'The Stolen Motorcycle' storyette is now complete

 

Royale's Original Catalogue Thumbnail

I have finished adding this set to the Archive

View The Stolen Motorcycle index page

Royale Catalogue (May 1958)

The only proper Royale Catalogue the Archive has discovered is the 1960 compilation of the 10 individual quarterly Lists which had been published up to that date. Many of the early sets had been deleted from the catalogue by that time and the first five lists had been condensed into a new List 'A', so information about those early years is incomplete.

However, in May 1958 (about 6 months after Royale's launch) the full page advertisement shown below was printed in 'Adonis' No 4 showing many of the models on their roster at that point.

Royale Advertisment in Adonis No 4 (May 1958)

It says a lot for Clavering's confidence and marketing knowledge that Royale were splashing out on full page ads so early in their existence. The catalogue price was  4 shillings, which is about £4 at today's prices.

There are 19 models named on these two pages as follows:

	Left Hand Sheet				Right Hand Sheet
Top Row	Don Avard	Don Avard		Don Avard	Artur Robin	Michael Bambin		Ricky Alboni
2nd Row	Terry Finch	Mohamed el Zole?		Ian Oliver	Mercer	Sandy MacCrea		Richard Robinson
3rd Row	David Trood		Pat Brooks		Muller		David Wales
4th Row	John Dawe?	Les White		Charles Kassapian(?)	Allan	Charles Kassapian		Lee

I am not confident of models named with a question mark

You can see some of the names more clearly in the original, unenhanced image

The man named 'Mercer' is not known from other sources (sadly), nor is 'Allan', nor 'Muller' (although his ship's wheel appears in a well-known picture of Mike Chisholm).There is another image of 'Lee' but the magazine did not give his full name. 

A separate source, also from May 1958, an advertisement in 'Tomorrow's Man', states that Royale had 30 models on their books at that point, so this ad identifies two thirds of their roster. The missing 11 probably included Tibor Urgay, John Skilling, Fred Collins, Ted Gutteridge, Frank Wheeler and Henri Barjac who are also associated with the early existence of Royale

 

The Curator is on Holiday

 

Football Ballet complete

 

Royale Studio - The Football Ballet, FOBA1-19 Double Caning

The full set of images in the Archive for Football Ballet have now been posted at the Gallery

Visit the FOBA Index Page first for background information on the set 

Work continues on the Football Ballet set

Royale Studio - The Football Ballet, FOBA1-03 The Players Mount Up

 Publication of the Football Ballet series has commenced at the gallery.

Features Royale's 'famous shorts'.

Background and onward link to the pictures at the Football Ballet Index Page

Horse Guard set added to Archive

Royale Studio's Tom Manlick as a Horse Guard

As part of the work for setting up the gallery entry for 'Football Ballet' I have posted a new Index entry for the model Tom Manlick and a post at the Gallery covering his scandalous photo-set depicting a member of the Royal Horse Guard's Regiment semi-naked. Full details and link at his Index page.

I've also undated the Horse Guards Collection with two added entries

Royale's 'Joke' Names

 Confusion about model names abounds in vintage beefcake photos. Models often adopted pseudonyms for publication. Sometimes they used different names for different studios. Royale Studio seems to have had more than it's fair share of confusion.

Tibor Urgay and Brian Lamprill in 'Gym', April 1960

I relate elsewhere at this blog the confusion of Tibor Urgay's identity with the US Model Ray Andersen (see above) because they looked so alike. Brian Lamprill was also inexplicably given the name of another British model, Gerry Haywood (not Gerri!) in this caption. By the way, I love the idea that this image (actually from the Urgay v Lamprill set) was an impromptu session created by models 'waiting assignment'.

Trim 16 March 1960

Communication problems might be the explanation of this earlier mis-naming of Brian Lamprill as Brian Campbell in Trim magazine in  April1960. In the 60's contact between Royale in London and Trim in Washington DC with attendant clock differences was reliant on slow letters and unreliable phone lines. In the index of Trim Studio Quarterly No 26 he's called Brian Lamphill.

Vim Nov 1960

Poor Brian Lamprill was also tagged as Brian Lamphrille in Vim later the same year. This hardly seems like a simple mistake, a typo or misspelling. It's as if some wag deliberately turned the name into a suggestive pun. (Say it out loud if you don't get it!). It probably wasn't Vim's doing, they took themselves very seriously as a body building periodical. In fact, Royale seemed to make a regular practice of giving models 'joke' names.

The Cast of 'Navy Gash'

Lamprill was primarily a 'straight' body builder for Royale and able to use his real name (or at least his competition name) but Royale often using serving members of the armed forces for their racy, uniformed storyettes and they probably adopted false names which were often not particularly subtle. Thus the trio above from 'Navy Gash' were named (L to R) Ned Willy-gan, Percy* and Tom Hard-ing. (To be fair, Tom Harding could be a real name)

*Percy is a common UK euphemism for penis, (as in 'I'm off to point Percy at the porcelain').

I have also related elsewhere at this blog the confusion surrounding the names Ned Willigan and comedian Spike Millican in Navy Romeo Identities which I suspect is another jest by the people at Royale.

Royale seemed to pick a well-known, French surname (top left) at random to identify Yves Grangeat in this feature at Body Beautiful 9. Presumably they couldn't remember or couldn't pronounce his real name in their communications with the magazine. In fact Yves suffered a multitude of misnamings in his short career, see the Yves Grangeat Index Page.

In those days in the UK making fun of foreigner's names was perfectly normal and Tom Manlick's improbable, saucy 'moniker' was possibly derived from an original Central European name.

Peter George as 'Harold Andsbury' in Gym 3, Jun 59

Gym Magazine were complicit in dubbing Peter George as 'Harold Andsbury' in this feature. Abbreviating Harold to 'H' produces the name H.Ands-bury, highly suggestive of FF fetish. Coining sobriquets like this for other people was a popular pastime for certain gay men in those days and some were very good at it. It's more likely a jest about Peter's memorable backside rather than titillating information about his actual sex life. 

Stan Free giving a caning to a youth in' TEDS'

Renaming models was not confined to magazine appearances, Stan Free was called 'Barry Cutts' in the Royale Catalogue listing of 'TEDS' but I've not found that name used anywhere else. I've speculated that this is another joke  in his Solo Sets Post

~

More casual mistakes crop up even in Royale's own catalogue - 

David Reid was called David Reed in the blurb for the Bullies storyette.