. Assuming these are indeed all from the set of Dragon, it would have been the spring of 1973, when Lee was on top of the world. And in that last shot he looks like it. Just a few months later, in July, he would be gone.  

Above, a never-before-seen-online poster for Bruce Lee’s Fist of Fury, made for the DVD release around 1999 or 2000. Fist of Fury should not be confused with Fists of Fury. The latter was released in 1971 and was better known in the U.S. as The Big Boss, whereas Fist of Fury was known as The Chinese Connection as well as The Iron Hand, and its Mandarin title was Jing mo mun and its Cantonese title was Jing wu men. Got all that? Great. Fist of Fury premiered in Hong Kong today in 1972. 

You can keep your Christmas music—we’ve been listening to Bruce Lee. On this 45 record from 1972, Bruce explains his philosophies of self-discipline and self-defense, in both English and Cantonese. Lee was popular—we all know that. But the very existence of this record speaks to the intensity of worldwide interest in the man, his movies, and his unparalleled skills at pimp smacking bad guys. Put another way—can you imagine an action star putting out a release like this today? We think not. The record would be better if Lee were the only one speaking, but every Gladys Knight needs her Pips, seemingly. You can listen to My Way of Kung-Fu here. 

Mining dead artists for profit is a well-established (if ethically dubious) tradition. Ernest Hemingway somehow kept publishing novels after his suicide. Tupac Shakur released more albums after he was shot to death than when he was alive. And Game of Death, for which you see the Japanese promo art above, hit theaters after Bruce Lee died unexpectedly during filming. The film's producers, who had been left with a large cash outlay and no star, cobbled together a disjointed finished product using doubles and old footage, and when the end result was unveiled to the world, everyone from Lee’s family to his die-hard fans labeled it a blight on Lee’s legacy. But we take a different view. Lee wasn’t famous because he was an actor—he was famous because he was a visual artist. His acting was always secondary, merely a convenient medium of delivery for his martial arts. Like a dead musician whose final few great songs are released on a disc filled out by mediocre live recordings and outtakes, Game of Death’s Lee footage should be judged apart from the film as a whole. Seen in that light, you’ll be able to appreciate the fact that Lee is sublime in his last few choreographed fights, even if the filler material surrounding him is a mess. From what we’ve read, Lee’s original concept for this movie was ambitious, interweaving bits of philosophy and spirituality into a violent quest for higher consciousness in both life and martial arts. Had the project been finished, it probably would have been the greatest martial arts epic ever made. But even if the film never reached such lofty heights, we can still enjoy Lee’s last moments working in the craft he loved. Game of Death premiered today in Japan in 1978. More rare promo art below.

Covers and interior images of Bruce Lee from assorted Hong Kong martial arts and cinema magazines, circa early 1970s. Click keyword "Bruce Lee" below to see more magazine covers.

Assorted album sleeves from Argentine soundtrack maestro Lalo Schifrin, circa 1970s.

Various martial arts and cinema magazines, including Screen, just above, with Bruce Lee on the covers, circa 1970s.