The Curator is on Holiday

 

Posting of Leather Merchants is set to resume next week, meanwhile check out the new Mike Ridgeway page.

Recent posts at the Gallery

Cliff Smith by Hussar

 This picture of Cliff Smith, by Hussar in 1963 (from a set of 3), is the latest addition to the mitchmen Royale Gallery. Cliff was one of the ever-present Royale boys, appearing also in the 1958 'Stolen Motorcycle' set and the 1961 set 'Leather Merchants', that marked the breakaway of Dolphin Studio (later named Hussar). He wore that studded leather belt in all 3 sets. 

The Cliff post follows a group related to the career of Ron Fenn - 'Tough Schoolmaster', 'Thief' and 'Black Leather', view all three at the Royale Gallery.

Milism - An Appeal to CP Enthusiasts

 I recently posted a 're-print' of Squaddie John's article about Royale Studio, which was previously published at the now-defunct 'milism' website. It prompted a reader to ask me about another article on that site, an RMP's account of actual corporal punishment in the armed services in the modern era. We're asking if anyone has a copy of that article that they might share. 

If you can help please contact me via my blogger profile.

The Royal Tournament, Earls Court (Updated)

Royal Tournament, Field Gun Race 1999

 

 Royale Studio's catalogue description for the 'Navy Gash' storyette describes the models as being members of the '1959 Earl's Court, Chatham Gun Crew'. Don Avard, one of Royale's first models, was reported to be a member of the 1957 Chatham crew (in Adonis, May 1958). 

 

This identifies them as being (or having been) real sailors in the Royal Navy. It's a reference to the Field Gun Race, which was part of  'The Royal Tournament', a military display which the UK military services used to put on annually at the Earls Court arena in South West London. It ran up until 1999 when it was halted on the grounds of cost, but is still revived occasionally for charity events.

 

Royal Windsor Tattoo 2010

 

The Royal Tournament featured displays from all three services - marching bands, army gymnastics, dog-handling skills and formation displays by motorcycle riders, cavalry and artillery regiments. 'The Field Gun Race' (illustrated above) was one of the most popular events. It originally involved four Royal Navy crews*, representing the naval dockyards of Chatham, Portsmouth and Devonport, plus the Fleet Air Arm, all competing against each other to dismantle a cannon, ferry it across and through various obstacles and then reassemble it and fire it before their opponents could beat them to it. 

 

*Chatham dropped out of the competition after 1960, I don't think it was because Royale were recruiting their hunkiest men, but you never know! 

 

The top image features Portsmouth vs The Fleet Air Arm from the final Royal Tournament in 1999. In that year Devonport beat the Fleet Air Arm in the final, setting a new record time that would never be broken. There's a good video on YouTube showing the final race in full. There's also a video of the 1957 event on YouTube, which involved Don Avard, but, unfortunately it's not possible to identify the team members.

 

In Royale's day the Royal Tournament got a lengthy, Saturday night, peak time TV viewing slot, so Royale's models were minor celebrities as well as being real sailors.

The Gun Race and it's Royale connection

This contemporary article about the Gun Race in 'Man Alive' No 7 (Oct 1959) was illustrated with an image from Royale's 'DTS' photo-set. The joke re-titling of the event as the 'Royale Tournament' has all the hallmarks of Basil Clavering's bravado.

Read about Royale's use of real Servicemen

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The Gun Race was originally inspired by a heroic incident in the Boer War, in which Navy crews transported guns from their ships across very difficult terrain to help relieve the siege of Ladysmith. There's a succinct explanation of the history of this event in Origins of the Gun Race. The Gun Race is still used as a Navy training exercise, and I believe it featured in the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022.

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Earl's Court Exhibition Centre

In the 1950s, the Earl's Court Arena was one of the few spaces in the country capable of mounting large scale events like the Royal Tournament, undercover before a seated audience. It could accommodate military vehicles and even stabling facilities for the horses (it was regularly used for indoor Show Jumping events, including for the 1948 Olympics). For the Royal Tournament it was also conveniently close to a number of barracks, including Chelsea Barracks, home of the Queen's Guards. 

