Tragic Hero - Chow Yun Fat (1987) - Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

Following his return from Malacca, Chai makes a call to Inspector Cheung (Danny Lee) telling him his plan to take out Yung so that Cheung can take all the credit. He makes his call from a phone box located on Nathan Road opposite the Peninsula Hotel. It looks to me like a prop because in one shot the phone box is facing the hotel on the other side of the road, and then in the next it has turned at an angle so that we can see the end of the hotel building facing Salisbury Road.

Notice in the top image how the left arched window aperture is missing the molding from its keystone? That has since been replaced and the rectangular hole next to it has been filled in. As you can see, most of the things I notice in these images are of no interest to anyone...

No doubt the Google location marker will have jumped to a nearby building, but to be clear, this is on the south east corner of the Nathan/Middle Road junction.

A Cause to Kill - Ivy Ling Po (1969) - Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

There are a couple of scenes shot on the lower part of Nathan Road as Hsin Li drops off and picks up her attache case. The first image below shows her crossing Nathan Road to head to the Peninsula Hotel, the other images are from a later scene as Inspector Sheng (played by Chiao Chiao's real-life first husband Wong Chun-shun - he played the literal back-stabbing uncle in Way of the Dragon) drops her off in a ruse he has planned to prove her guilt. You can just about see the signs for Gaddi's underneath the hotel marquee.

A Cause to Kill - Ivy Ling Po (1969) - View of the Harbour

As Hsin Li starts to put her nefarious plan into place, she takes a briefcase of cash to the Peninsula Hotel and puts it in their lockers. This is where the killer will collect his reward once the deed is done. The establishing shot is this nice view taken from the top of the hotel's east wing, looking across the old train terminus and over to the island.

The Scavengers - Vince Edwards (1958) - Hankow Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

The gang put a plan together to throw the General off their scent by pretending to buy tickets to Manila. This scene starts with Allison walking along Hankow Road next to the Peninsula Hotel before walking into the Peninsula Arcade. The molding next to the window is still on the hotel today exactly where the Hankow Road entrance to the arcade is. What follows is a shot of Allison walking through what I can only assume is the real Peninsula Hotel Arcade as he heads to the Philippine Airlines office inside.

The Dragon from Russia - Sam Hui (1990) - The Peninsula Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

Yao does his first major contract hit on a guy in Hong Kong as he is leaving the Peninsula Hotel. This is where May (Maggie Cheung) first thinks she sees him after not seeing him since he was kidnapped in Russia.

The Peninsula Hotel's Former Fountain

Another re-publishing of a film-related post from my old, and now defunct history blog. I suppose this is one might loosely fall into the "Now/Then" category - although it's an on-screen artifact we are looking at rather than a location.

I can't remember where I first heard it - possibly on local Facebook history group when I still had an account - but someone had mentioned that a fountain that once sat, pride of place, in the centre of the Peninsula Hotel's front driveway had been donated to a local school on Hong Kong Island.

There is a brief clip in Soldier of Fortune (1955) that nicely captures it in its former Peninsula Hotel glory.

Soldier of Fortune (1955)

Anyway, after posting my little snippet of historical info on Gwulo.com, someone turned up to correct me and post that it wasn't donated at all but, in fact, was purchased by their grandmother. You can read the comments on the Gwulo link I just posted above but in essence, this person's grandmother, Mrs Wen (溫廖詠楚), was the woman responsible for the creation of the True Light Middle School in Hong Kong.

Mrs Wen was one of the teachers at the True Light Middle School in the Baihedong area of Guangzhou (Canton) and, following the war, she came to Hong Kong and bought a plot of land at 50 Tai Hang Road. Historically, religious groups have been allowed to purchase plots of land very cheaply in Hong Kong on the proviso that the land was used to provide schooling. This is one of the main reasons why most current local Hong Kong schools are founded by and governed by a religious/church organisation.

This was the site, on Tai Hang Road, where the Hong Kong True Light Middle School was established in 1947 and still remains to this day. The events surrounding Mrs Wen's ownership of the fountain are not explained, but in 1965 she bought the fountain from the hotel and donated it to the school where it still stands in the main front courtyard.
  

Actually, if you look very closely at the base, you can see that the one at the school differs slightly. The original one on the screencap above has a rounded lip, but the school one is just flat, so I guess the original base was unsalvageable - perhaps it couldn't be removed without damage. All the same, it's nice to see a little bit of Hong Kong history surviving in a location different from its original one (it happens more than you would think). The screenshot below (from A Queen's Ransom) shows you what replaced it. I think I know which one I prefer.
   

