Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - William Holden (1955) - Kayamally Building, Queen's Road Central

Here's another oldie but forgotten about location that I was supposed to post years ago. This is the scene in the film where Suyin goes to meet her friend for coffee. The exterior of the coffee shop was filmed outside the Kayamally Building at what was 20-22 Queen's Road Central. You can just see the neighbouring Shell House in the background of the screen shots below.

For the interior scenes though, this was a studio set. The image through the cafe window was a back projection of some footage filmed on Queen's Road Central at the bottom of Pottinger Street. I've included the shot of that for reference.

The plot that these two buildings (Kayamally Bldg and Shell House) sat on now hosts the Central Tower building, that occupies the whole corner with Wyndham Street.

I have explained in my older posts that every single dialogue scene in this movie was shot on a sound stage. Not a single scene involving dialogue was shot on location. I'm not familiar enough with sound recording technology to know if this was because the technology (sync sound) didn't exist at the time, or whether the general noise in Hong Kong simply made it impossible to do cleanly (which is why many local films were still filmed this way well into the 80s and 90s). If you know, please feel free to comment.

You can just make out the sign for Shell House in the background.

Studio set with a back projection of Pottinger Street

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - William Holden (1955) - Queen's Road Central

I know I said I would post it later, but I thought I should do it while it was still fresh in my mind. During the pandemic I went through a bunch of my older movies and found a whole swathe of locations perviously missed the first time around. I already posted a couple of these bonus locations a while back (Pok Fu Lam Road and Po Shan Road)  but neglected to post this brief scene from the opening ambulance sequence of Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. It's part of the opening sequence that takes in several areas including Barker Road, and Queen's Road Central by Central Market. Anyway, following on from my last post for Yakuza on Foot my memory was jogged, so here we are.

These three images show the same stretch of Queen's Road Central, on the bend just before Hillier Street. The first image shows the reverse view of the Yakuza on Foot post, looking back down Queen's Road Central, towards the general direction of Wellington Street, from the bend under what is now Hollywood Terrace. In the lower images, the ambulance is tracked as it passes the camera. The opening of Hillier Street is on the right and the location of Central Theatre can just be seen on the extreme left of the frame - just a few pixels worth above the man carrying a rolled up rug. Unfortunately, it's difficult to include more images from this sequence because the camera tracking means much of the background is blurry.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - William Holden (1955) - Pok Fu Lam Road, Kennedy Town

Another mystery solved thanks to help from the HK Mapping services online aerial photo catalogue. Actually, I already updated the Gwulo thread on this because David Bellis had started with the locations from this film way back in 2009. As you have noticed the past few posts are mainly films I covered years ago but had various places that simply eluded me and this one was no different. The main reason (as is often the case) is because the area it was filmed has changed significantly and that is why the old aerial photos have been really helpful.

The location is one of those seen during the ambulance driving sequence that starts after the opening credits have finished. The scene starts on Queen's Road Central and finishes at The Fairview but there are a few brief snippets of other locations in between and one of them is this place in the image below.

What this shows is an old bend in Pok Fu Lam Road that has since been redeveloped. The road has been straightened so that it cuts straight across the gap on the left of the screen but the bend does still exist and contains the Pok Fu Lam bus terminus. You can see the area after development courtesy of  this Foxbat post. The original path of the road leads around the back of the terminus past the petrol station.

Well, anyway, mystery solved. If you click on my very first link above it takes you to the comments on Gwulo and David has subsequently posted to fill in some of the details of the area.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - William Holden (1955) - 10 Po Shan Road, Midlevels

I (and many others) have been wondering where this particular building was located for several years. Ever since we first started looking at the movie locations on Gwulo back in 2009 this has been a location I have been itching to pinpoint but simply lacked the resources at the time. For those of you wondering which place in the film I am referring to, it is the building exterior used as the establishing shot for the dinner party that Suyin gets invited to and where she first meets Mark Elliot. Here is the reminder.

So you can see from the screen caps that the property appears to be built on a podium and the garden balustrade extends into the distance to the hill in the background. The driveway obviously reaches the podium via a slope but it's not clear how steep or curved it may be. The house itself has this very large and ornate stucco portico with columns and you can see behind the property part of a retaining wall where the hillside has been cut out to accommodate the building. The balustrade closest to the camera on the left is also angled away from the top of the drive.

I initially thought this might be one of the large mansions on Conduit Road close to the Fairview, but no matter how much I looked there was really nothing that quite fitted. Anyway, after a few weeks of sifting through image after image I finally found a photo on Gwulo that had a property on it that looked like a possible match. It didn't take long to find some aerial photos that confirmed the shape of the podium (the extended garden area, sloped driveway and angled balustrade etc) and 10 Po Shan Road was finally identified.

