Robert Clouse (March 6, 1928 – February 4, 1997) was an American film director and producer, known primarily for his work in the action/adventure and martial arts genres.
Other projects included Black Belt Jones (1974), Darker than Amber (1970), China O'Brien (1990), Jackie Chan's The Big Brawl (1980), Gymkata (1985), The Ultimate Warrior (1975), among others.
[1] Clouse made his feature directorial debut with Dreams of Glass, a love story between an Asian girl and white boy, starring John Denos and Caroline Barrett.
He then followed that film with Darker Than Amber (1970) (based on the John D. MacDonald novel of the same name) and starring Rod Taylor as the protagonist, Travis McGee.
Ironside also featured Bruce Lee as Leon Soo, a Karate/Aikido/Judo instructor in a martial arts school (in the episode "Tagged for Murder" (1967)), an icon with whom Clouse would later collaborate for much of his career.
[9] Clouse would collaborate with several actors from Enter the Dragon on his later films, including Bruce Lee (at least archival footage of Bruce Lee, in Game of Death (1978)), Jim Kelly in Black Belt Jones (1974), Robert Wall in both Game of Death (1978), Keye Luke (who provided the voice of Mr. Han in Enter the Dragon (1973)) in The Amsterdam Kill (1977), and Bolo Yeung in Ironheart (1992).
Clouse was one of the directors of the television series The Master, which was broadcast in 1984 and featured a ninja called "Okasa", a recurring character played by Sho Kosugi.
He directed episodes of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color in the late 1970s and early 1980s - "The Kids Know Too Much" (1980) and "The Omega Connection" (1979).
The book's description recites "Finally, the truth can be told about Bruce Lee's remarkable life and tragic death.
[13] An excerpt from the book, in Clouse's voice, reads: My direct contact with Bruce Lee occurred between November 1972 and June 1973 when I started pre-production of the film Enter The Dragon and through the post-production period when Bruce came to the Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank, California, to complete some dubbing of dialogue that had been poorly recorded in Hong Kong.