My Three Sons - Fred MacMurray (1965) - View from the Peak

Not the best view we've ever seen on the blog, but no doubt the same footage has been used elsewhere in better quality than the VHS upload I took this from on Youtube. At least the time frame coincides with the 1965 setting because I can see the Hongkong Hilton in the top image, completed in 1963. Often you find library/stock footage used that doesn't reflect the reality of the show's setting.

My Three Sons - Fred MacMurray (1965) - Repulse Bay Road

The family are staying with one of their dad's colleagues and the establishing shot for these scenes is an upward shot towards some properties that used to stand on Repulse Bay Road. The lower building in the image is the previous version of a property that was located at 16 Repulse Bay Road. The two properties above are the old properties of 25 (on the right with the curved verandah) and 27 Repulse Bay Road. Fortuna Court and Royal Garden developments now occupy these sites (respectively). It's a shame the picture quality is so poor because I've never seen images of these upper properties before. I think the camera must have been positioned down on Island Road in front of the golf course.

My Three Sons - Fred MacMurray (1965) - Kai Tak Airport

The family arrives in Hong Kong via some stock footage of the Kai Tak runway and the airside of the terminal building showing the observation deck.

My Three Sons - Fred MacMurray (1965) - Aberdeen Harbour

Here's an obscure one that, not being American, I had never heard of until recently. My Three Sons was a fairly long-running comedy drama show starring Fred MacMurray as the widowed father-of-three young sons and the show followed them through their daily lives. It ran from 1960 through to 1972 over 12 seasons.

For the purpose of this blog there is a single episode from Season 6 (broadcast in 1965) that featured Hong Kong as the setting. Episode 12 is called The Hong Kong Story and details how the main character, Steven Douglas (MacMurray) travels to Hong Kong with his sons and their Uncle Charlie for the purpose of business. Uncle Charlie is an ex-sailor who met and fell in love with a local girl when he was in Hong Kong and he hopes to find her despite 35 years passing. George Takei (pre-Mr Sulu) even makes an appearance as a local Chinese business associate who greets them at the airport.

Sadly, as with many low budget shows, the episode only features library/stock footage of Hong Kong for its various establishing and transitional shots, but there are some interesting views to look at and I am including the show for completeness more than anything else. If anyone is interested in watching the episode, Knack Entertainment on Youtube has Season 6 loaded up as one long video on their channel.

The episode starts its journey to Hong Kong by showing us what we think is the plane's view of its approach to Kai Tak, but in fact is just a helicopter shot of Aberdeen that takes in the cemetery, town, and then harbour.

(above) Aberdeen Chinese Permanent Cemetery

Look carefully at the bottom of this last image and you can see the old Aberdeen dry docks where Nam Ning Street now runs.

Red Dragon - Stewart Granger (1965) - #10 Fei Ngo Shan Road

Another pandemic find that I neglected to post due to the fog in my brain at the time is this old property up on Fei Ngo Shan Road. It was previously located at #10 Fei Ngo Shan Road and can be seen as Michael Scott (Stewart Granger) narrowly avoids being assassinated by a man pretending to be blind whose white stick is actually a disguised gun. The failed assassin is then killed himself and the perpetrators flee in a car down Fei Ngo Shan Road.

The old house used in the film was demolished and redeveloped sometime in the mid-90s but the neighbouring house (#8), which makes a brief appearance as part of the backdrop, is still around (or at least was at the time of my initial discovery) and doesn't appear to have changed very much over the years - an impressive feat given the sometimes dizzying speed of redevelopment in Hong Kong.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Cameron Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Hanoi Road turns immediately into Cameron Road as Z55 follows the girl to a bar that might be familiar to regular readers. Su Ling walks past the Kobe Bar and goes straight to the big red doors of the Cherry Bar at 24 Cameron Road.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Hanoi Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Despite heading off towards Part Avenue, in the next shot we see Z55 following Su Ling along Hanoi Road.The big giveaway here is the large "Kam Lung" sign that can be partially seen in the top of the first image. Kam Lung was having a sale it seems.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Junction of Carnarvon Road and Prat Avenue, Tsim Sha Tsui

Had I paid more attention to these shots below I might have realised a bit earlier that the hotel featured in the film was the Grand Hotel. These shots occur as Z55 leaves the hotel. This is actually a very popular view looking down towards Prat Avenue and Hart Avenue from the junction with Carnarvon Road i.e. looking from directly outside the Grand Hotel. You can see an almost exact repeat of this very same angle over on Gwulo.com. The only discernable change from that 1964 image is the change of business opposite from "Emba Mink House" to something called "Hazel".

Anyway, Agent Z55 sets off after Su Ling (Yôko Tani) and heads off towards Prat Avenue. Relish the relative emptiness (of people and traffic) of these screen shots because this junction is as busy as Piccadilly Circus these days - masses of people and illegally parked trucks and cars blocking the view.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - The Grand Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

I have to say a big thanks to "Moddsey" over on Gwulo.com for identifying this next location for me. I had thought it might be the Park Hotel until Moddsey quietly referred me to the existance of a sign at the back for a venue called "The Russian Restaurant" that used to be located on Humphrey's Avenue in Tsim Sha Tsui.

This is the hotel where Agent Z-55 is staying and runs into a bit of trouble with the girl in the room next door, who happens to be working for the criminal gang he has come to investigate. The interiors were almost certainly filmed in a studio, but the external footage of the hotel matches a version of it that wasn't supposed to be opened until 1968 (see here on the HK Hotel Association website). In the film, the hotel's front entrance has a driveway, and Z55's taxi drops him off right at the front door, but this version of the hotel apparently didn't open until 1968 according to the HKHA website above, so I suspect that they have their dates wrong.

