Though not because of his movies, Bruce Lee shut down his kung fu school in 1970. In addition to his work in movies and TV, Lee operated a school where he taught martial arts to locals in California. However, his days of running the studio ended shortly before his acting career took off.
During the 1960s, Lee’s income came from a combination of teaching and acting. He did much more than just co-starring in The Green Hornet and making guest appearances in other TV shows. He also gave private kung fu lessons to celebrities like Steve McQueen and James Coburn. Plus, he had schools where he could instruct small groups of students eager to learn Chinese martial arts. What he taught was Jeet Kune Do, a system of martial arts he developed himself. Lee had trained in Wing Chun in his youth. In the late 1960s, Lee spent a great deal of his time teaching Jeet Kune Do at his Chinatown kung fu school.
Bruce Lee closed the school in January 1970. While some may assume that the decision was motivated by his stardom and busy schedule, that actually wasn’t the case. Lee didn’t land his career-making role in Golden Harvest’s The Big Boss until the following year. Instead, his choice to close the school stemmed from his concerns about Jeet Kune Do’s future. According to Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly, Lee was adamant on Jeet Kune Do not becoming like other Chinese martial arts styles. By teaching it in a school, Lee felt that he was risking that being Jeet Kune Do’s legacy. Lee had always envisioned Jeet Kune Do as a constantly-evolving martial arts philosophy. To him, it wasn’t a true kung fu style, but a set of ideas.
Traditional kung fu styles are taught in schools, where the masters instruct their students to use specific stances and moves. That’s exactly what he didn’t want for Jeet Kune Do, as Lee was deadset against this kind of approach, which he felt was narrow-minded and unnecessarily restrictive. Polly wrote in his book that Lee didn’t want Jeet Kune Do to eventually take this course, so he closed his studio and made several of his students promise not to run commercial Jeet Kune Do schools. After his death, the Bruce Lee Estate tried to protect Lee’s legacy by keeping others from misusing the Jeet Kune Do name.
It should be noted that though Lee became opposed to his kung fu being taught in formal schools, he continued to teach Jeet Kune Do privately after shutting down the school and had no issue with his students doing the same. As Bruce Lee said in the past, he considered that his role was to “guide” people into helping them find their own path, and not to “teach” them into following his.