Hammer Museum on February 25 at 7:30 p.m. for our tribute screening, Bruce Lee
Please join the Archive at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum on February 25 at 7:30 p.m. for our tribute screening, Bruce Lee: “The Way of the Intercepting Fist,” with special guest Shannon Lee, daughter of Bruce Lee.
In the television collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, which holds thousands of network prints, a single station identification break is emblematic of how historically significant 10 seconds of television can be. Case in point: icon Bruce Lee starring in an ABC-TV promo for the network’s series The Green Hornet.
Archival television holdings (film and tape) often contain promos and bumpers broadcast once during a program’s original run, omitted as extraneous from subsequent rebroadcasts, syndication and home video releases. Viewed within the flow of a vintage television program, these original spots that ran between sponsored ads serve as mini-time capsules that illuminate how networks utilized expensive airtime to create unique brand identities and distinguish their programming slates from the competition. Shoehorned into slots sometimes lasting seconds, the best of these promos employed modern graphics or star power to pack a punch and quickly leave an indelible impression.
Embedded in an archival 16mm network print of Marlo Thomas’ groundbreaking, proto-feminist series That Girl (1966-71), then-unknown actor Bruce Lee emerges between the seams of the sitcom to speak directly to the camera. His gaze in the network promo, like his confidence, is unwavering; his very presence, front and center, seemingly in defiance of the standard operating procedures of network television in 1966, which, more often than not, kept people of color at the margins. This 10 seconds of film is perhaps the first time an Asian American starred solo in a network promo. Unfortunately, over 55 years old, the Eastmancolor film print now has color fading and is slightly worn, dotted with imperfections. Unequivocally, Mr. Lee deserves much better, so a brief, but important preservation project was initiated. The 16mm print was prepped, machine cleaned, then scanned on a LaserGraphics ScanStation. Color correction and digital clean-up were then conducted by the Archive’s Digital Lab team (Randy Yantek, Bryce Lowe, Lauren Poleski-Schultz, Tim Wilson) to return the promo to as close as possible to the condition as it was originally seen in 1966, when Lee, a young, global star-in-the-making made history, introducing himself to ABC’s primetime audience.