Jim Kelly

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James Milton Kelly (May 5, 1946–2013) was an American singer, comedian, and martial artist.

Kelly came to fame in the early 1970s in several blaxploitation films.

Kelly is perhaps best known for his appearance in Enter the Dragon, a 1973 martial arts adventure film.

He appeared in Black Belt Jones as the title character and Three the Hard Way as Mister Keyes in 1974.

Kelly died of cancer at the age of 67 on June 29, 2013.

Personal life and death

Kelly married twice: from 1967 to 1968, to Marilyn Dishman, his college sweetheart, and finally in 2013 to Marcia Bentley, from 1980 to 2013. Rosalind Miles, a 1973 to 1976 film actress, appeared on television from 1973 to 1976. Kelly died of cancer at his San Diego, California, on June 29, 2013. He was 67 years old at the time.

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Early life and athletic career

Kelly's father operated a locker-rental company for Navy troops. He began his athletic career at Bourbon County High School in Paris, Kentucky, where he competed in basketball, football, and track and field. He attended the University of Louisville on a football scholarship but left early in his freshman year after a coach referred to a black teammate with a racial insult. Rather, he began to study Shorin-ryu karate.

Kelly began his martial arts career in Lexington, Kentucky, under the tutelage of Sin Kwang Theo' (Shaolin-Do). He trained in Okinawan karate under the direction of Parker Shelton, Nate Patton, and Gordon Doversola. Kelly made a name for herself in the early 1970s as one of the country's most successful world karate champions. He won four prestigious championships in the same year, most notably the World Middleweight Karate Championships at the 1971 Long Beach International Karate Championships. Kelly founded his own dojo, which attracted a slew of Hollywood stars and culminated in him being cast in the movies.

Kelly trained as a tennis prodigy in addition to his martial arts and film careers. In the 1970s, he played amateur tennis at Plummer Park in West Hollywood. He began serving on the USTA Senior Men's Circuit in 1975. He eventually ranked No. 84, the world's best-ranked player. In the state of California, the two top ten in the state in senior men's singles and the top ten in the state. He began owning and running a tennis club in the San Diego area later in life.

Acting career

Kelly was the first black martial arts film actor to play in black. In the thriller film Melinda (1972), he was a martial arts instructor for the first time. Calvin Lockhart, the film's actor, was given the award after being asked by the film's writer, to whom he was introduced by one of his karate students, to teach martial arts to the film's star. Kelly then co-starred with Bruce Lee in the blockbuster Enter the Dragon (1973). He played Williams, a martial artist who was invited to a tournament run by a crime lord and renegade Shaolin monk Han. The role was originally planned for actor Rockne Tarkington, who mysteriously dropped out days before shooting in Hong Kong. Fred Weintraub, a producer who heard about Kelly's karate studio in Los Angeles' Crenshaw district, was immediately impressed. He had his best lines in that film:

Kelly was also granted a three-film contract with Warner Brothers, which culminated in starring roles in a number of martial arts-themed blaxploitation films. Black Belt Jones (1974), the first black belt warr, and a heroin dealer threatening his friend's dojo, was the first in the series. The novelty of an African-American martial arts master was demonstrated in this and most of his other roles. Golden Needles (1974), with Joe Don Baker and Elizabeth Ashley, and Hot Potato (1976), in which he reprises his role as Black Belt Jones and rescues a diplomat's daughter from Thailand's jungles, were among his other Warner Brothers films. Jim Brown and Fred Williamson directed Three the Hard Way (1974), a Spaghetti Western in which he portrays a mute Indian scout expert in martial arts, and One Down, Two to Go (1982), in which he appears as a co-owner of a multinational martial arts dojo. He appeared in the low-budget films Black Samurai (1977), Death Dimension (1978), and Tattoo Connection (1978). Kelly appeared in fewer films after appearing in One Down, Two to Go. In 1985 and 1986, he appeared in two episodes of Highway to Heaven. In a cameo appearance with Eddie Griffin in a deleted scene from the film Undercover Brother (2002), which was not included in the DVD extra features. Kelly made a cameo appearance in Afro Ninja (2009), directed by, and starring veteran stuntman Mark Hicks.

Kelly outlined his exclusion from film in an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2010.

Reginald Hudlin, a film and television producer, referred to Kelly's enduring fame as the cool martial artist with the massive ‘fro's iconography. You must have done something really wrong if you can make an image that lasts more than 30 years. And he did."

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