Kelly was the first Black
martial arts film star. His first role was a martial arts instructor in the thriller
Melinda (1972). He got his part after being asked by the film's writer, to whom he was introduced by one of his students, to teach martial arts to its star,
Calvin Lockhart. Kelly's breakout role was alongside
Bruce Lee in the blockbuster,
Enter the Dragon (1973). He played Williams, who is 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 visited Kelly's studio in the
Crenshaw district of Los Angeles after hearing about him, and was immediately impressed. '' (1977) This appearance also earned Kelly a three-film contract with
Warner Brothers and led to starring roles in a string of martial arts
blaxploitation films. The first was
Black Belt Jones (1974), in which he plays a hero who fights the Mafia and a drug dealer threatening his friend's studio. His other two Warner Brothers works 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 plot to commit Black genocide,
Take a Hard Ride (1975), a
Spaghetti Western in which he plays a mute Native American scout skilled in martial arts, and
One Down, Two to Go (1982), in which he plays a co-owner of an international martial arts studio. In the late 1970s, he also starred in the low-budget films
Black Samurai (1977),
Death Dimension (1978) and
The Tattoo Connection (1978). After his appearance in
One Down, Two to Go, Kelly rarely appeared in movies though he did two episodes of the TV series,
Highway to Heaven, in 1985 and 1986. A deleted scene from the film
Undercover Brother (2002), included in the DVD extra features, shows him in a cameo appearance with
Eddie Griffin. In his last film, Kelly made a cameo 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 resonates to this day. If within only a few films you can create an image that lasts over 30 years, you must have done something really right. And he did." == Personal life and death ==