Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Fei Ngo Shan Road, Kowloon

One of Hong Kong's great roads that provides the best views over Kowloon and beyond (when the smog lifts that is...). It's a big favourite for film makers wanting a vista because it's open to traffic all the way up to Kowloon Peak (Fei Ngo Shan). Although it also starts as either Shatin Pass Road or Jat Incline depending on whereabouts you start the ascent. Well worth a visit. Anyway, here is a few grabs of our love struck couple. The top one shows the bare apron of Kai Tak on the left - everything else is not really defined enough to make out, but you get the idea.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Back Door Club, Lockhart Road

Part of the film revolves around Betty telling her life story to a bartender in somewhere called the "Back Door Club". It's not around anymore and initially I had thought that perhaps these scenes were filmed in a studio, but I don't think they are. Perhaps if anyone remembers going to the place they can either confirm or deny whether it is the actual place.

Anyway, it turns out that the club was located at 42 - 50 Lockhart Road in what looks to be the basement(?) of the building still known as "de Fenwick". The building itself is still around and was built in 1966. It's quite an attractive building.

 

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Cheung Sha Wan Beach, Lantau

Betty is feeling a bit unloved and so drives off to a beach. It's an impressive feat when you consider the beach is actually on Lantau Island and not easily accessed by car in the mid-70's.

The more eagle-eyed HK film fans out there may recognise this place from another film - albeit one made 30 years later. You can see this beach at the beginning and end of SPL: Sha Po Lang starring Sammo Hung, Simon Yam and Donnie Yen. Dan's location blog has a post about it here.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Cornwall Street, Kowloon Tong

Here is an interesting scene, for me at least because I travel up here pretty much everyday. It's a shot looking up Cornwall Street very soon after the road was actually completed.

Cornwall Street now runs from Waterloo Road, all the way up to the Chak On Estate near Tai Wo Ping, however, originally it only ran as far as the lower section of Beacon Hill Road (which for some reason is completely disconnected from the upper part where Betty used to live!) - which is basically where the closest traffic bollard is in the above screen grabs. Even by 1973, just a few years before this film was made, the western end of Cornwall Street had been laid out but the Govt had yet to make the two ends meet across the railway track near the Beacon Hill Tunnel - this is essentially the section we can see above. Look closely and you can see where the bridge over the track is/was.

Of course the bridge is still there even though the track has now been moved, but the old trackway still exists and so the bridge still needs to be there. Anyway, here is a modern comparison and yo can see how much has actually changed. That's where Beacon Hill Road (lower section) starts on the right and marks the initial extent of Cornwall Street before its extension.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Lion Rock Tunnel Road exit ramp, Kowloon

At the end of the film we see Betty wandering aimlessly and for some strange unfathomable reason, walking up the exit ramp towards Lion Rock Tunnel Road. Coincidentally (or not...really), this circular exit ramp that takes traffic just exiting from the tunnel into Kowloon down onto Lung Cheung Road just happens to be situated right next door to where the old TVB studios were on Broadcast Drive. In fact the whole thing sits above what is now known as Broadcast Drive Garden.

On the screen grabs you can see the undulating ridgeline of Beacon Hill in the low background (look closely enough and you might be able to make out the older - now defunct - Civil Aviation Department radar dome).

Had the camera panned to the right you would have seen the old TVB studios. TVB was of course created by Sir Run Run Shaw and the studios were based here on Broadcast Drive from 1967 to 1984 when they moved over to Movietown in Clearwater Bay. All of Bruce's Enjoy Yourself Tonight appearances would have been at these studios on Broadcast Drive. Streetview below.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Whitehead Point, Ma On Shan

A long time ago, before the current golf driving range and even before the area was turned into a Vietnamese refugee camp (one of many) there was a quarry at Whitehead Point which was used on many occasions for filming. Nearby is the site of what was the location for the finale of Drunken Master and I also previously posted about this being used in The Young Master.

Anyway, here we see Bruce accepting a challenge from some dude he met in bar and he proceeds to knock seven bells out of the guys and his axe-wielding buddies. As a result we get some really good shots of the Tolo Harbour and Channel areas, including the Plover Cove Reservoir Dam wall.

Above. Looking NW from Whitehead Point. The ridgeline in the background is Wong Leng, along the same ridge that eventually becomes Pat Sin Leng (off camera to the right).

Two views of the point of Ma On Shan in the previous pictures. Below we are looking north east and can see the dam wall. The most striking thing though is the clear air and green hills.

And a look further to the east.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - South Lantau Road, Lantau Island

It's not often that Lantau Island has been seen on this blog (other than the Chi Ma Wan peninsula in Double Impact), but here we see Betty and Bruce (i.e. Danny Lee) walking along the dam wall of Shek Pik Reservoir. There is a road that runs along the top, South Lantau Road according to GoogleEarth. I've yet to go but then again I am yet to go to so many other places as well. One day...