The replacement fountain seen in A Queen's Ransom (1976)

City on Fire - Chow Yun Fat (1987) - Middle Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

As Tiger and Ko Chow case up a few jewellery stores along Nathan Road,they take a lunch break on the corner of Middle/Nathan Roads and watch two women emerge from the Peninsula Hotel across the street.

In the background you can see the sign for the Kowloon Hotel which was in the news recently when the actor Kenneth Tsang passed away in one of the rooms during his quarantine stay. Sadly, the hotel staff were unwilling to open the room for his daughter when she lost contact with him. A sad indictment of Hong Kong's increasingly ridiculous Covid restrictions and the repurcussions the Govt has threatened should any rules be broken i.e. the staff were more fearful of the Govt than they were of a man (a revered HK actor, no less) dying in one of their rooms.

Love Circles - Michelle Siu (1985) - The Peninsula Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

The last post from this film sees us outside the Peninsula Hotel as Blake, the crooked journo fresh from his blackmail shenanigans, catches the hotel shuttle bus back to Kai Tak airport. And so the Hong Kong chapter of this story ends as he hooks up with someone he meets on the bus.

As the bus turns left onto Salisbury Road we get to see the Planetarium and the former Intercontinental Hotel, now renamed back to the Regent Hotel.

The Black Dragon's Revenge - Ronnie Van Clief (1975) - Sheraton Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

The beginning of the film is supposed to be taking place in San Francisco the day after Bruce Lee's death, but in fact the establishing shot for this is filmed from Middle Road next to the Sheraton Hotel. The camera pans past the Sheraton and finishes with a zoom into one of the windows of the Peninsula Hotel. I guess the Peninsula is a good stand in for similar buildings in San Francisco (although I've never been to the latter.

Anyway, once we have established we are in the US, the interior scenes were almost definitely filmed at one of the suites in the Sheraton. The room is duplex with a spiral staircase, but the giveaway in the window configuration which matches the windows at the south east top corner of the hotel. I have no idea if Sheraton still has these rooms for hire but perhaps someone reading this was lucky enough to stay here. It had only opened just a couple of years prior to the film being made.

Note the double height windows in the last two images which, as mentioned, indicate this room was one of the penthouse suites located in the south eastern corner of the hotel.

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.

Harry's Hong Kong - David Soul (1987) - The Peninsula Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

The Peninsula Hotel features a fair few times in this show because it's where the main character has his office. It looks as though the room used as a stand in for harry's office is one of the top floor suites in the east or west wing of the hotel. You can tell this by the window shape in the background because only the top floor rooms facing the harbour have he same arched window shape (you may remember that Ryan O Neal and Candice Bergen also filmed in one of these suites for Oliver's Story back in 1978). I guess for a 1980s Aaron Spelling production, hiring one of these huge suites for a day's filming wouldn't have been considered extortionate, but was this also the Marco Polo Suite?

Vanessa - Olivia Pascal (1977) - The Peninsula Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

Fresh off the plane, Vanessa heads to the nearby Peninsula Hotel and proceeds to ask a taxi driver if he knows the way to her Uncle's house. By pure coincidence he does and off they go. This was 1977 so behind the adverts on the other side of Salisbury Road should still be the about-to-be-demolished KCR terminus.

Oliver's Story - Ryan O'Neal (1978) - The Peninsula Hotel, Kowloon

The pair are staying at the famous Peninsula Hotel. As they enter, Bergen's character rmarks that they are staying in the Marco Polo Suite and it certainly looks as though the interior shots were filmed there. You can see the arched window in the lower screen grabs.

Although the decor has been updated, the layout is still very similar when you look at the floorplan that is on the hotel website. I can't seem to spot any information about which side of the hotel the suite is on though (east/west) so if anyone can enlighten me it would be appreciated.

China Rose - George C. Scott (1983) - The Peninsula Hotel, Tsim Sha Tsui

The Peninsula Hotel features a fair amount in this film both inside and out as it's the hotel where the two main characters are staying.

And some pictures of one of the corridors as well as the view from Scott's room. From the view outside the window it looks like this was filmed on the top (6th?) floor on the eastern side of the main section of the building.

Das Mädchen von Hongkong - Joachim Fuchsberger (1973) - Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

A nice view of the pre-high-rise Peninsula Hotel as viewed from the harbour. It looks like it was undergoing some renovation of the east wing because all I can see is the fabric cladding that always gets put up when that kind of stuff is going on. To the left is the old YMCA building with the Hankow Centre behind it, and the old Marine Police HQ can just be seen on the far left of the lower picture.