Jim Kelly, ‘Enter the Dragon’ Actor, Dead at 67

He delivered some of nastiest blows and funniest lines in Bruce Lee's martial arts cult classic

Actor Jim Kelly, whose sharp wit and martial arts chops were a big part of the Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon,” has died. He was 67.

Kelly’s ex-wife Marilyn Dishman said that he died Saturday of cancer in his San Diego home in a Facebook posting Sunday.

He played he Afro-topped tough guy named Williams in the 1973 cult classic “Enter the Dragon” and supplied some of the film's best lines: He’s “too busy lookin’ good,” Mr. Han-man comes “right out of a comic book,” and “ghettoes are the same all over the world – they stink.”

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"It was one of the best experiences in my life," he told salon.com of working on "Enter the Dragon." "Bruce was just incredible, absolutely fantastic. I learned so much from working with him. I probably enjoyed working with Bruce more than anyone else I'd ever worked with in movies because we were both martial artists. And he was a great, great martial artist. It was very good."

The role in "Enter the Dragon" landed him several others, and he appeared in “Three the Hard Way,” “Black Belt Jones and “Black Samurai.”

Kelly began studying martial arts in 1964 in Kentucky and later moved to California where he earned a black belt in karate.

 

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