I have no idea whether or not this building's address was indeed #10 but seeing as #8 is next door and block 1 of the current building Po Shan Mansions includes #10 and #12 then I don't see it as too flimsy an assumption.

So what happened to the building? The truth is I won't know until I get my hands on the land deeds but from the aerial images the building was still around in 1959 but by 1963 had been removed, leaving only the podium. This makes sense because po Shan Mansions was completed in 1965 and the current building stands on the old podium with a few changes.

The building itself was replaced by Block B of Po Shan Mansions whereas Block A was built on what used to be the garden section. The old front driveway was filled with concrete and a new driveway constructed that led around the eastern end of the podium to the rear of the property. However, if you go and visit Po Shan Road you can see from the roadside that the old bricks that formed the slope of the original driveway are still visible...to the extent that you can see how they filled up the old driveway space with concrete. (if you have Google Chrome then you can view it here). Other than that the podium retains much of its old shape and you can even see the angle at the front that I mentioned above, where the driveway met the podium level.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this stitch of the screen caps to give you a better idea of how the place once looked.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - William Holden (1955) - Vehicular Ferry Pier, Central

Do you remember the flipped film I found during That Man Bolt? Well it seems that the same thing was going on 20 years earlier with a small sequence involving a vehicular ferry. It's the scene after when Suyin goes to meet Elliot at Kai Tak and they return to HK Island afterwards. It's very quick but there's a nice view of the island and the ferry as it steams towards it. However, if you are familiar with HK scenery you should immediately know that this scene has been flipped with what should be the western flank of HK Island appearing on what appears to be the east. The correct view can be seen in the second picture.

To round off the scene there is a quick glimpse of, what I assume to be, the Central vehicular ferry pier as the ferry pulls in to dock.

I've mentioned it before but there is still a vehicular service that runs in HK but it is limited to those vehicles carry good too dangerous to travel via the harbour tunnels.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - William Holden (1955) - Hong Kong - Macau Ferry Pier, Sheung Wan

A closer view of the old ferry terminal (if you can use that term to describe what it used to be) and we get a slightly better view of one of the ferries - although it's not the one that Suyin gets on board. First we have the view over to the other boat. 

I'm sure someone out there can tell me which one it was ;-). The following pictures show a life ring with the name Fat Shan on it. We've seen the Nam Shan and the Wah Shan on this blog before but I'm not sure we have come across the Fat Shan before, despite the fact that it was a fairly well known vessel. Sadly we don't get to see it anyway as the camera seems to be filming from on board the ship - as you can see from the bottom image.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - William Holden (1955) - Hong Kong Island Waterfront, Opening titles

One of the standout sequences for me in this film is the opening scene where we are treated to a birds eye view of the northern shore of HK Island. Granted, the views are marred a bit by the titles but once they have finished we still see a few seconds of film that show what the place looked like before the obsession with skyscrapers ruined the view.

The sequence starts off the west side of HK Island with Green island immediately below the camera (next to the 'g' of the top image).

 As the camera (attached to a low-flying plane I suspect) flies on we can see a road on the right hand side that runs parallel to the waterfront - (just under the name 'Doss' below). You can see it a bit clearer in the second picture below as the camera gets closer. I'm open to corrections, but this looks to me to be the western end of Queen's Road West where it joins onto to Kennedy Town Praya. The Praya is separated from the sea by slightly more reclamation now, at this area, but not significantly.

Moving a little further along again and now the camera is taking us past the waterfront Connaught Road West around the area of Whitty Street and further east. None of these waterfront buildings exist anymore and these days the waterfront has given way to some ugly reclamation that houses the Western Wholesale Food Market.

Now that the titles are out of the way the camera continues on and we get an open view of Connaught Road and Des Voeux Road West which runs parallel one block to the south. In other words the wide road we can see below. 

One of the interesting things about Hong Kong is that whilst development goes on all around on the various plots of land, the roads' general shape tends to stay the same. This isn't true all the time of course and indeed sometimes smaller roads completely disappear, but looking above you can see the bend that Des Voeux Road makes (in the bottom picture) as it turns north next to Queen Street and Ko Shing Street. For a modern reference, this corner is where the IBIS Hotel currently stands.

Finally, one last zoom over the bend in Des Voeux Road West and we can see the Macau bound ferries at the waterfront. The only building that was standing in the 1950's that is still around is Western Market, and if you look very closely you can see its roof just in front of the taller building with the arched openings (I think this was a hotel, but I can't find the name of it). These days, most of the building stock around here now dates back only as far as the early 70's.

I'm hoping a ferry fan will be able to discern which ships were at port. They look like two distinctive types one of which perhaps is the Fat Shan that will crop up in my next post, in name if not in physical form.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing - William Holden (1955) - Kai Tak Airport, Kowloon

Most of the visits we have made to Kai Tak courtesy of the various films I've posted about here (and almost every one - with a few exceptions - has a scene at Kai Tak) have been of the post 1958 variety. This means that most of our films show planes taking off and landing along the famous runway that jutted out into Kowloon Bay.

