Flint's Martial Arts--wrong Bruce!

Wow, very few people remember the late Bruce Tegner. Bruce Tegner passed away in 1985 in Ventura County, southern California, heart attack. He is listed on www.findagrave.com.

Bruce Tegner was almost a generation older than Bruce Lee and represents the immediate post-WWII generation that introduced Far East Asian martial arts into the United States. Prior to that, Asian martial arts were somewhat known in the west, primarily as jujutsu and judo, with scant awareness of karate. But in the years after World War II, Americans and Asians seriously introduced martial arts into the west, especially karate, which by then had completed its transition from karate-jutsu to karate-do.

Bruce Tegner's parents were devout judo practitioners, a rare thing indeed for their generation. Bruce Tegner mastered judo and its black belt advanced instruction of atemi-waza (striking). He later seriously studied karate. Tegner would later go on to be among the first Hollywood stuntment and trainers of actors in the martial arts which the actors employed in film. The efforts are clear in these early, black-and-white films which showed actors, some famous, using judo throws and the judo chop (knife hand) or the karate chop (sword hand), which is the deadly effective edge-of-hand blow that is rarely seen today in reality martial arts fighting. The knife/sword hand is effective but requires much closer-in fighting than the fist.

Bruce Tegner was a prolific writer of martial arts books, still available today. He preceeded Bruce Lee in the fervant belief that martial arts had to be practical and could indeed by modernized. Like Lee, Tegner believed that martial arts should be dynamic and evolutionary, and not static simply for traditionalism, customary and historical beliefs, a stance which earned both men harsh criticism, and especially for Bruce Lee, bitter enemies. Unlike Bruce Lee, Tegner did not force the issue against such strong traditionalism, although he remained true to his beliefs until his death. Today, Bruce Tegner is largely forgotten, which is a shame. He was born perhaps twenty years too early.

Bruce actually did choreograph the fight scenes for another spy spoof of the era, the Dean Martin Matt Helm film "the Wrecking Crew". It was the film debut for Chuck Norris and Mike Stone, who taught Elvis karate, was Dean's stunt double for the martial arts scenes.