Sadly no Google Streetview for this location - most likely because in order to drive in this section of Lantau Island you need to possess a "Lantau Closed Road Permit" - so, probably not available to drivers of Google cars.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Salisbury Road, Kowloon

In the flashback part of the film (well, I guess that is most of it isn't it) we see a supposedly 'young' Betty trying to cross the road in Kowloon. She's standing at Salisbury Road just a little along from the front of the Sheraton Hotel. This is an area that has changed immensely due to several factors including the reclamation that allowed the New World Centre to built, the Regal Kowloon - which has since become the Intercontinental, the removal of the old KCR terminus, only to be replaced by East TST station.

This of course was in the day when you could actually cross Salisbury Road at ground level. Now it seems to be a futile exercise in pedestrianism (is that even a word?) and instead the subways and underpasses have been designed to take you past as many shops as possible on your travels across the road. Since the road design was changed to allow quicker through traffic to use an underpass, it has also widened significantly. Sometimes I think modern life is complicated just for the sake of it...

There is a quick glimpse back up the road as well. It shows how the area looked before the newer East TST station was constructed. In front of the retaining wall on the front of Signal Hill (the wall is still there, just hidden) was an open space that also contained a children's playground.

In the screen grab above you can see the retaining wall and the trees mark the area where the playground was. When the station was built they used up the whole of that space for the station and stuck a new playground on the roof of the new station building. Thankfully Signal Hill has so far escaped all the surrounding development unscathed. Just the odd bit of obscuring its once open view, but if you fancy a quiet time in TST it is a great place to walk to - especially since the New World Centre was knocked down.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - View of Victoria Harbour

Bit of a quickie this one but worth it for the nice late afternoon shot of the harbour on a clear day. Things to note is the reclamation on both sides of the harbour - Wanchai on the north side of HK Island and East TST on Kowloon side. It looks as though this shot was filmed from Lugard Road with the shadow of Victoria Peak at the bottom of the screen. I'm not sure how clear the view is now in terms of tree growth, but I can tell you this kind of visibility is rarely encountered outside of the summer.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Kai Tak, Kowloon

Another view of Kai Tak, this time from the south, as a Cathay Pacific plane comes into land. I think the buildings in the background (of the last pic) might be the Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate, only half of which are still standing.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Connaught Road, Central

A brief glimpse but worthy of inclusion because we get a quick look at one of the best buildings to have been torn down in HK ever. The HK Club. The club still exists in name of course but the new building is not a patch on the old one.

I understand the columns from the front door were 'saved' and placed somewhere inside the new building, but I've never been in to confirm it either way. On the positive side, the Cenotaph that can be seen on the right of the picture was recently granted 'Monument' status in HK.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - View from the Hilton Hotel

Quite unexpected but welcome nonetheless is the following picture. No, this screen grab isn't from the film per se, but is a nice by-product of uploading photos to this Google blog.

In case you didn't know, Google has this funky new algorithm that goes through your photos looking for effects it can apply. It's already found a few of mine that it has automatically ,merged into panoramas etc.

The following picture, as you should know from my last post is taken from a room in the Hilton Hotel where Betty was supposedly staying during the story in Bruce Lee & I. Google took the three screen grabs I uploaded and simply removed Betty! - I think there are probably a few Bruce Lee fans around the world that wish they could do the same, though I'm not one of them.

Anyway the result is a nice clear view over to the buildings and out across the harbour and Betty being abducted by aliens.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Hilton Hotel, Central

Speaking of the Hilton Hotel, as we just were, here is a shot taken from it rather than of it. Betty is staying at a hotel in the film when she starts her liaison with Bruce. In reality she was staying at the Hyatt Regency over on Nathan Road in Kowloon, and Bruce was first introduced to her there, but in the film we have switched over to HK Island and she is shown staying at a nameless hotel, but as we can see from the film it is in fact the Hilton Hotel.

How do we know this? Well, looking out of her suite window we can see several buildings opposite: the yet-to-be-opened Furama Hotel, Hutchison House and what is now Bank of America tower.

The only building tall enough (because I am pretty sure this was not a back projected studio scene) to fit is the Hilton Hotel which was directly opposite the Furama.

Sadly, the Furama disappeared several years ago and was replaced by the AIG building that now stands in its place. Despite walking past it on several occasions I never went in to sample the revolving restaurant nor the bakery on the ground floor(?) that my wife says had the best cakes in HK :-)

Hutchison House (the shorter of the three) and BoA tower are still standing, for the time being.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Waterloo Road, Kowloon

Just before the car gets to Ede Road and Beacon Hill Road, we see him driving along Waterloo Road (okay, so I'm not doing these in the order I should be). First we see a shot through the windscreen that shows us Kilowatt Court.

