Trading Places | 1983
Discover where Trading Places (1983) was filmed around Philadelphia; plus Long Island, New York; and St Croix in the Virgin Islands.
Rich old men Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) get their comeuppance after swapping the lifestyles of beggar Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) and stockbroker Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) for a bet.
Set mainly in Philadelphia, where ‘legless’ Billy Ray begs in a wintry Rittenhouse Square, at 18th and Walnut Streets, to the southwest of the city centre. In the classy district a little further southwest is Winthorpe’s house, taken over by Billy Ray, at 2014 Delancey Street near 21st Street.
Randolph and Mortimer’s ‘Duke and Duke’ bank is the Fidelity Bank, 135 South Broad Street, just south of City Hall. After he’s had his credit cards confiscated, the destitute Winthorpe is offered help by hooker Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis) on 15th Street in front of Claes Oldenburg’s giant, 45-foot steel Clothespeg statue, Market Street west of City Hall.
Billy Ray and Winthorpe set out for New York from the elegant deco concourse of Thirtieth Street Station, 30th Street (seen also in Blow Out, Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie and Witness).
The Dukes’ mansion isn’t Pennsylvania at all, but Mill Neck Manor for the Deaf, Frost Mill Road, Mill Neck, Nassau County, Long Island.
The frantic climax, with Billy Ray and Winthorpe joining forces to bankrupt their tormentors, was in the Comex Commodities Exchange Center, of the World Trade Center in New York.
All ends happily, of course, with the good guys on the tropical beaches of St Croix in the Virgin Islands.
