Imagine Bruce Lee being interviewed by Johnny Carson and doing kung fu with Elvis

A svelte, muscle-ripped Bruce Lee is poised to kick some serious butt and avoid any broken bones or blisters while making “Enter the Dragon,” the Way of the Intercepting Fist originator’s final completed film distributed on August 17, 1973, less than a month after his bewildering death. Photography by Dave Friedman / Warner Bros. / Capital Pictures

An unmistakable groan materializes when Matthew Polly confesses in the third installment of an exclusive interview series that Bruce Lee had been booked to promote Enter the Dragon on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in August 1973. Less than a month earlier as the “Little Dragon’s” debut leading role in a Hollywood film accumulated…