Identity Check - The Mystery of Mike Scudder

Mike Scudder makes his appearance

Mike Scudder (Hussar)
in Grecian Guild Studio Quarterly No 22

 This image of a man in football kit appeared, clearly identified as Mike Scudder, was published in Grecian Guild Studio Quarterly No 22. This magazine was entirely devoted to a retrospective of Hussar Studio images and was published in the summer of 1967, three years after Hussar Studio had gone out of business. The attractiveness of the model in this picture has ensured that it has been much reproduced and the name made familiar to Royale fans. Puzzlingly though, despite his appeal, only one other image of him is known, it is reproduced below.  

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Mike Scudder (Hussar)
in Trim Studio Quarterly No 22

The second image is a page from Trim Studio Quarterly No 26, an equally comprehensive, Hussar retrospective published a year after GGSQ's. The man on the left here is clearly the same person as 'Mike Scudder' in the top photo, but this particular page is in the middle of a consecutive run of three in the magazine and all of them are clearly identified in the index as photos of Stanley Free. 

 

As is the way with old photographs, particularly those culled from magazines, it's not particularly obvious that even the two men seen in the Trim image just above are the same person. However, there is separate, corroborating evidence of a man who is unquestionably Stan Free, also posing in football kit, just like the top 'Scudder' picture. It's in the Football Fight playlet by Hussar. His socks in the second picture of that set closely match those in the top picture here, with a narrower hoop showing at the top of the sock on his right leg. 

 

For good measure, the medallion the model is wearing in the first picture above is also seen in a number of other photos of Stan Free by  Royale. It was a common male accessory in the 50s, but despite that, I can't recall any other Royale model posing while wearing one.    

This evidence seems to settle the matter of the model's true identity, he's Stanley Free, and the connection with 'Football Fight' enables us to date his football solo images to the same year of publication, ca.1960-61. They must have been near-simultaneous shoots, because of the distinctive, unrepeatable pattern of the model's socks. I will be adding these images to the Stanley Free entry in the Archive gallery.

 

The Second Mike Scudder 

 

Mike Scudder and Stan Free (Hussar)
in Grecian Guild Studio Quarterly No 22

 

The mystery of the Scudder name was complicated further by the image above, from exactly the same retrospective by Grecian Guild Studio Quarterly, No 22. It shows the model line-up for a later (1963) 'playlet' by Hussar, which was an odd photo-set of sailors struggling for dominance. It was known simply as P/STAFF by the Studio, but has been designated by this archive as set 47 'Scudder & Free' (article pending at the time of writing). Stan Free can be visually identified as the sailor on the left (look back at the previous image if you're unsure). 

 

So, is the sailor on the right the real Mike Scudder?  He might well be. A completely separate, magazine spread of  the P/STAFF photo-set in 'Manual', No 44 (Sept 1963) gave the models the same names.

 

 

Mike Scudder (Hussar)
in Tomorrow's Man (July 1963)

 

In addition, I have found one solo image of Stan Free's co-star above, from around the same time, also giving his name as Mike Scudder (shown above). Confusingly, however, he's called Mike Edwards in two other solo pictures, in earlier issues of the same magazine (both in 1962). 

 

The explanation for Stan Free's footballer image being labelled as Mike Scudder might simply lie in the fact that the two names at the top of the sailor photo from GGSQ22 are the 'wrong' way round relative to the men shown below. That misleading attribution could easily have found it's way into the solo football image in the same publication via a member of the editorial staff who knew no better. This was 1967 after all, 3 years after Hussar had closed down. That being so, the second model would be the 'real' Mike Scudder with Mike Edwards presumably being a genuine, alternative name he used.

 

I will post images of the real Mike Scudder/Mike Edwards in due course (link pending) 

  

Update to Military Flogging Imagery

Horse Guard Pete Beale Disciplines A Subordinate

 

This image presently forms part of the Gallery article about 'The Captive (Part 2)', but it doesn't really belong there. I have just finished revising that article and as part of that review have now linked the tripod image to the 'The Horse Guards Batman' photo set, which seems a more plausible home for it based on present knowledge.

Identity Check - The Redcap and the Deserter

 

The Redcap and the Deserter is one of those Royale Studio, photo stories that 'got away'. It survives only in a couple of fragments but the presence of Tibor Urgay as the Deserter, taking his clothes off makes you long to see the rest. Tibor is easily identified visually but the man playing the Military Policeman is unknown.

This set belongs to the dark age after the 1960 Royale Catalogue and there is only one documented reference to it, just the title, in a Royale advertisement in 'Man Alive' No 8. This enables us to assign a release date of March 1960.  

