The Champions - Stuart Damon (1967) - Hennessy Road, Wanchai

Next up in our montage of Hong Kong establishing scenes is a view along Hennessy Road. This particular street corner is the junction with Marsh Road and you can see the same curved building in this earlier photo over on Gwulo.com. I'm still not sure when this library footage was shot but you can see that the adverts on the corner of the building were in place during the late 50s. Those with a bit of HK knowledge might be able to discern the old Tung Tak pawnshop building that was this side of the Marsh Road junction. You can see its old vertical blue sign on the left in both images below.

Crossing Hennessy - Jacky Cheung (2010) - Tung Tak Pawnshop

 Just opposite from Hair's Way was the Tung Tak Pawnshop. The shot in the film shows Oi Lin and Xu "crossing Hennessy" Road (one of the few times this actually happens in the film) as seen by Loy's mum as she looks on from the hairdressers. In the background you can see the pavement columns of this rather excellent looking buildings which has sadly since been demolished. This was a bit of cultural vandalism on the part of the owners (and the Govt for allowing it) as it was the only remaining curved corner shophouse in existence on Hong Kong Island. Anyway, that's why I thought it worthy of its own place, even if it only appears briefly in the background. For more info see here.

Foxbat - Henry Silva (1977) - Marsh Road, Wanchai

After leaving the ambulance at Canal Road West because the double-decker bus won't fit under the flyover, Silva manages to somehow turn the bus around, head back up the way he came and take a turn into Marsh Road. The film camera looks to have been placed on the pavement at the side of the flyover, luckily almost exactly where the Google car took its Streetview pictures from so we can compare the exact same angle.

In the Streetview grab you can see that the famous Tung Tak Pawnshop - the low rise building at the back on the corner of Marsh and Hennessy. Sadly this place was eventually demolished only just last year. A sad way for such a nicely designed and historical building to go and yet another sad indictment of HK's official policy towards heritage conservation.

In the lower pictures the only change has been the replacement of the two end blocks by a newer building and its podium floor. It's called the Sun Group Building.

Shirley's World (TV Series) - Shirley MacLaine (1972) - Hennessy Road, Wanchai

A brief glimpse along Hennessy Road (looking westbound from around where Canal Road is. I'm not sure when the canal Road flyover was constructed but the angle of the camera suggests it may have been positioned at around that height, but I need to confirm.

Pretty much all the buildings along here (on the right) have been redeveloped with the exception of the brown building at the far end on the right which is the Foo Tak building. It's still around as far as I know but you may have realised already that the small low rise corner building at its side (on the corner of Hennessy and Marsh) is the recently demolished (to Hong Kong's shame) Tung Tak Pawnshop.

There's a white high rise covered in scaffolding on the right hand side as well and I think this is probably Henning House that was completed in 1971 - so I guess the filming for these scenes can be dated to that year.

Hong Kong 97 - Robert Patrick (1994) - Marsh Road, Wanchai

Just after the shootout, Patrick's character makes a run for it and is picked up by his buddies on Marsh Road just a few yards away from the gunfight on Lockhart Road.

The sad story about this scene for me is the fact that the Tung Tak Pawnshop that stood on the corner of Marsh and Hennessy - and its columns can be seen on the right of several shots below - has only just recently been demolished. The sad thing is it was only one of four remaining curved corner shophouses left in the whole territory.

It looks like this small section of Marsh Road (between Hennessy and Lockhart) was a three-lane road back in 1993/4 but these days the pavement has been expanded and narrowed it to two lanes. Here's the Streetview.