The 30 for 30 doc also dealt with the actor’s death at 32, an event that led many distraught fans to think up rumors and conspiracy theories detailing how they think the Enter the Dragon and Fist of Fury legend really died.
The facts as we know them, however, are these: Lee died in Hong Kong on July 20, 1973. He suffered a cerebral edema, a building up of fluids around the brain, after taking a prescription painkiller called Equagesic, a drug that would be discontinued in the U.S.
On that day, according to the biography Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly, Lee had met with James Bond actor George Lazenby, who Lee wanted in his movie Game of Death. He had some hash with Andre Morgan, an employee from production company Golden Harvest, followed by some more at his girlfriend Betty Ting’s apartment.
Lee felt faint, then said he had a headache, so he took one of Ting’s Equagesic–a medication she had had before with no ill effects. He then fell asleep on a mattress on his girlfriend’s floor. He would never wake up.
With his team releasing no official announcement, however, rumors quickly began to emerge about how the actor really died. Sudden celebrity deaths are usually a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, but in this case, the fact that Golden Harvest lied and said he had died after collapsing in his garden with his wife, Linda Lee Cadwell (so as to hide the fact he had a mistress) probably did not help.
The actor’s autopsy was conducted on July 23, with Dr. R.R. Lycette writing: “The brain is very tense beneath the covering dura. The brain weighs 1,575 grams. A normal brain weighs up to 1,400 grams…“Congestions and edema of the brain (i.e. excessive fluid accumulation), were the immediate cause of death.”
Lycette also speculated that the drugs Lee had taken had been part of his death. This lead to another round of speculation that the actor had died after taking everything from heroin to LSD to a Hong Kong sexual stimulant known as 707.
These tales then began to be exaggerated. Some said he had died from having too much sex, leading to him dying with an erection. Others said he was hacked to death by a gang, had been poisoned by ninjas, or that he had faked his own death to deal with the Chinese mob. Many wanted to turn his death into the sort of thing that could happen in one of his movies rather than an unfortunate accident.
The rumors were then compounded when the actor’s son also died young. Brandon lee died aged 28 in an accident on the set of his 1994 movie The Crow, leading some to speculate that the family was subject to a curse.
New theories continue to be thought up, as new generations get into the movies of Bruce Lee and consider the facts of his death. In 2006, for example, the Taipei Times posited that Lee may have been epileptic. Polly added to the mystery of what caused the edema by suggesting that heatstroke may have had something to do with it. Lee died on a hot, humid day, after having the sweat glands in his armpit surgically removed. The biographer also revealed that the edema that killed Lee was not the first one he had suffered.
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