- Asthmatic as a child, he attended the Brandes School in Tucson, which he credits with helping him overcome the condition.
- A notable race car driver in his youth, he participated in the 24-hour race at Le Mans, Nurburgring, Grand Prix of Cuba, and won the GT Class at Sebring, all in 1958.
- Close friend of Lance Reventlow, and was best man at his wedding to Cheryl Holdridge in 1964.
- Member of the Rose Marie Reid swim suit family and fortune.
- After a serious crash at the 1959 Examiner Grand Prix at Pomona, California, Kessler spent days in a coma. Soon after, he retired from racing.
- Kessler was also a world class skeet and trap shooter.
- One of his earliest efforts was a short film he directed on the Scarab race car for his friend Lance Reventlow called The Sound of Speed.
- Bruce Kessler and Lance Reventlow, driving Reventlow's Mercedes-Benz SL aluminum coupe had stopped at Blackwells Corner on CA Rt. 466/133 on September 30, 1955 on their way to the Salinas Road Races when James Dean and his mechanic, Rolf Wutherich, pulled in with Dean's Porsche Spyder. They all agreed to meet for dinner at Paso Robles, about 60 miles away that evening. Reventlow and Kessler took off 10 minutes earlier. Dean never made it as he was involved in a fatal two-car crash at Rt. 466/41 near Cholame 30 miles away. Kessler remained the last person alive who spoke with James Dean before his death.
- Kessler entered one World Championship Formula One Grand Prix (Monaco 1958) with a Connaught owned by Bernie Ecclestone, but failed to qualify, although he posted the 21st-fastest time of the 28 entrants.
- Kessler was a second unit director on Howard Hawks' Red Line 7000 (1965).
- He was an American racing driver and film and television director.
- He raced the road race courses at Paramount Ranch and Willow Springs in California.
- In the early 1950s he started racing his mother's Jaguar XK120 in the Sports Car Club of America races at sixteen years old. He raced the road race courses at Paramount Ranch and Willow Springs in California.
- He was a team driver along with Chuck Daigh for the Scarab race cars built by his good friend Lance Reventlow in the late 1950s. The Scarabs won the International Grand Prix at Riverside, California beating the famous driver Phil Hill in a Ferrari. Kessler was invited to Europe to drive at Le Mans.
- As a film and television director, some of his credits include the television series The Monkees, The Flying Nun, Mission: Impossible, It Takes a Thief, Marcus Welby, M.D., The Rockford Files, McCloud, CHiPs, The Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Hunter and Renegade, his last directing credit.
- Kessler was a lifelong adventurer who left his mark as a winning professional automobile racer, a veteran Hollywood director, and one of the first Americans to circumnavigate the globe as captain of a motor yacht.
- Bruce Kessler and his wife Joan Freeman circumnavigated the globe from 1990 to 1993, visiting 34 countries.
- He learned his trade as director quickly under the mentorship of the legendary Howard Hawks and directed four movies and a long string of popular TV series. This included many episodes of Mission Impossible, The Rockford Files, MacGyver, Knight Rider, Hart to Hart, McCloud, Renegade, The Commish, and many more.
- At age 22 in 1958 he was driving for Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans when, in the middle of the night, in the rain, he crashed into the wreckage of another car and survived, though seriously injured.
- Joan Freeman, perhaps best known as the love interest of Elvis Presley's character in Roustabout (1964) and Bruce Kessler were together for 54 years and married for 33.
- Kessler entered hospice care on March 31, 2024.
- He was a recipient of the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America's Spirit of Competition Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from PassageMaker magazine.
- He retired from racing after surviving two crashes in two years, and made his first film, a short subject called The Sound of Speed. The film was the U.S. entry in its category at the 1962 Cannes International Film Festival. That was his entrée into Hollywood.
- Kessler later began designing boats, building a yacht, the Zopilote, built on the hull of a fishing trawler and created for marlin fishing.
- Kessler directed the feature films Angels from Hell (1968), Killers Three (1968), The Gay Deceivers (1969) and Simon, King of the Witches (1971).
- In 2007 Bruce founded the FUBAR (Fleet Underway to Baja Rally), a 980-mile powerboat flotilla cruise from San Diego around the tip of the Baja peninsula to La Paz, Mexico, as a continuing fundraiser for junior sailing at Del Rey Yacht Club. The mission of the rally was to give powerboaters an opportunity to experience long-distance cruising to Mexico with the safety of a flotilla of 50+ boats, complete with mechanical, communications, and medical personnel in the fleet.
- With his wife, actress Joan Freeman, he cruised and fished around North America.
- He was never more at home than when he was aboard his boat at sea or in port. Over his lifetime, he logged over 100,000 nautical miles as captain of his own cruising boats.
- Bruce Kessler was also a member of the Ocean Cruising Club, a longtime member of the Del Rey Yacht Club, the Southwestern Yacht Club (San Digeo), the Marlin Club (San Diego), and the Tuna Club (Avalon, Catalina Island), and an Honorary Commodore of the Seven Seas Cruising Association.
- Born in Seattle, his family moved to Beverly Hills where he started his racing career among Hollywood celebrities such as James Dean and Steve McQueen.
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