Bruce Lee’s Yellow Jumpsuit Up For Auction
Bruce Lee’s yellow jumpsuit is now available to purchase, if you happen to have a few thousand dollars to spare.
Bruce Lee is considered one of the greatest martial arts fighters to ever live, and if you look at what he accomplished, he probably is. He brought Kung Fu to the US in spite of death threats, and even faced punishment for it, leading to him being temporarily paralyzed. For the movie buffs out there, he even beat Chuck Norris hand to hand, and there is video to prove it below.
The Chinese martial arts champion got his US start in The Green Hornet, where he played the sidekick who did all of the heavy work for his partner. He was supposed to get his first TV role in Kung Fu, but the studio replaced him with David Carradine. His theatrical breakthrough happened in Hong Kong with The Big Boss.
Continuing his success, Bruce Lee went on to star in the blockbuster Enter the Dragon. The film was so successful it was actually used as a template for one of the best video game based movies of all time, Mortal Kombat.
It was Game of Death that introduced Bruce Lee’s famous yellow jumpsuit, an outfit used in several forms for characters meant to emulate him. The most famous iterations are video game characters from Tekken (Law), Super Street Fighter II (Fei Long), and Mortal Kombat (Liu Kang). The yellow jumpsuit is an icon that solidifies Bruce Lee’s presence even when it’s not really him.
Quentin Tarantino even gave the martial arts superstar a nod when he dressed his star Uma Thurman in a similar outfit in Kill Bill volumes one and two.
Bruce Lee’s infamous outfit is one of several items from Game of Death given to his friend Taky Kimura, and sold to a collector. The collector of the memorabilia is putting the items up for sale on Thursday at Spink auction house to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Bruce Lee’s death. The jumpsuit was custom tailored for Bruce Lee for the film, but because it was washed afterward, it shrunk to a smaller size.
#BruceLee‘s famous yellow jumpsuit up for auction http://t.co/hKdjPIALdw pic.twitter.com/9ADFnPYvJo
— ST Communities (@STCommunities) December 2, 2013
If you happen to have about $40,000 to spend on movie memorabilia, it could be yours.
Other items up for bid besides Bruce Lee’s yellow jumpsuit include a yellow lacquered wood nunchaku and a bamboo whip. Are you a Bruce Lee fan who wants to be surrounded by martial arts movie memorabilia? If so, you might want to book a flight to China and pick up these pieces of Kung Fu movie history.
