The groundbreaking television series Kung Fu premieres on American television on February 22, 1972. Kung Fu starred David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine, a Shaolin monk traveling across the Old American West, armed only with his spiritual training and martial arts skills, as he seeks out his half-brother Danny Caine.

Kwai Chang Caine is the orphaned son of an American named Thomas Henry Caine (Bill Fletcher), and a Chinese woman, Kwai Lin, born in mid-19th-century China. After his maternal grandfather’s death, Caine is accepted for training at a Shaolin Monastery, where he grows up to become a Shaolin priest and martial arts expert. In the pilot episode, Caine’s beloved mentor and elder, Master Po, is murdered by the Emperor’s nephew, who uses a firearm. Filled with a sudden thirst for revenge, Caine in turn kills the nephew, with onlookers unaware that the man was reloading his weapon preparing for a second attack. With a price on his head, Caine flees China to the western part of the United States, where he seeks to find his family roots, and his half-brother, Danny Caine. This first episode sets up a series of adventures, as Caine navigates intolerant locals, fellow countrymen that have relocated to America in order to build massive railroad lines, and foreign agents sent to track him down.

Kung Fu aired for 3 seasons on ABC, for a total of 63 episodes. The final episode was titled “The Last Raid,” and originally aired on Saturday, April 26, 1975. The series soon achieved cult status, thanks in part to the martial arts craze that swept America at the time. The show’s enduring popularity spawned a second TV series called Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, which ran from 1993 until 1997, as well as two TV movies, including Kung Fu: A Legend Reborn (1992) and Kung Fu: The Movie (1986).

Martial arts icon Bruce Lee has long been said to have created the concept for Kung Fu. Lee’s widow, Linda Lee Cadwell, stated in her memoir “The Man Only I Knew” that Lee created the concept for the series, which was later stolen by Warner Bros. There is evidence for this in a December 8, 1971, television interview that Bruce Lee gave on The Pierre Berton Show. In the interview, Lee stated that he had developed a concept for a television series called The Warrior, meant to star himself, about a martial artist in the American West – the same concept as Kung Fu, which aired the following year – but that he was having trouble pitching it to Warner Brothers and Paramount.

David Carradine himself in a 1989 interview and in his book “Spirit of Shaolin,” stated that Bruce Lee was passed over for the role.  It was alleged that an unnamed ABC executive said “You can’t make a star out of a five-foot-six Chinese actor.”

According to writer and martial artist Matthew Polly, Bruce Lee did not invent the Kung Fu TV series. Polly states that Ed Spielman created the character Kwai Chang Caine, and the movie treatment Spielman wrote with Howard Friedlander in 1969 was the origin of the pilot and subsequent series. However, it was the popularity of Bruce Lee’s early television and film roles that popularized martial arts for mainstream American audiences.