Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Edinburgh House, Central

One of the establishing shots from episode 11, Nine Lives, is some footage at the junction Queen's Road Central and Ice House Street. A building called York House now stands on the corner in the background but when this series was shot it was the curved corner of Edinburgh House. The "P.G" sign in the background left was the Parisian Grill on Queen's Road Central. The same clip was used again in Episode 15: Lesson in Fear.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - The Peninsula Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

To Catch a Star is the first episode that uses a recurring shot of The Peninsula Hotel. The starlet who has arrived in Hong Kong is supposed to be staying a some place (I can't recall what they call it) but the establishing shot for the hotel scenes use this image to set the stage for the sequence. The shot is reused in the later episodes Murder by Proxy and Love, Honor and Perish but I don't think the hotel is ever referred to by its real name. There is also a daylight shot from the same angle that I will put in a later post.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Central Police Station Compound, Central

Here's another quick view of the Central Police Compound that hasn't popped up before. The building on the left was the actual police station building that fronted onto Hollywood Road. I think over the course of this whole series, almost every angle of this central courtyard was covered.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Causeway Road, Causeway Bay

This quick sequence showing Evans' car driving in the westbound lane of Causeway Road is used for the first time in this episode, To Catch a Star. The large monolithic building in the left background is the former Causeway Bay magistracy, built in a very similar style to the North Kowloon Magistracy on Tai Po Road that now houses the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), with its long vertical window openings. This isn't surprising given that both buildings were built around the same time, the only difference is that this one was demolished sometime in the late 1980s and "Park Towers" built on the site.

This snippet was used again in future episodes 12, 18, and 19 - The Dragon Cup, Double Jeopardy and Lady Godiva, respectively.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Kai Tak Signboard, Kowloon

Moving onto Episode 10, To Catch a Star, in which a visiting movie star decides to generate some publicity by staging a kidnap before her kidnappers decide to do it for real. The establishing shot for the airport, which was used several times in future episodes, is an old signboard at Kai Tak. I'm not sure where the main entrance to the airport was at this time but this was before the new terminal opened in 1962 and there was a 'temporary' terminal building (which also pops up as an establishing shot in later episodes) that I believe was sited somewhere around the site of today's "The Latitude" development. Corrections welcome. Also seen in The Survivor and Love, Honor and Perish.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Hennessy Road, Central

Not far from the last post I did for Hennessy Road, but this time driving in the opposite direction and we have this shot from The Turncoat from a scene when Taylor is driving Lisa Lu back to her hotel. The section of Hennessy Road we are looking at is just past the junction with Fenwick Street. In the lowest image you can just see a small section of the Methodist Church poking in on the extreme right. On the left of the same image you can just make out the (blurry) shape of the building that sat on the eastern corner of the junction and had a company called the "Yung Ziang Trading Company on the ground floor level. Gwulo has a proper image of the same building here. The distant ridge is Braemar Hill.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - 41a Conduit Road, Mid-levels

I mentioned in a previous post that the Mok Villa at 41a Conduit Road popped up again in a later episode and here it is in The Turncoat. In this episode it is, as it was in reality, the venue of the Foreign Correspondents Club (F.C.C) and is where Evans goes to meet a Chinese journalist who has reached out to him. He's expecting a male colleague but instead is met by a female in the form of Lisa Lu who wants him to help her boyfriend, the so-called "turncoat", escape to another country.

Sadly, we are only treated to a close up of the main entrance and the columns of its portico, so for those who need a reminder of what it looked like from another angle, here is the post from Love is a Many-Splendored Thing.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Hennessy Road, Central

Not quite Central but on the cusp between Central & Western and Wanchai districts. This is a shot that appears for the first time in The Turncoat but was reused in a later episode called The Survivor.

The building on the right is the former Police Married Quarters that sat on the main Police HQ site along Arsenal Street. If you are confused about the location, because there was also a similarly named building on Aberdeen Street, then Gwulo has a page dedicated to it here. Arsenal House sits on the site now.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Deepwater Bay, Hong Kong

Episode 9, The Turncoat, centres around a man who was one of the American "turncoats" following the cessation of hostilities during the Korean War i.e. defected and decided to stay in North Korea. In this episode he has had enough of his life and wishes to gain a passport/passage to another country in return for revealing the location of a drug haul he has been paid to bring into Hong Kong.

The show starts with a small boat off the coast of Hong Kong as he swims into Deepwater Bay. Look carefully and you can just make out podium wall of the famous "Arrowhead" house in the background (left). This was the property owned (and built) by Alfredo Alvares that featured in Love is a Many-Splendored Thing.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - 41a Conduit Road, Mid-levels

A final post from Colonel Cat and it's the establishing shot for the closing scene as Tully and Evans convalesce in hospital following their tussle with the ruthless Japanese Colonel himself. The shot for the hospital appears to have taken some inspiration from Love is a Many-Splendored Thing and used the former Mok Villa at 41a Conduit Road (in that film, it was also supposed to be the hospital where Han Suyin practiced her medicine). Sadly the shot is so brief that if you blink you'll miss it. The building was demolished in the late 60's and Realty Gardens was built on the site. It pops up again, briefly, in the next episode in its true form for the time: the F.C.C.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Aberdeen Harbour, Aberdeen

In a brief scene, from Colonel Cat, shot in Aberdeen, Lloyd Bochman's Chief Inspector Campbell boards a sampan and makes his way over to what looks like the Sea Palace. I can't say for certain but the circular decoration close to where he boards looks very much like part of the ornamentation that used to be on the front of that, now disappeared, 'floating' restaurant.On an aside, you can see the old Police Station on the hill in the background.

