David carradine

Born on December 8, 1936, in Hollywood, California, John Arthur Carradine (his real name) was the eldest son of the legendary John Carradine , a supporting actor known for his films with John Ford . His brother Bruce has occasionally been an actor, although his half-brothers (on the father’s side) Keith and Robert Carradine and Michael Bowen have worked much more.. As a child he traveled all over the country, due to his father’s professional commitments, and had his own private tutors. David Carradine’s youth was marked by excesses, so typical of the hippie environment of the 60s, when he dedicated himself to the frenetic consumption of drugs. During those years, he was also introduced to oriental culture and philosophy. He was so fascinated by these subjects that years later he ended up writing the book ‘Spirit of the Shaolin’, on the philosophy of Kung Fu.

After studying music theory and composition at the University of San Francisco, David Carradine decided he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. So he made his debut in the theater, in various productions of Shakespeare’s works. After marrying Donna Lee Becht, he made his television debut, in various series such as The Virginian . Taggart , a forgotten B-western, was his first theatrical feature. His first major job was as the lead in Shane , a television version of the film Deep Roots , in which he inherited the character from Alan Ladd . Martin Scorsese made him the co-star of Bertha’s Train, where he was a train robber who stole the heart of Barbara Hershey , with whom he had a real-life romance that lasted many years. Scorsese also cast him for a very brief appearance in Mean Streets .

It is clear that nobody would remember David Carradine if it were not because in 1972 they decided that it was too risky to hire a Chinese man, the legendary Bruce Lee , to star in the Kung Fu series . Although Lee had devised the series, at the last moment, they preferred to give the lead role to a Westerner. And that Carradine played a Chinese, Kwai Chang Caine, although his nickname became much more popular: ‘The little grasshopper’. Caine toured the American West where he delivered justice. So popular was Carradine in the 70s, that they did not stop claiming him in the cinema, for titles such as The Death Race of the year 2000 and Cannonball , by Paul Bartel . Two works stand out:This land is my land – where he played the famous folk singer Hal Ashby – and The Serpent’s Egg , directed by Ingmar Bergman . There he played a circus trapeze artist in Berlin in the 1920s, whose brother committed suicide. In Outlaws of Legend , a Walter Hill western, he was the lead along with Keith and Robert Carradine.

In the ’80s and ’90s, Carradine accepted all sorts of roles in infamous spinoffs. It would be said that she did not choose the films, she simply chained shootings of whatever. She saves the North and South series and little else. Thus, he was completely forgotten when Quentin Tarantino recruited him to play the character alluded to in the title, in Kill Bill -he appeared mainly in Kill Bill Volume 2 -. With that film he reconciled with moviegoers, although he continued to accumulate titles of low projection. In the last years of his life he has played movies like The Great Stan (The Prison Bully) and Crank 2 .

Carradine was not very lucky in love. She had four more wives, two of them – Gail Jensen and Marina Anderson – also actresses. He is survived by the last, Annie Bierman, to whom he had been together since 2004. He had had two daughters, from different mothers.