The building itself was also used for Exhibitions, Fairs (above) and award ceremonies like 'The Brits'. Unusually for a big arena (back then), it was very easy to get to by public transport, being directly opposite Earl's Court tube station. It had a striking 'Art Deco' frontage but was controversially demolished in 2017.

 

Jan 2023 - Original Article

Aug 2024 - Updated with cross-reference to Royale Studio in Man Alive and an image of the venue.

Feb 2025 - Enhanced header image added 

Jun2026 - Video links added 

 

Royale Studio and Guys In Uniform

Compare these two images ...

Royale Studio - Tough Schoolmaster

 The first is from Royale Studio's 'Tough Schoolmaster', showing the students turning on their military-style master and giving him a taste of his own medicine. The date is 1960.

 

Guys In Uniform - Unknown Title

This, near identical image, comes from a set of photos published by 'Guys In Uniform' in 1975. Their set (which I have informally named 'Caning by Numbers') closely follows the plot line and imagery of the Royale one, there's a picture by picture comparison in 'Caning by Numbers' at the mitchmen blog. 

 Royale Studio and Guys in Uniform images are often confused. It's easy to see why when comparisons like this are made, but they were actually 15 years apart. The GIU photographer, Charles Koestler, reputedly had been involved in the Royale set-up, and he actively emulated the 'Royale Style'. He even recreated Royale's memorable, rigging prop for a set of Sailor images. Unfortunately, his use of serving Guardsmen as models, as Royale had done, was to prove his undoing (see mitchmen article on the history of Guys In Uniform) 

Stylistically, the colour used by Guys In Uniform in the image above is an obvious differentiator between the two studios (although the Colville Exhibition showed that some of the later Royale/Hussar photos did exist in colour). The differing styles of the footwear and socks are an even better clue to the passage of time. In addition, if you look more closely, the Guys In Uniform shorts are a great deal briefer and snugger than Clavering ever achieved with his sewing machine, thanks to the wider availability of elasticated fabric in the 70s. The numbered singlets feature in a number of 'GIU' photo sets, there are a few Royale images of men in numbered singlets, but they are of a different, less austere style. 

Koestler was not the only photographer who revived Royale-style, British military scenarios in the 1970s, Mike Arlen also produced a selection of homoerotic, photo storyettes (see Soldiers, Shorts and Sexiness at mitchmen blog). 

Click on the label below for more about 'Guys in Uniform' at this blog.

Numbers on Royale Pictures

 This Article has been transferred from the mitchmen website

 Many of the Royale images in circulation today have numbers in their corners. 
They have various formats, but what do they represent?

1. Numbers in White Boxes

Royale Studio - Catalogue Thumbnail Sheet for set 'W'

'

Numbers in bold characters which appear inside a square, white box in the bottom left corner are Royale's own numbers, used on their thumbnail sheets to show the sequence of the pictures and for customers to reference when ordering full size prints. 

I've yet to identify the soldier seen undressing in front of a mirror and getting down to exercise in Catalogue 'W'. It's a fairly typical Royale set with a genuine service uniform paired with Royale's ultra tight shorts. The routine of getting different 'real' men to perform the same, slightly embarrassing, erotic ritual is part of the appeal of Royale Studio's work.

Royale Studio - Navy Gash 08

Thumbnail pictures often turn up on their own having been cropped from the full sheet,

sometimes apparently with scissors!

The quality can be surprisingly good for samples.

The example above is from 'Navy Gash'

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2. Numbers Inside White Circles

Royale Sailor Punished in Shorts 2

A lot of other pictures have smaller numbers inside little circles in the bottom left corner.

This example is from Royale 01 'More Sailors in the Rigging' 

Clearly 401 isn't a sequence number within a set, they usually only comprised 16 - 24 pictures. They can't be Royale's unique identification numbers either, the values are too low for that. The ones I have only go up to 401 but Royale produced dozens of sets. There are 117 sets in the Catalogue Sheets I have, representing something like 3000 pictures.

So what are these circled numbers?

I collected together all the 'circle' pictures in my possession. There were 45 altogether, good quality scans of original photographs. Straightaway I could see from the filenames that they all came from the 'Originals' collection which was controversially released to the internet some years ago. 

