Hong Kong (series) - Rod Taylor (1960) - Queen's Building, Central

In Double Jeopardy the other sister is staying at a hotel in the city and Queen's Building is the building used as the establishing shot for the hotel. Although Queen's Building and Prince's Building were of a very similar, almost identical, design, Queen's Building is identifiable by the top storey arched windows whereas Prince's Building has rectangular windows on that floor.

Anyway, it's nice to see such a great looking building that was demolished not long after this was filmed and replaced by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in 1962.

Interestingly, in the background the top floors of the new Union/Swire House can be seen. I know a portion of the later Hong Kong episodes were shot and shown in 1961 but I was under the impression that the Hong Kong on-location footage would have been filmed in one big chunk sometime at the start of the show in 1960. Even if this is a later shot filmed in 1961 it still pushes the build date of Swire House back to 1961 (there was some discussion about the date over on Gwulo.com).

Soldier of Fortune - Clark Gable (1955) - Queen's Building, HK Island

Here is another shot from the intro taken from the harbour right in front of Queen's Building - once again showing the large COOK'S sign on the harbour-side of the building.

It's not just the old buildings that I find fascinating, but also the almost complete lack of development on the hillside at the back. It's difficult to see anything through the hundreds of high-rises these days. There are a few other things to spot though including the old HSBC building, the old Bank of China building, The Hong Kong Club (far left), what looks like the pitched roof of Blake Pier in the foreground and the former LegCo building (aka Supreme Court) behind it.

Soldier of Fortune - Clark Gable (1955) - Connaught Road, HK Island

There are lots of scene-setting shots in Soldier of Fortune that reveal a great deal of what HK was like in 1955. The following is from an extended view along - a then harbourfront - Connaught Road including one of the old police platforms used by traffic constables for directing traffic.

Being on the waterfront, as it was, Connaught Road is unrecognisable today and I've included a streetview grab below so you can see what the same stretch of road looks like today. Look carefully on the film grabs and in the distance you will see what was Queen's Building on the corner of Statue Square (just to the right of the police platform). Of course this was replaced by the Mandarin Oriental about 10 years later. This view is impossible now.

The World of Suzie Wong - William Holden (1960) - Statue Square, Hong Kong

Actually, this area was and still is dissected by Chater Road and the part featured below is really the area next to the Cenotaph (though we don't see this on film), I've used Statue Square in the title because it's perhaps more familiar and we still get to some see the buildings that encircle(d) it anyway.

Well, immediately after crossing Connaught Road from Edinburgh Place, Holden (as Robert Lomax) walks to ask directions to the Nam Kok Hotel. Unfortunately the filmmakers at this point thought it would be more interesting to have a rickshaw blocking the foreground whilst the fantastic old Queen's and Prince's buildings get largely obscured in the background and as such we get only glimpses of how impressive these buildings were.

Queen's Building was of course replaced by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in 1963, not long after this film was made (the COOKS sign above can be spotted on almost any old photo of the place) and the Prince's Building still exists - albeit in name only.

Interestingly, on this last shot above we can see the former versions of both the Standard Chartered Bank Building (then just known as "The Chartered Bank") and part of the previous (and much more pleasing to me) HSBC building.