Hong Kong doctor, who tried and failed to revive Bruce Lee, takes secrets of kung fu legend’s 1973 death to the grave
PUBLISHED : Friday, 14 August, 2015, 1:33pm
UPDATED : Friday, 14 August, 2015, 10:14pm
Oliver Chou
oliver.chou@scmp.com
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Hong Kong kung fu icon Bruce Lee died despite efforts by Dr Eugene Chu to resuscitate him. Photo: AP
Obituary
Dr Eugene Chu Poh-hwye (1932-2015)
The doctor who tried to revive Hong Kong kung fu icon Bruce Lee as he lay on his death bed has died at age 84.
Dr Eugene Chu Poh-hwye – who never spoke a word about the night of July 20, 1973, when Lee breathed his last – had been suffering from pancreatic cancer. He died on August 10.
Veteran singer Anders Nelsson, a long-time patient of Chu’s while Lee was still alive and well, remembered the doctor’s extraordinary professional ethics.
“Dr Chu had been my doctor for the past 45 years. He would of course not break doctor-patient confidentiality,” he said.
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Superstar Bruce Lee Siu-lung with his wife Linda and a friend of theirs head out of a theatre in April 1973. Photo: SCMP Pictures
Chu first learned his trade at Melbourne University, graduating in medicine and surgery in 1956. He became a fellow at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1959 and then at the London chapter in 1961.
He returned to Hong Kong to practise and became a private doctor to show business celebrities, among them Taiwanese actress Betty Ting Pei – whose flat in Kowloon Tong was where Lee, at age 32, never woke up from his sleep in 1973.
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Mourners pay respects to their idol at his funeral in 1973. Photo: SCMP Pictures
According to testimony Chu gave at a hearing two months after Lee’s death, he arrived at 10.10pm following an emergency call from Ting, who had given Lee a prescription painkiller, Equagesic, for his headache.
The pill had been prescribed by Chu for Ting. It was stronger than aspirin and could produce side effects in people who were allergic to it – and Lee was believed to have been one of them.
At the scene was Ting and Raymond Chow, the boss of Golden Harvest, which produced all of Lee’s blockbuster kung fu movies.
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Actress Betty Ting Pei poses next to a portrait of Bruce Lee on the 30th anniversary of his death. Lee died at the actress' apartment in Kowloon and she was later said to have been his mistress. Photo: AFP
For 10 minutes, Chu tried to revive Lee but there was no response. An ambulance was summoned and the medics performed another round of resuscitation, but to no avail.
Lee was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Yau Ma Tei, where he was certified dead at 11.30pm.
For the next 42 years after the hearing, Chu did not once break his silence over Lee’s death. He continued to practise at his Tsim Sha Tsui clinic and attended to patients at Baptist Hospital in Kowloon Tong.
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Thousands of fans of movie icon Bruce Lee turned out for his funeral in 1973 in Kowloon. Fans lined the street where his hearse would pass by. Photo: SCMP Pictures
