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July 26, 2020 Actor John Saxon, the protagonist with Bruce Lee of the film "The 3 of Operation Dragon", has died. The Hollywood Reporter reports it. Saxon was 83 years old and died of pneumonia in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

"I was sure he would hold out until his birthday on August 5. He was a fighter, a generous person not only with friends but also many people who needed help and support," says Gloria Martel Saxon, the 'tough guy's wife of Brooklyn ', to the microphones of the CNN.

Saxon was born on August 5, 1936 in Brooklyn, New York, and his real name was Carmine Orrico. His father was an Italian immigrant. "Brooklyn was a difficult place to grow, but it taught survival and, if you were ambitious, it also taught you to want better things," Saxon said, recounting his youth. 

In his long career he has participated in nearly 200 films and TV shows since his debut in 1954. Saxon won a Golden Globe in 1958 for his role in the film 'The Temptation of Mr. Smith'. It was also the cop Donald Thompson in 'Nightmare - From the depths of the night', which starred Freddy Krueger, the famous horror serial killer. 

Passionate as a child in martial arts, Saxon started studying them when he arrived in Hollywood. "As a young man he was fond of a war movie in which an American soldier met a small Japanese soldier. And when the Japanese had stretched out his small hand to the much more massive American in a few seconds he had turned it upside down and thrown it on the ground," recalls the wife. 

Saxon played the bad Mexican bandit who opposed Marlon Brando in 'Southwest of Sonora' and was one of the characters in the popular Dinasty TV series, playing the Middle Eastern tycoon flirting with Joan Collins. In 1973 he joined Bruce Lee in his first American film in the role of Roper.