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The rise of kung fu action films had coincided with the economic boom in Hong Kong in the 1970s.

The rise of kung fu action films had coincided with the economic boom in Hong Kong in the 1970s. Now, in a strange coincidence, as Hong Kong’s fortunes seem to be falling with mainland China asserting its legal jurisdiction, John Saxon, the last of the three stars who turned Enter the Dragon into a global hit, has died. Bruce Lee died young in 1973, after taking the genre international with The Big Boss in 1971. Jim Kelly, who brought hang-loose black coolness to the ring, died in 2013. Saxon, the white American face of the sport, always took the jackpot by gambling shamelessly against himself with the leitmotif line: “You wanna bet?” He was the last to hold out, and his death at the age of 83 in Tennessee brings down the curtain on the pioneering era of English kung fu movies.

Together, the three men represented almost the entire spectrum of the human race — the Amar Akbar Anthony of the world of roundhouse kicks. Enter the Dragon sparked a martial arts craze that spanned San Jose and Sakhalin, Jedburgh and Jabalpur, and the film remains the most readily recognised work of the genre. The watershed movie seems to have erased much from public memory. John Saxon was originally a Fifties teen idol, romancing Debbie Reynolds and Sandra Dee. He was directed by John Huston and appeared with Rex Harrison, Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Anthony Quinn and Lana Turner.

Unbelievably, when he did the judo throws and shotokan karate in Enter the Dragon, he was aged 36. He was fit and in training, a role model for the American people. Almost 50 years after, thanks to Saxon, they remain immersed in endless “training” for unspecified missions. It’s a national craze. You think Saxon didn’t inspire it? You wanna bet?