Bruce Lee was screwed out of this TV show

David Carradine was born to play Caine!

It is true that Carradine was not an exhaustively trained fighter, but he is a very talented & capable actor. This is most evident due to the love that generations of viewers have for the character of Caine. Don't forget, Carradine carried that bedroll barefoot for 3 years!

His physical strengths were a natural athleticism and fluidity of movement. His melodious and gentle voice was perfectly matched to the poetic nature of the Taoist inspired dialogue.

Carradine's face was naturally gentle and sublime, but he could also turn it dangerously dark and menacing when the helpless or innocent were threatened.

All of these talents were blended perfectly to create the peace loving and lucidity seeking character of a wandering Shaolin monk.

Kung Fu was a "dialogue" television show. The fight scenes rock & roll, but only as a lesson to the intolerant and racist boobs that blocked Caine's peaceful path or hassled the friends he made as he trecked across the West.

Bruce Lee is a martial arts deity, at least in the movies. No offense to Asians who have learned English, for I have the utmost respect for those who know multiple languages, but there is NO WAY Bruce could have pulled off the dialogue with his heavy accent. I also think that his martial arts style would have been too authentic and brutal, distracting the viewer from the show's true aim to educate and entertain.

As Kwai Chang himself might say:

"David Carradine was Caine, Bruce Lee was not"

Well, in my opinion Bruce Lee can play a pacifist, he played a Caine type of role in the first episode of a short lived detective show called "Longstreet", his role was the complete opposite of his "Fist Of Fury" roles. Lee was a good actor, he started as a child actor in Hong Kong and I heard he was actually called the Chinese James Dean when he appeared in a Chinese movie called "the Orphan" when he was about 16 or 17 that was before he moved to the US.

Eitherway, I don't care who would be right to play Caine, Carradine was great as Caine and he seems to understand the philosiphy and knowledge of Eastern culture maybe he didn't start out that way but the show may have got him interested in Eastern philosiphy. So its all good.

Overall, I believe Lee came up with the concept but I don't really care that he didn't get the part as long as Carradine did a great job with the character. I just think Lee was a better actor than people give him credit for.

You got things mixed up. The American audience at the time was not ready for an Asian lead. In Green Hornet, Bruce Lee was not the lead, just a side kick.


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The fact of the matter is that Bruce Lee was a rotten actor.

It is a sad fact that Bruce Lee looked, in the words of the Hollywood know nothings, "too oriental to play an oriental" and was not chosen for the role.

That being said, Kung Fu was still a fine show.

Regretfully, it is a known fact that Bruce Lee was passed over for the role because the Hollywood know-nothings thought he looked too Chinese to play a Chinese.

You make sense of it!

Here's the true story behind Kung Fu:

Kung Fu was created by writer Ed Spielman, who originally came up with the idea in the mid 1960s. Ed was interested in all things oriental and Chinese, and even took evening classes to learn Mandarin. He became fascinated with martial arts and learned as much as he could about the history and of the various styles. Spielman would visit martial arts schools in New York's chinatown and talk to the old grandmasters.

Spielman had written a 44 page treatment for a movie called Kung Fu. He spent the next few years shopping it around. By 1969, he had acquired an agent who liked the story and sold it to Warner's in New York. In February of 1970, Spielman's agent bartered a deal for Spielman and his friend and collaborator, Howard Friedlander, to write a theatrical motion picture screenplay from Spielman's original story. All of this occurred in New York.

Ultimately Warner Brothers decided not to make it as a movie. But, studio executive Harvey Frand had faith in the project, and took it to ABC TV, where it was developed for television.

Meanwhile, on the west coast, Bruce Lee had been approached for a possible part on the show and also as a technical adviser. Whether Lee had actually been thinking about the same idea for a similar series is not certain, but being contacted about the project perhaps made Bruce Lee incorrectly think that he was "developing" the series. Lee went to meet Tom Kuhn, then the vice president of Warner Brothers Television to convince him he should play the lead. But Kuhn thought Lee wasn't the right fit for the show. The studio (ABC) on the other hand was familiar with Bruce (from the Green Hornet) and was leaning toward him for the lead. This was all happening just before Lee had accepted the offer from Raymond Chow in Hong Kong for a two picture deal, and just before Lee did the first episode of Longstreet.

Bruce Lee desperately wanted to make it in Hollywood, and even while filming The Big Boss and Fist of Fury in Hong Kong, Bruce held out hope that he would be part of the Kung Fu TV series, which had a working title of 'The Warrior'. But it was not to be.

Kung Fu was never Bruce Lee's idea or creation.

This is all verifiable, according to Ed Spielman, through documents he filed for copyright purposes when he registered his original script in the mid 1960s.