A strange name for a place but I suspect either due to its proximity to the CLP HQ (that's China Light & Power, the Kadoorie owned monopoly utility company that provides the electricity to Kowloon and NT), or it may even have been developed by one of the Kadoorie companies. Either way, it's still around as you can see from the next Streetview picture.

Look past Kilowatt Court on both the film grab and Streetview picture and you will see the red brick tower of the Mary Knoll Convent School. This is one of the so-called 'Band 1' local schools that sees parents so desperate for their daughters (it's a Catholic girls school) to get into that they become Catholics just for the purpose of getting some extra points on their entry forms. I know, this goes on everywhere in the world but for some reason it seems more common here. There was even an instance a few months ago of a mother who got her son baptized so that he could get into the nearby LaSalle Catholic Primary school (yes, the one Brandon Lee attended) only to find out he had been baptized as a Protestant rather than Catholic!

Anyway, here is the quick shot of the school further on in the sequence, followed by the current Streetview.

Notice anything different? Well, the most obvious difference to me is the missing pine tree in the later picture. A few years ago this tree caused a bit of a local kerfuffle. It's a Norfolk Island Pine tree and, as you can see, had been in the school grounds for a considerable amount of time. This film was made in the mid-70's and there it is in all its glory.

The school decided in 2009 that it didn't want the tree any more and was going to cut it down, causing a huge uproar from students and public alike so the school backed down. Then about a year later it disappeared completely! It turns out that the school had authorised some 'drainage' works to be carried out that resulted in the roots of the tree being severed - in essence killing the tree. This despite the fact that as a declared monument, the school should have requested authority from the Govt to carry out any works on site (in case they damaged the school), which of course they hadn't.

Anyway, you can read a much better summary of the controversy on wikipedia here.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Beacon Hill Road, Kowloon

Well, it doesn't get any more real than this does it? Fake Bruce (Danny Lee) continues his journey up the slopes at the back of Kowloon as he heads towards Beverly Heights on Beacon Hill Road - the actual location of Lee's rather sad demise all those years ago. Not much has changed here as mentioned before. Many of these buildings are old for HK standards - Beverly Heights, where Ting Pei lived and where Bruce died (IMO of course - I subscribe to the theory that he was dead long before the ambulance arrived which is why it made no difference which hospital he was taken to...) was built in 1970 - but still sell for a ton of money due to the relatively large amount of space and ceiling size.

Here we see the car driving up the road.

The concrete slope is still there, as is the small staircase, the low wall and the little line of tree that comes diagonally down the slope. The building at the far end of the road (the Luso Apartments) are also still around as is that little hillock next to them. All that has changed really is that the local district council have added some tree saplings along the pavement.

Then as the car goes past the camera we get a glimpse of the corner at the top of the road and just beyond is the edge of Beverly Heights (the white building).

As you can see from the current Streetview, other than some tree growth this place has changed very little. And just in case there is any doubt as to where we are...the road sign is actually pretty much the only thing that has been removed :-)

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Ede Road, Kowloon Tong

From the intro to the film when we see 'Bruce' (i.e. Danny Lee) driving in his Merc up to see Betty at her flat on Beacon Hill Road. In a surprise for the movie industry, the route we see on the way is pretty much as it should be in reality - and here the car goes up Ede Road on the way to Beacon Hill Road, passing Ede Terrace on the way - that's the retaining wall with the Chinese characters on that we can see in the screen grab below.

Despite quite a significant amount of development in this area in the past few years, much of it ongoing, both Ede Terrace and its neighbour, Orion Court (the gateway of which you can see up there past the terrace on the left) are still around and are still some of the more desirable places to live thanks to the huge amount of space inside the apartments - built when space in HK was less of an issue for property developers. Current Streetview below.

Bruce Lee & I - Betty Ting Pei (1976) - Ma on Shan, New Territories

An absolutely ridiculous film on so many levels (but no more ridiculous than Game of Death) but contains some absolute nuggets in terms of film locations. One of the first is this shot of Ma On Shan from the old KCR train line on the opposite side of the Shatin Sea (now the Shing Mun River Channel). Have you ever wondered what Ma On Shan looked like before it became a 'new town'? Well, here it is.

Take a good long look at that pretty awesome view, it's been slightly squished by the lens of the camera, but it is quite easy to see that the mountain (Ma On Shan) which gave the name to the new town at the bottom of its slopes, is a fantastic sight to behold - especially in the 70's when clear days were the norm and not the exception.

Just to compare here is a quick grab from Streetview so you can see how much has changed.

Pretty amazing I would say, but not necessarily for the better, me thinks. I should just add that this Streetview grab was also taken about 100 metres closer as well due to all the reclamation that has also gone on on the west side (where we are looking from) as well. Plus, of course, when this film was made the KCR line - as it was known then and up until 2009 in fact - was still on a single track with diesel engines pulling the carriages.