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Thursday October 3rd 2024

Live And Let Die | 1973

Live And Let Die location: 33 East 65th Street, New York
"Live And Let Die location: Bond follows a lead to the ‘Oh Cult Voodoo Shop’: 33 East 65th Street, New York

One of the better Roger Moore Bonds, which plays like an homage to North by Northwest, opening with a murder at the United Nations, the hero hiding from an aerial attack in an overgrown field and a final scene on a train.

The United Nations Building is on 46th Street at First Avenue, New York, and Bond is duly dispatched to the Big Apple.

The New York consulate of the fictitious ‘San Monique’ is on 69th Street, midtown Manhattan. Bond tails a lead from the ‘Oh Cult Voodoo Shop’, 33 East 65th Street on the East Side, up Fifth Avenue to the ‘Fillet of Soul’ on ‘Lenox Avenue and 124th Street’ in Harlem.

The Fillet was actually filmed on the Upper East Side on Second Avenue at 94th Street, though the ensuing fight scene was shot on 118th Street, edging towards the real Harlem, with more Harlem scenes filmed on 117th Street.

The trail leads to the island of ‘San Monique’ which is, inevitably for a Bond movie, in the Caribbean.

Bond’s hotel, where Baron Samedi performs his tourist-voodoo nightclub act, is the Sans Souci Hotel, now Couples Sans Souci, 2171 Magenta Drive, in Ocho Rios in the foothills of the Blue Mountains (which previously featured as Miss Taro’s home in the first Bond movie, Dr No).

The cemetery was simply a set, built on a hill three miles north of the Montego Bay-Falmouth road. The bus chase (it’s a London double-decker under the San Monique logo), used the Montego Bay-Lucea Highway.

The derelict wharf, where Bond and Rosie try to board Quarrel’s yacht, is at Montego Bay. Rosie’s breakfast veranda is a bungalow at Half Moon Bay.

To Louis Armstrong International Airport (which was then Moisant Field), in Kenner, 15 miles east of the Big Easy itself), where Bond is spirited away to the ‘Bleeker Flying School’ – in actuality the Lakefront Airport, 6001 Stars and Stripes Boulevard, about five miles northeast of the city – where several planes get thoroughly trashed during the chase. The classic Art Deco building was used as the headquarters of the fictional company Ferris Aircraft in the 2011 action hero film Green Lantern starring Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively

The crocodile farm (the ‘Trespassers will be eaten’ sign is actually for real) is Ross Kananga’s farm, home to 300 crocs and ’gators, not in Louisiana at all but back in Jamaica, some 20 miles from Montego Bay. Kananga himself, whose name was confusingly nicked for the film’s villain, performs the running-over-the-crocs stunt. The farm is now Falmouth Swamp Safari (also known as Swaby's Swamp Safari), Foreshore Road, Falmouth, a two-acre mangrove swamp offering guided tours to view wetlands wildlife. Among the sights – of course – are several types of crocodiles native to Jamaica, as well as owls, snakes and iguanas.

Bond escapes by boat, ready for the big set piece chase through the Louisiana bayous. The boat jumps over Highway 11 at the Crawdad Bridge, just outside Phoenix on the Mississippi River, south of New Orleans.

The interrupted wedding was filmed at the Treadway Estate, a former Indian reservation in Louisiana’s Bayou country, 30 miles from New Orleans. The boats scoot over the lawn at the Baldwin Estate, Louisiana.

The police riverblock is at Miller’s Bridge. Adam dies among the rusting wrecks of the boatyard at Slidell. The Southern Yacht Club marina is on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.