This was footage used several times throughout the series and it occurs in a much longer version in the very last episode.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Canossa Hospital Steps, Robinson Road

There is a brief scene of Lloyd Bochner walking along a raised concrete pathway during the "looking for Tully" section in the middle of the Colonel Cat episode. This is a view I have never seen before but thankfully there are a couple of background landmarks that help narrow the location. Look carefully and you can see the Roman Catholic Cathedral down below in the background. This puts us somewhere in the vicinity of the section of Robinson Road that skirts the higher, southern edge of the Zoological and Botanical Gardens. Also, there is a large rectangular structure on the left of the sequence that is still there and is Raimondi College.

Initially, I thought this may have been part of the small walkway that creeps up the hill from Glenealy to Robinson Road, but closer examination of older aerial images confirms that this set of steps was located at the front of the podium terrace where the previous version of Canossa Hospital stood.

The current version of the hospital is an amalgamation of the old building (that Bochner would have been looking at) and a curved addition that goes right up to the edge of the terraced podium level. It looks as though the area where these steps were was incorporated into the car park that now sits under the new facade. Corrections welcome.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Magazine Gap Road, Mid-levels

In one of the driving scenes from episode 8, Colonel Cat, Evans (Taylor) is driving his signature car around one of the hairpin bends on Magazine Gap Road. The "driving up" part of the sequence was also reused for the last episode, The Runaway.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Central Police Station Compound, Central

Here is a new view of the Central Police Station Compund from episode 8, Colonel Cat. This is the first time we have this view from the central carpark/courtyard looking south towards what was once the main barrack block.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - KCR Terminus, Kowloon

Another of the entry points shown in the opening sequence is the KCR terminus in Kowloon. There is a little bit of footage of some of the old train carriages and then a quick jump to the platform.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Kai Tak Airport, Kowloon

Moving on to episode 8, Colonel Cat, and this story is about a known Japanese wartime criminal returning to Hong Kong to secretly reclaim a stash of bank notes that he buried before the end of the war. I'm not sure how widely known the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong was in the US, post-war, but this story follows a little bit of that history. The Colonel has escaped from a Japanese prison and is seen by Tully, Evans' bar-owning friend (played by Jack Kruschen), who was a victim of the Colonel's sadistic practises as an internee during the Japanese occupation of HK.

There are quite a few locations in this episodes largely thanks to the portion of the plot where Evans and Chief Inspector Campbell spend a bit of time wandering Hong Kong in search of the Colonel and their difficult to locate friend, Tully.

This is a brief sequence of a plane landing at Kai Tak from that episode. It was part of the opening sequence where the narration explains how many different ways there are to get into Hong Kong.

Sister Street Fighter - Etsuko Shihomi (1974) - Queen's Road Central, Hong Kong

Given that the last shot of the harbour from this film was taken in the 1960's, I doubt very much if this quick image of Queen's Road East was taken any later, although my knowledge of the area is too limited to be able to say exactly. I think it's okay to assume this is footage from an older film spliced in for the purpose of establishing Hong Kong as the initial location for the story. What should be familiar is the shape of Central Market on the right hand side.

For a glimpse of the same area in 1955 you can go back to look at Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. The opening ambulance scene drives past the same spot. See here.

Sister Street Fighter - Etsuko Shihomi (1974) - View over Victoria Harbour

Another break from the monochrome with a quick visit to a 70's classic, Sister Street Fighter. It stars Etsuko Shihomi as a karate expert whose undercover cop brother is kidnapped by the organisation he has infiltrated and used for drug experimentation.

The Hong Kong connection is extremely tenuous, with a couple of establishing shots for the story set up - the gang the brother has been kidnapped by was based out of Hong Kong - before the action is transferred back to Japan for the remainder of the film. As a result there are only a couple of posts to put up for this film. The first shot is a nice view of the harbour that starts on Tsim Sha Tsui before pulling back so that the former Tamar dock is visible. However, notice that Ocean Terminal is missing from this view which means this footage must have been filmed before 1966 (the movie was shot in 1974) and is therefore stock footage (Toei made quite a few films in HK through the 60's so it's possible this footage is from one of those films).

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - 17 Magazine Gap Road, Mid-levels

Another view of the previous version of 17 Magazine Gap Road. In this view, looking from the east end of the podium to the west, it's possible to make out the kinked shape of the balustrade at the other end. If you go to the Magazine Heights development today (current version of #17) then you will see the current development has a different shape podium but the original retaining wall is visible from the road complete with the original kink. For a later view from the other end of the site then we can go back and look at this image from Black Cobra Woman - filmed in 1976 with the current building.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Wanchai Gap, The Peak

The car chase goes up what looks like Magazine Gap Road (although it's proving hard to match those locations to the current area) and ends when Evans makes a quick and sneaky turn down Wanchai Gap Road and the chase car goes past them. The terrace in the background supports the precursor to today's #1 Peak Road, but I'm not ure what it looked like. The area is very similar today but with more trees obscuring the view. This is the same place where the multi-car crash was staged for Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine a few years later in 1965.