Kung fu mania in 1970s UK kept Bruce Lee’s memory alive after his death, thanks to dedicated fans and a society’s newsletters
- Fans in the UK communicated through the newsletters of The KFM Bruce Lee Society, which ran from 1976 to 1983. Author Carl Fox has collected them in a new book
- The content of the newsletters runs from the mundane to the outré. There are poems, art and a group even got together to make a kung fu film as a tribute to Lee
The dreary Britain of the 1970s seems a long way from energetic Hong Kong, but Bruce Lee still managed to amass thousands of dedicated fans there – even if most of them didn’t hear about the star until after his death in 1973.
British fandom is the subject of Carl Fox’s book The KFM Bruce Lee Society, which collects all the newsletters of the UK-based Lee fan club together. The result is an intriguing snapshot of Lee’s international appeal.
Unlike their counterparts in the United States, it was difficult for British fans to see Lee’s films, and they had to search out screenings. The fan club acted as an information exchange, with fans writing in with details of, for instance, the availability of Lee Super 8 films, which were often just trailers and clips.
Censorship was a big deal for British fans, as the British Board of Film Classification made many cuts, most notably excising any depictions of nunchaku, or nunchucks. Fans were continually enraged by the fact that they couldn’t see the full films, which were sometimes missing entire scenes when they played in cinemas, and the Society even organised an anticensorship petition and presented it to the censors.
British fans were sometimes martial artists, but were more likely to be film fans and collectors. Lee memorabilia – which included medallions, a die-cast metal version of the Green Hornet’s car (Lee played chauffeur Kato in the 1966 US series The Green Hornet), and even a pillowcase – was popular, and posters of Lee were in high demand.