The Yellow Muffler - Betty Ting Pei (1972) - Former Fire Brigade Dock, Tsim Sha Tsui

The stone pier where Pai-hung (Betty TP) is supposed to stunt-double for an actress and leap into the water was filmed at the old L-shaped govt pier near the old Fire Station. This pier has been seen before on the blog when it doubled for Hankow (now known as Hankou) in The Sand Pebbles. The Yellow Muffler scene was filmed at the right-angled part of the pier that makes up the L-shape.

The north edge of the pier has been incorporated in to the West Kowloon Reclamation, and the lower part of the L-shape was removed/remodelled. I don't think this part of the waterfront is open to the public due to its proximity to the China ferry pier and also due to the Fire Brigade seemingly still using it for their fireboat, but this image on GoogleEarth shows you what remains of the old structure (the right angle L-shape section was removed and replaced by a less acutely angled section. Look carefully at the image I linked to and you can see the granite blocks (on the pier edge by the concrete hut) that formed part of the original structure. That also happens to be where the right angled section of the pier started. There's a small semi-circle of bricks by there that marks where the turn was.

Lord Jim - Peter O'Toole (1965) - Former Fire Brigade Dock, Tsim Sha Tsui

Following on from the revelation regarding the Hankow Bund seen in The Sand Pebbles, an elusive location from Lord Jim has finally been revealed to me. This is the location of the Seaman's Home and Hospital where our main protagonist, Jim, is convalescing just before he accepts a position on the apparently doomed ship that he later abandons.

The first building can be seen below. It's the same building that can be seen on the left of this behind-the-scenes shot of The Sand Pebbles (although you can't see it on screen in that film). The grey building on the right being the same godown building that had "Hankow Godown" written on it for The Sand Pebbles. Anyway, the top two images below are of that white building. The third image appears to be the view from the same building looking out towards the waterfront. I suspect the trees and other greenery were put there simply for the benefit of the film seeing as this was essentially a working Govt dockyard.

The next images include the same two colonnaded buildings that can be seen on The Sand Pebbles. In the first two images it's the red brick building that can be seen on the far right of the screen shots I included in my earlier post (but here is one of those images). Again, I have no idea what it used to be and all trace of it has now gone.

In the final shot from the pier, we catch a glimpse of the final white building. Similarly style with lower floor colonnades, this one has thinner pillars on the upper floor with rattan blinds hanging in the openings.

Again, I have no idea what any of these buildings were, but given that this was a piece of Govt land that included a Naval yard and a torpedo depot then it's possible they were originally military in nature. If anyone can shed any light on them please feel free to comment.

According to this Gwulo image, it looks as though they had already been demolished by the late 1970's.

The Sand Pebbles - Steve McQueen (1966) - Former Fire Brigade Dock, Tsim Sha Tsui

One of the benefits about going back over films is that usually I find something that wasn't previously known or appreciated. The case in point is this extra Hong Kong location for The Sand Pebbles.

Looking at an old press release online (available via this link) there is an old mention of the Kowloon "Fire Brigade Dock" being used as the stand-in for the Hankow Bund. I honestly had no idea of where this might be but looked at an old 1965 map for references. The map wasn't that specific but did show all the Govt piers and it wasn't long before the penny dropped and I realised it was the dock that used to be in front of what is now the main Tsim Sha Tsui Fire Station on Canton Road.

The clincher was this BTS photo over on Don Whistance's blog (update: blog link now dead but he was the guy who contacted me about all this stuff a few months back). Don has mistakenly mixed it in with the Tamsui pictures (one of several errors) but it quite clearly shows a modern building at the back which turns out to be a school... two schools in fact: the Lai Chack Middle School and the Canton Road Govt Primary School.

It looks as though the old Govt site had quite a few old colonial style colonnaded buildings on it which have since been knocked down and replaced by not only the current version of the fire station but also the adjoining China Hong Kong City building.

Anyway, comparing the BTS photo and current maps, it looks as though the building with "Hankow Godown" written on it was about where Tower 3 of the China Ferry terminal now stands. There's still some semblance of a pier here at the moment but I suspect it is off limits until the High Speed Rail terminal has been completed. In the meantime, here are the film grabs for that location.

This bit of extra identification has also now allowed me to place some other shots from Lord Jim that I was scratching my head about at the time. So a new Lord Jim post will be up in a few days as well.