the Dragon (1973). He played Williams, a martial artist invited to a tournament run by crime lord and renegade Shaolin monk Han. The role was originally intended for actor Rockne Tarkington, who unexpectedly dropped out days before shooting in Hong Kong. Producer Fred Weintraub had heard about Kelly's karate studio in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles, went there to see him, and was immediately impressed. That film gave him his most memorable lines: This appearance also earned Kelly a three-film contract with Warner Brothers and led to starring roles in a string of martial arts-themed blaxploitation films. The first was Black Belt Jones (1974), in which he plays a local hero who fights the Mafia and a drug dealer threatening his friend's dojo. This and most of his other roles played up the novelty of an African-American martial arts master. His other two Warner Brothers films were 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 the jungles of Thailand. He also made three films with black action heroes Jim Brown and Fred Williamson: Three the Hard Way (1974), in which he plays a martial artist who helps Brown and Williamson stop a black genocide plot, Take a Hard Ride (1975), a Spaghetti Western in which he plays a mute Indian scout skilled in martial arts, and One Down, Two to Go (1982), in which he plays a co-owner of an international martial arts dojo. In the late 1970s, he also starred in the low-budget films Black Samurai (1977), Death Dimension (1978), and Tattoo Connection (1978). After his appearance in One Down, Two to Go, Kelly rarely appeared in movies. He did appear in two episodes of the TV series, Highway to Heaven, in 1985 and 1986. A deleted scene from the film Undercover Brother (2002), included on the DVD extra features, shows him in a cameo appearance with Eddie Griffin. In his last film, Kelly made a cameo appearance as Cleavon Washington in Afro Ninja (2009), produced, directed by, and starring veteran stuntman Mark Hicks. In a 2010 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kelly explained his absence from film: Film and television director and producer Reginald Hudlin described Kelly's enduring identity: “The iconography that Jim Kelly established as the cool martial artist with the giant ‘fro