Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Harbour View Towards Hong Kong Island

The final location from Love, Honor and Perish is this view towards the western end of HK Island from the harbour. Sadly the definition isn't really good enough to make out much of what is on the shorefront.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Jordan Road Vehicular Ferry, Kowloon

Here's one from Love, Honor and Perish that had me scratching my head for a while because I couldn't figure out where it could be. In the show this is supposed to be a ferry from Hong Kong to Macau but in reality is just one of the old vehicular ferries that ran between Kowloon and Hong Kong Island in pre-Cross Harbour Tunnel days. However, there is a problem because the ridge line at the back doesn't really match up with anywhere in Hong Kong...

...until you reverse the images and then the familiar Kowloon ridges of Beacon Hill and Lion Rock are suddenly revealed. So we are obviously looking at a boat just departing the Jordan Road ferry pier. This was filmed in the days before the Ferry Point Estate was constructed and there was a clear view to the mountains.

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

In episode 24, Love, Honor and Perish, we get given a pilot's eye view of a landing at Kai Tak, very similar to this sequence from The Night My Number Came Up. In this sequence from Hong Kong though the plane lands on runway 07. If you are unsure of the old runway designations, Gwulo.com has a handy map/diagram.

Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Hong Kong Island view

One of the most frequently occurring establishing shots for this series is a nighttime view across the harbour towards the business centre of Hong Kong Island with Victoria Peak in the background. In fact the following shot was used in the first official episode Clear for Action but I have left it out all the way until episode 20, The Hunted, simply because this episode has no other proper Hong Kong locations, it was almost 99.99% shot on studio sets. As well as Clear for Action, this shot can also be seen in The Turncoat (Ep: 9), The Dragon Cup (Ep: 12), Murder by Proxy (Ep: 22) and Love Honor and Perish (Ep: 24)

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

One of the sites visited in The Dragon Cup by our intrepid photo journalist is the Peninsula Hotel, so in an effort to retrace her steps, Evans takes her back to all the sites she visited earlier to recapture the lost images and to find out if there is any link between the sites and the robbery.

This image of the Peninsula Hotel appears for the first time in this episode, although as you can see, it is made to look like it is being seen through the aperture of a camera. The same image pops up again in several later episodes (Ep.21 With Deadly Sorrow, Ep.22 Murder by Proxy and Ep.24 Love, Honor and Perish). The second image is what the un-doctored shot should look like and how it appears in the later episodes mentioned above.

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) - 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.