Moddsey points out that the presence of the Russian Restaurant sign in the background as well as the "Jade Pagoda" sign opposite the hotel confirms where we are. Anyway, the hotel closed in 1985 and was demolished to be replaced by a mixed mall/office block there called the "Grand Centre" -  preserving building names in Hong Kong is common, preserving actual buildings, less so.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Aberdeen Harbour

Z-55 escapes in the stolen boat at Paterson Street and heads around to Aberdeen Harbour. We get some shots of the western approach before the breakwater was constructed (I think they put it in some time in the late 1960s). He gets back on land near the old floating restaurant pontoons (last image) on Wu Nam Street.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Paterson Street, Causeway Bay

Agent Z-55 manages to evade the police on land and steal a boat from the end of Paterson Street. I didn't recognise the road initially but was able to identify it thanks to the metal arch above the gate (image 5) which has the Chinese name of the street - 百德新街. Looking at old maps there was a small pier here with a navigation beacon at the end marked as "P.P 45". In the film it quite obviously says "Private Pier" so that would explain the P.P., but I wonder who owned it? It looks as though it had gone by 1970, that whole area is no longer waterfront.

The buildings in the background of the images are all still around. In the last two images, on the right, is Riviera Mansion - it still has its red/white colour scheme - and on the left we can see Prospect and Welcome Mansions. Weirdly, the buildings appear to be in better condition today than they were back then, but that might just be the image quality.

Please feel free to share if you are old enough to remember when they allowed parking down the middle of the street.

Private Pier 45 and its navigation beacon (at the top of the pole?)

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - River Jordan Nullah, Kowloon Bay

It does appear that much of the car chase was filmed along various points of Kwun Tong Road, however, this small snippet below is interesting enough to include separately because it shows a piece of infrastructure that seems to have disappeared into the mists of time.

The shots below show Agent Z-55's escape vehicle driving alongside a nullah (in Hong Kong this term refers to what is essentially a former natural waterway that has been concreted for easier control). This was the River Jordan that flowed down from the Kowloon hills, through the Jordan Valley and emptied into Kowloon Bay. This road doesn't appear to have a name but at the time connected Kwun Tong Road with the nearby Jordan Valley Resettlement Estate.

The nullah is actually still around. The aforementioned resettlement estate was demolished and the site now holds the Jordan Valley public swimming pool, and the nullah - now called the Jordan Valley Channel - can still be seen running along the north side of the site. However, it disappears underground by Choi Ha Road and on some maps is marked as continuing under Ngau Tau Kok Park, then under the Kowloon Bay MTR Depot, and then continuing onto somewhere near Sheung Yuet Road. I can only imagine it continues under here until it discharges into Kowloon Bay, but if any local engineers out there know any better please feel free to comment.

For some modern day context, the junction with Kwun Tong Road seen in the last image below - where Kwun Tong road bridges the channel - was located at the point where the footbridge from Exit A of the nearby Kowloon Bay Station now stands.

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Amoy Canning Corp Building, Ngau Tau Kok

We recently saw the Amoycan Industrial Building along Kwun Tong Road, but the Amoy Canning site occupied a much larger footprint and the building seen below was located about 300 metres further west - where Amoy Gardens* is located today.

During the helicopter search for Z-55, we can see the main building of the old canning factory that fronted Ngau Tau Kok Road. It was located, more or less, exactly where blocks I, J and K of Amoy Gardens are now located.

*  Amoy Gardens became infamous during the SARS emergency in 2003 when its sewage pipes were found to be a major cause of the spread of the disease around the estate, resulting in the residents undergoing extended quarantine and the estate being fitted with improved waste systems). 

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Yet More Kwun Tong Road

The police still can't catch Agent Z55 so they send up a helicopter to help. The initial aerial images after the chopper takes off is of another part of Kwun Tong Road. The following is looking south from above the old "Garden Estate" (since redeveloped from the low-rise buildings you can see in the bottom left corner into a huge high rise estate). The building in the background with the ramps along the side was the old Kwun Tong bus depot. That site is now occupied by Millenium City 1. The two petrol stations lower centre frame (2nd image) were replaced by Ngau Tau Kok MTR station.

As the camera pans right, the 3rd image shows the old Grandeur Factory Building. This was still around until quite recently and was quite recognisable thanks to the model plane shop that occupied the ground floor called World Models Manufacturing Company and had two large model jet planes attached to the top of the first floor canopy. Anyway, it's now gone and has been replaced by "Boton Technology Innovation Tower".

Next up is a big mess of white.The building in front was called Mong's Industrial Building, but I don't know what the building behnd was called. That whole block now contains Ricky Centre, Nina Hotel Kowloon East and Kinox Centre.

The final image shows the building that sat on the corner of Hung To Road and Lai Yip Street, this was until last year (2022) the Tsui Wah Group Centre. Tsui Wah being a famous local restaurant company. It's now gone. But look next door and you can see the low-rise Lay Yip Street substation and next to it the still standing (for now) H.S. Chan Building at 4 Hung To Road.

Bus Depot and Petrol Stations 

Grandeur Factory Building

Mong's Industrial Building in front

Desperate Mission - Germán Cobos (1965) - Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui

At the end of Mody Road, the vehicle turns left on to Chatham Road South. It's only a brief glimpse but shows it at the time when there was still a military camp on the east (right) side. The image quality is a bit poor but you can just make out one of the camp's Nissen huts behind the fencing on the extreme right.