However, in this film we see the airport in its former incarnation (and location) as a rather more modest development on the shores of the bay in the San Po Kong area. It wasn't until a few years later that the airport was shifted south with the building of the new (more familiar) runway and the whole of the area you see on these screen grabs below became an industrial area filled with factories (trivia: it was in one of the factories in San Po Kong that an industrial dispute led to the outbreak of the leftist riots in 1967).

The east of HK Island in the far background

Looking northeast - perhaps with a seaplane in the background?

The next pictures are a sequence where we see Suyin's plane land, supposedly, in Chung King but actually we are just seeing another angle of Kai Tak with Diamond Hill area in the background.

It looks to me as though it may say HAEC on that hangar rooftop. HAEC was the previous name for HAECO.

Later on in the film, Suyin goes to meet Mark Elliot at the airport when he returns from Singapore we get to see the very distinctive eastern slope of Kowloon Peak in the background (and I guess the hill on the right of the top shot was what became Anderson Road Quarry?).

And a final parting shot of Suyin with the iconic Lion Rock behind her as she looks through the fencing.

Remembering Ronald Chow

One of the great things about this blog is that I get contact from a wide variety of people. Some get in touch to say thanks, some get in touch to offer me suggestions on films I may not have been aware of (it happens a lot, and I really appreciate the pointers), some people are curious about a location in a film that I haven't already covered, and some people are just like-minded individuals who share this rather weird obsession with film locations (it's more popular than you would think!).

Recently I was contacted by a women in the US who was keen to get a copy of some of the screen grabs I had put up for Soldier of Fortune. Soldier of Fortune is the Clark Gable feature made around the same time as Love is a Many-Splendored Thing that featured Susan Hayward and Michael Rennie as well as some fantastic Hong Kone locations including King Yin Lei and the Barker Road Peak Tram stop.

The film is quite famous in that its female lead, Susan Hayward, couldn't get to Hong Kong to shoot any scenes due to an ongoing custody battle over her children with her ex-husband (Jess Barker). As a result of her absence during key HK-located scenes (such as the rickshaw ride around Central, the scenes outside the Peninsula Hotel and also one at the aforementioned Barker Road Tram Stop) Hayward's double, Dale Logue, was used as a stand in and filmed from a distance so that no one would tell the difference. When I originally started looking at these films there was a bit of speculation that the stand in was Jennifer Jones - who was also in HK for the filming of Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. I'm sure this was spurred on by the fact that both films were released in 1955 and shared Buddy Adler as a producer, but after a bit of research it turns out that Dale Logue was indeed the stand in on this and many other of Hayward's later films. Also, Soldier of Fortune was filmed late in 1954 and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing didn't start filming until nearly 6 months later.

So anyway, back to that email contact I mentioned. It turns out there is another link between the two films other than Buddy Adler. The link is a gentleman called Ronald Chow. Here is an edited version of the email to explain further:

Hi...I am interested in a photo in your...blog... 

Of particular interest is the first photo in a series of three, featuring Michael Rennie and an unknown man walking towards the Marine Police HQ. That man was my father, Ronald Chow, who passed away 2 years ago [in 2013]. He happened to be the location scout for this film, as well as Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, and was given a bit part in the movie. This movie was made 7 years before I was born. He had a short career in the movie industry.

He was very proud of his involvement in this movie and I'd love it if I could obtain a print or JPEG file to include in my memories of him.

So there you go, the man responsible for tracking down and organising all those fantastic locations for both of these films back in 1954/5 - many of which I have been able to include here in the blog - was Ronald Chow.

So I went back to look at Soldier of Fortune again (and I'll be updating my blog posts with better quality grabs in the very near future) and sent a whole bunch of screen captures off to his daughter.

In case you haven't seen the film, or in case you have but want to know who Ronald was, he played Merryweather's (played by Michael Rennie) local police assistant who went by the moniker of '303'. He was in several scenes and I have included a few grabs from each below. The first scene is on the Marine Police patrol boat as Rennie's character is on the lookout for Susan Hayward's missing husband (played by Gene Barry). Ronald is the chap in blue inside the wheelhouse.

Part of the same scene but now on board a sampan as they go looking amongst the 'flower boats' in the typhoon shelter.

Here is Ronald and Michael Rennie in front of the old Marine Police HQ in TST (now the Hullet Hotel).

And finally, one last appearance outside the Peninsula Hotel just next to the Marine Police HQ.

So there you have it, a small piece of cinema history. Sadly, as you have read, Ronald passed away only 2 years ago but at least we can remember him in our own little way here and give him some late thanks for the seemingly small but actually quite significant contribution he made to these films.