Saturday, November 9, 2013

I Spy (TV Series) - Robert Culp (1965) - Majestic Theatre, Yau Ma Tei

Another nailed location thanks to Thomas and his eagle-eyes. In this case it is the Majestic Theatre on the corner of Nathan Road and Saigon Street in Yau Ma Tei.

As usual there is a trove of information provided by HK's premier cinema expert - Raymond Lo - on the Cinema Treasure website: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/29778

The Majestic Theatre (called 'theatre' but was a cinema ) closed in 1988 and was replaced by the Majestic Cinema which eventually closed in the late 90's. What we see in the screen shot below is of course the version that was there in 1965 i.e. the Majestic Theatre.


You can just make out the 'Majestic' lettering at the top right of the building. The smaller road at the side is the eastern part of Saigon Street (south is to the top in this screen shot). Interesting to note are the buildings on the right side of the picture. The low rise building - whose rooftop we can see - was replaced by the current Wing On department store, but the building just to the top (which is physically on the opposite side of Saigon Street) is actually still around. Here are some Streetview grabs to add a bit more context.


So this first picture above shows the site of where the Theatre and the Cinema stood - yes, that is the Novotel that now stands there. Saigon Street, or at least the eastern part of it can be seen just to the right of the hotel. The building to the right of the hotel and street is called the Kim Tak Building and it was completed in 1965 - so I guess that is the building we can see covered in scaffolding on the left of the 1965 screen grab.


Moving across Nathan Road to the opposite - pedestrianised - section of Saigon Street and you can see the building in front with Chow Tai Fook on the ground floor. It's called Wong House and was built circa 1959 and is the building we catch a brief snippet of in the top right of the 1965 screen grabs. On the far right of our modern view though you can see a small portion of the Wing On store that stands on the site of the former low rise building. Coincidentally, the Wing On store is also low-rise in this section and is probably the same height as the building we can see the roof of in the screen shot.

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