(See footnote on Sailor Al in 'Sailors In The Rigging - 1b'). 

Pictures in beefcake magazines in Royale's time (1959-63) do not have these numbers, although one turned up later. This points to an obvious answer, that these are simply the numbers that a collector used to identify the photographs he owned.

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Do these numbers tell us anything about the sets they belong to?

 

Royale Sailor Punished in Shorts 1

 In Royale 01, 'More Sailors in the Rigging' there is another photo, seemingly from the same set as 401, but numbered 391 (see above). Does this mean there are 9 pictures between these two in the original set?

Well, no, because in the 'circles group', there are two pictures from other sets with numbers in-between 391 and 401, including the one below, 394, which clearly doesn't belong.

Royale - Footballer Punished

Just this one example tells us that the numbering is not meaningful. So even where there are 'runs' of pictures that look connected (e.g. a run of four images numbered 331-334 in Royale 93 Sailors Caned) that doesn't tell us for sure that they appear in that sequence, nor even that they are in the same set.

It's possible they were numbered in the order of their acquisition. Then small groupings of related images would occur naturally, chosen from the thumbnail sheets like 'W' above.

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3. Numbers inside Black Boxes

There is a further small group of 6 pictures which have white numbers inside black boxes, always accompanied by a star. These too can be traced back to the 'Originals' collection

It looks as if these stars have come from a sticker sheet (notice how it overlaps the number). The numbers are probably stickers too (this is pre-computers, remember!). The circled numbers just discussed are probably also stickers, because the numbers on them slant at various angles. Perhaps sheets of numbered stickers were specially produced in those days for collectors of all sorts and I guess businesses would have a use for them too. 

As it happens, the picture above (107) from 'Sailors in the Rigging' also exists with circle style numbering - and it's a different number, 279 (see below). 

 The existence of duplicate copies with different numbers confirms that the numbering isn't meaningful. It also suggests that they were originally from two different collections which ended up being merged to form the 'Originals'. These photos were considered to be porn and were publicly unsaleable through normal channels, so passing on complete collections to other, like-minded individuals was the only safe way of disposing of them. That was how collections came to be merged.

Sailor Al told me that he acquired most of his collection from a man who had worked with 'Guys in Uniform' Studio and had previously been connected with Royale. That might explain the large size of the collection. It's possible he may have rescued them when they were raided or wound up. 

 

Thanks to this provenance, the 'Originals' collection also includes a number of pictures from Guys in Uniform Studio (confusingly, these scans have been given filenames with MIU numbers, standing for Men In Uniform). Two of these, that I know of, have 'black square' numbers in their corners, see below. It's not a purely Royale phenomenon.

 

 

A 'Guys in Uniform' image with a black, corner reference number, 47

 

This seems to prove conclusively that the numbers were put on the pictures by a collector. 

 

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Postscript

Royale Models photo in Bonham's Auction

Collecting all my numbered Royale pictures into one folder for this investigation threw up one completely unexpected result. I found some of them were duplicated by images I had acquired quite recently from the catalogue of a sale of Basil Clavering pictures at Bonhams (Jun 2021). Five images reproduced in the Bonhams' listing had circled numbers in their corners and 3 of them duplicated images I already had (the one shown above was one I didn't have). 

It seems this sale must have been of Sailor Al's 'Originals' collection. The provenance Bonhams gave closely matches the story I had been told by him (see above). 

The sale raised £22,000 for around 850 prints plus negatives etc. About a third of that amount was the buyer's premium (the auction house's commission). I don't know who the actual seller was in the end, but I hope the new owner of these pictures will share more of them with us all. 

Tough Schoolmaster posting completed

Royale's 'Tough Schoolmaster' Image 02

I have completed the posting of images from 'Tough Schoolmaster' at the gallery. The 'copy cat' version by Guys in Uniform ca. 1975, named (by me) as 'Caning by Numbers' has been posted simultaneously at the mitchmen blog. It contains an image by image comparison with the Royale set. 

There's background info in the 'Tough Schoolmaster' Profile