Peggy Su! — The Penny Lane Laundry Behind the Film

In photographs of Penny Lane, the red shopfront carries the name G. LEONG. In publicity for Peggy Su!, a cast group stands outside a remarkably familiar entrance beneath different lettering: JACK SU.

The connection is now confirmed. Location manager Idris Ahmed has told Out in Liverpool that the production filmed in 1996 at the former G. Leong Laundry, 117 Penny Lane. His reply gives us a precise address for a film location that our earlier research had identified through photographs.¹

It also brings a real neighbourhood business into the story of a film about Chinese family life in Liverpool. The shopfront had a history of its own before the fictional Su family appeared outside it.

Liverpool in 1962

Directed by Frances-Anne Solomon and written by Kevin Wong, Peggy Su! is a romantic comedy centred on a Chinese laundry. Its story takes place in Liverpool in 1962, with Pamela Oei playing nineteen-year-old Peggy, who lives with her brother Jack and his wife Rita.²³

The production's publicity describes Peggy's attempts to find a husband of her own choosing after learning that her father has selected one for her. The family business provides the setting for work, domestic life and competing expectations about the future. Jack dreams of a successful laundry; Peggy wants a life she can choose for herself.²

The laundry is central to that premise. A workplace and a home occupy the same small world, with the demands of one pressing into the other. That gives the story a connection to the experiences recorded by real laundry families, even though its characters and events are fictional.

The year 1996 refers here to the filming. It comes from Ahmed's confirmation and from cast member Sukie Smith's recollection of working on the production. The Liverpool being recreated in the story belongs to 1962.¹⁴

A direct answer from the location manager

Ahmed replied to our historical enquiry on 2 November 2026. He confirmed his role as location manager and identified the premises:

“We did indeed film on Penny Lane at the former G. Leong Laundry, 117 Penny Lane”

Idris Ahmed, correspondence with Out in Liverpool, 2 November 2026.¹

He described it as one of the production's filming locations and supplied two photographs of an old publicity card. One shows the cast group outside the Jack Su frontage; the other carries a synopsis and production credits.¹²

This is firsthand testimony from someone involved in arranging the locations, given thirty years after filming. It resolves the address identification. It leaves room for further detail about the filming days, the use of interiors and the preparation of the premises.

The clues in the shopfront

Before Ahmed's reply, there were already good reasons to look at G. Leong. In a recollection published with her Sound Vision interview with Pam Oei, Sukie Smith remembered rehearsals in London, filming interiors in Acton and working at a laundrette on Penny Lane. Her account dates the production to 1996, but gives no street number.⁴

A cast photograph associated with Smith's film page provided another clue. The Jack Su frontage has a recessed central doorway, display windows with angled returns, distinctive upper glazing and a dark tiled base. Those features closely correspond to the G. Leong frontage in later photographs.⁵⁶

The comparison was stronger than a shared colour scheme or the word “laundry”. The shape of the entrance and the arrangement of the windows survived beneath the different lettering and decoration. A cropped publicity photograph nevertheless gave us no visible street number. Ahmed's address-specific recollection supplies the confirmation that the visual comparison alone could not.

The real laundry behind the fictional one

G. Leong also appears in memories of everyday Penny Lane. In her study Places they remember: Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields, historian Rachael Jones records Ann Carlton's recollection of her father sending collars to George Leong to be starched. It is a small, specific account of the service the laundry provided.⁷

Other Liverpool family testimony helps explain how closely laundry work and home life could be joined. Sue Lee, recalling her father's business at 45 Great George Street around 1928–1932, described numbered customer tickets, individually marked garments, ironing tables and meals taken in the shop. As a little girl, she helped prepare starched collars for drying.⁸

Her recollections concern a different laundry, decades before Peggy Su!'s setting. They give a named family's account of the labour behind a shop counter: tracking customers' belongings, washing, drying, starching, pressing and wrapping the finished work. The film's laundry setting belongs within that wider history of businesses in which family responsibilities and earning a living were closely connected.

For G. Leong, Carlton's recollection and the dated frontage photographs provide starting points. The opening date, succession of operators and final trading date still need to be established from records specific to this business.

Filming and trading are different questions

Ahmed calls the location the “former” G. Leong Laundry. That wording confirms the premises used by the production, but gives no date for the business's closure. Filming there in 1996 does not establish that customers could still bring in their washing.

A July 2002 Gateacre Society newsletter complicates the chronology. Mary Champion's report of a talk by John Edwards describes G. Leong on Penny Lane as the city's one remaining Chinese laundry. It is a useful record of how the premises were described at the time, though a meeting report cannot establish that the business was still accepting work.⁹

We can therefore confirm the filming address while leaving the last trading date open. Dated business records or testimony specifically about taking customers' orders would help answer that separate question. A retained name on a shopfront, however striking, cannot supply the answer by itself.

A place in Liverpool's film history

The confirmed connection gives 117 Penny Lane a documented role in the making of Peggy Su!. The publicity photograph records the familiar frontage under Jack Su's name; the location manager identifies the real premises behind it.

For our Chinese Laundries research, that is a useful addition to the story of a particular address. Film publicity, a participant's recollection and photographs of a neighbourhood shop can be brought together without losing sight of the people who worked there before the cameras arrived.

We will continue the business history through the wider Out in Liverpool Chinese Laundries Research Register. The confirmed film location gives us a firmer starting point for the next part of the enquiry.

Do you remember the filming on Penny Lane in 1996, or taking washing to G. Leong? Dated photographs, receipts and firsthand memories could help tell more of the story.