Bruce Lee fans ready to mark 70 years since idol's birth

Fans across the globe are preparing to this Saturday mark the 70th anniversary of the birth of actor and martial arts legend Bruce Lee.

Events are being organized from San Francisco, where Lee was born, to Hong Kong, where he was raised and found fame, as well as wherever Bruce Lee fan clubs are found across the globe.

In Hong Kong - the city that launched Lee as an actor and the place where he spent most of his life - fans are being treated to a retrospective of the man's earliest work, from the time he was ten to when he was 18, at the city's Film Archive ( http://www.filmarchive.gov.hk), while Thursday sees the general release of "Bruce Lee, My Brother'' ( http://www.mediaasia.com/bruceleemybrother) a feature film from director Raymond Yip Wai-man that has leaned heavily on the help of Lee's brother Robert.

In San Francisco, where Lee was born on November 27, 1940 before emigrating back to his parent's native Hong Kong three months later, both the actor's wife Linda and daughter Shannon are holding a fund-raising day for the Bruce Lee Foundation ( http://www.bruceleefoundation.com), the charity set up by his family and friends to promote Lee's "legacy, his martial art, his philosophy, and his life example."

Included in the list of events are a dinner and series of talks, while guests will also be taken on a tour of Lee-related sites around town. Shannon Lee has also asked her father's fans from across the globe to send birthday cards through to the foundation's office in Los Angeles.

Lee was living in Hong Kong when he was struck down by a cerebral edema (swelling of the brain) on July 20, 1973 at 32 years old. His international fame had just been established thanks to the Hollywood-funded Way of the Dragon, while in Hong Kong he had been responsible for two massive box office hits in the year before his death - Big Boss (1971) and Fists of Fury (1972).

"He wasn't a big guy but he had so much power,'' said Sam Ho, who has programmed the retrospective at Hong Kong's Film Archive. "His early films show just how grossly neglected his reputation as an actor has been. He really could do anything."

MS