As I am preparing articles for this blog I keep a lookout for Royale models who might be one of the un-named cast members of a storyette and I recently stumbled across one who I thought might be Military Cop in this picture. It's Terry Fury. If you look at the pictures in his solo set, you can judge for yourselves. Picture 6 is the only profile shot but that distinctive straight nose and his general demeanour strike me as a very good fit. 

Better still, the publication in the physique press of the earliest three of those solo pictures (which are obviously all from the same shoot), happened in December 1959, Spring of 1960 and April 1960, a close match to the advertisement for the storyette (March 1960). This is a persuasive argument for the shoots being close together. 

  The bizarre misnaming of Terry as 'Harold Masters' in that April image might be significant too, in view of his (presumed) role in 'Redcap and Deserter', but I guess we'll never know.

I have tentatively named Terry Fury as the missing MP until something more definitive turns up. 

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 Click on the 'Model's Names' label below for other Identity Checks

Identifying Royale Studio and Hussar Model's Names

How the lost names of Royale and Hussar models are discovered

Who played the MP in 'Redcap & Deserter?

   One of the main aims of the Royale Open Archive project is to identify by name and recognise the largely unsung heroes who actually posed for the photos that Royale fans love so much. The January 1960, Royale Catalogue is a priceless source of information, it names the stars of many of the early sets - David Reid, Fred Collins and Peter George etc., who often have such distinctive faces that it's easy to spot them in other, undocumented roles. More average mortals tend to be much more difficult.  

  Royale Storyettes and Hussar playlets that were issued after January 1960 are almost completely undocumented. So, for example, it would not be possible to name the seedy barman in Shanghai'ed Sailor (Jack Shrimpton) without the help of a feature that appeared in Man Alive 10. Unfortunately few of the beefcake magazines of the time followed Man Alive's example in publishing storyette photos, so the supporting actors in most later storyettes (and some early ones which had been deleted from the Catalogue by January 1960) are completely unknown.

The only recourse is to try and match storyette faces to those of Royale/Hussar models featured in solo poses in the physique press. That task is not made any easier by the fact that faces change dramatically when they are angled and in the vast majority of solo poses, the model is looking directly at the camera, whereas in storyette roles, they are often seen only in profile and sometimes only from behind or below. Tentative identifications can best be corroborated by matching the dates when storyettes and solo poses were published, since most models only had short careers in the spotlight and in lesser cases probably had effectively only one posing engagement, perhaps spread over more than one day to accommodate separate solo and storyette sessions.

I have succeeded (I believe) in uncovering the identities of some of these mystery men, or at least suggesting possible names for them. These are presently explained in the profile articles of the sets concerned as and when I discover them, but this is often a retrospective change, so I plan to follow up this explanatory article by announcing the 'discoveries' in blog articles here, using the common post label 'Identifying Model's Names'.

The first example will be the name of the model who plays the Military Policeman or 'Redcap' in the Redcap and the Deserter, story number 41, illustrated at the top of this post.

Recent updates at Royale Studio blog

 

 I have now completed the posting of Royale Studio, set 52 The Hold Up at the gallery. There are 10 images in all plus a couple of bonus AI efforts that are quite interesting. Background information about the set and cast can be found at the Profile Page: 52 The Hold-Up (Mar '61) 

There's also an update to set 55 Football Fight

Posting of 'The Hold-Up'

 

 

I have started posting the images of 'The Hold-Up', a Hussar 'playlet' which has striking parallels to 'The Wallet'. It stars a leather-clad Ron Wiltshire, seen above attempting to relieve an American sailor, Norman Simpson, of his wallet. His wicked plan comes spectacularly unstuck when a British sailor, Frank Harrod, intervenes. An early example of the 'special relationship'.

Read about the background of 52 The Hold Up 

Go direct to '52 The Hold Up' photo set

Significant revison to the Navy Trilogy

 

'Spike' in DTS04 from the Navy Trilogy

Royale's Royal Navy trilogy - Navy Romeo (parts 1 & 2), Navy Gash and the so-called 'DTS' photo-set tend to be overlooked because they don't have any spanking content, but they are an integral part of the foundations of the Royale Studio legend because of the tailor-made, tight (and wet!), white uniforms worn by the sailors, setting out the Royale, erotic dress style, and the uncompromising plot-lines about service life that would be called bullying these days. 

A good deal of mystery and confusion surrounds the casting of these photo sets but I have recently rediscovered information that was under my nose all the time and sheds new light on the actors who appear in them. This has led me to drastically rewrite the article about 

'Identifying the Navy Romeo, Navy Gash and DTS models'

This new analysis has also resulted in an update to 

Royale's 'Joke' Names 

There are significant 'knock-on' updates to DTS and Spike Millican