Astor House: Detective Work

My recent discovery of an archived film from 1946 that featured details on Broadway inspired me to review old newsreels to see if I can find other instances of historic film clips that feature the Astor House or its surroundings. While I was confident I would find something, there were very few interesting scenes that warrant featuring here.

So after a few weeks of occasional searches I'd paused this line of investigation... only to have a random episode of 1980s Magnum P.I. start with this remarkable introduction in the first minute of the show.

Well, needless to say, I was intrigued. This is the beginning of Season 5 Episode 21 "Torah Torah Torah" in which Magnum helps to recover a Torah that originally was lost during WWII in Shanghai.

The production must have pulled stock newsreel footage from the Universal Pictures archive for the short introduction. The title "Shanghai 1945" matches the script, but does not necessarily match the date of the original footage. I was not able to find the original source of this footage and all we have are these few seconds in an episode of Magnum P.I.

So what do we see here: In the first scene the Bund has an abundance of boats tied up and there don't seem to be too many warships in the Whangpoo. The second scene shows us the Garden Bridge with busy pedestrian traffic that seems to freely cross the bridge. The Broadway Mansions are finished without scaffolding, so it has to be after 1934 - but by 1937 the bridge would have been a heavily armed checkpoint.

The light grey car seems to be a 1935 Ford 3 Window Coupe and the police officer at the traffic light wears the old colonial uniform. Also, in 1945 the city was swarming with US soldiers and US Army vehicles, none of which can be seen here.

So what we actually have here is relatively rare footage of the north end of the Bund at the foot of the Garden Bridge in 1935 or maybe 1936. The Astor House can be seen on the right for this brief three-second clip with the Russian Consulate obscured by the trees in the park on the south side of Soochow Creek.

It's interesting to see the citizens of Shanghai in motion in this brief period of relative peace in the mid-thirties. Everyone is working hard and hoping for a better future, while dark clouds are gathering on the horizon.