The Objectives of the Royale Studio Open Archive
.jpg "Royale Studio by Basil Clavering featured miltary and sporting men)") |
| Royale Studio - Sailor tied to Rigging |
Royale were quickly lauded for their innovative photography and skill with lighting. Besides conventional, beefcake photos of male body-builders, these studios specialised in 'storyettes' - narrative sequences of 12–36 photos featuring gay, male stereotypes - such as Military men, Sportsmen and Bikers - acting out scenarios, dressed in tight-fitting clothes (as shown above). The plots generally revolved around combat, domination or punishment with spanking, bondage and wrestling often featured.
Dolphin/Hussar Studio split from Royale in 1961, for reasons that are unclear (see Timeline article). Strictly speaking these were separate entities, but they shared the same material. For this reason, I sometimes use 'Royale' as shorthand for all three studios in this Archive, as is common elsewhere. They had all closed down by 1963.
In the late 70s the concept was briefly revived, supposedly by some of the original team, as the 'Guys In Uniform' Studio. They produced some very similar material, once again drawing on genuine military sources for models, but suffered the same fate.
The British Publishing Context in the 1950s
In common with other male photography studios of the 50s and 60s, Royale sold its photos direct to customers by mail order, advertising them in beefcake magazines. Body Building magazines had long been permitted under British law if they had a self-improvement, health or sporting purpose. In the late 50s, however, a new brand of beefcake magazine joined them with more prominent imagery which was often erotically flavoured. Texts sought to be artistic rather than educational and gradually disappeared altogether.
The easing of publishing restrictions owed much to the publication of the Wolfenden report in September 1957. After 3 years of review, it had (grudgingly) recommended the decriminalisation of homosexuality because it was exposing (prominent) people to blackmail and causing suicides. It was not actually made law until 1967, but Wolfenden signalled the beginning of liberalisation of institutional attitudes towards gay men. Royale seems to have been founded simultaneously with that momentous event (in Autumn 1957), but did not survive to see its fulfilment.
Royale never did frontal nudity, but the storyette models were usually dressed provocatively or partly undressed. Simply placing them together, in proximity or interacting, allowed the images to be filled with subtle (and not so subtle) innuendo and erotic constructs that, at the time, breached the strict UK decency laws and censorship rules. Mixing erotic imagery with corporal punishment scenarios was even more shocking. They also attracted adverse attention due to their practice of openly claiming that their models were serving members of the armed forces and portraying them wearing realistic and sometimes genuine uniforms (or parts of them).
This reportedly attracted repeated Police raids and seizures of material, but there seems to be little documentary evidence of this or of any formal prosecutions. The threat of confiscation and prosecution could be directed not only against Royale directly as originators of the offending material but also against any magazine that printed them, any organisation that handled or sold the magazines and anyone who bought them. This was a highly effective, repressive mechanism. Some British magazines resorted to printing in the USA and (I believe) secretly importing them through less repressive European countries like Holland and Denmark.
Despite the changing times, the British Police continued to vigorously pursue gay publishers using obscenity and decency laws and this continued after 'decriminalisation'. Personal collections often disappeared with the death of the owner, destroyed by relatives unless provision had been made to pass them on. As a result, much of Royale, Hussar and Dolphin's original material seems to have been lost apart from that which had already reached the public domain through the beefcake magazines. Private collections and individual photographs do still turn up from time to time, notably the 'Originals' Collection, much of which was published on the internet a few years ago (see Sources article). To date, however, these private collections remain private.
The Founding of The Open Archive
In 2010, the gay artist, Mitchell published a series of articles at his mitchmen blog listing some of the Royale 'storyettes' with examples of the imagery and attempting to unravel some of the mysteries that had grown up around them over the years. In 2021, he began revising and extending the original articles and adding new ones. He also announced his intention to establish a public, open archive of all the material he had accumulated regarding Royale in the hope of saving it for posterity.
The mitchmen Royale Studio Open Archive is currently located on Google Drive and is still under construction. It differs from other public, internet collections in that it is not a random collection of juicy images, but organised into the sets/storyettes, which was how they were originally published. These contain all the available images, good and bad, but the site has drawn on the power of AI enhancement to improve the presentation of those used in the Gallery.
The Archive also cross-references the storyette images to the models featured in them, which have been largely unknown hitherto. Numerous sets of them posing solo are also represented.
New additions to the Archive are published as they become available through the Royale Gallery site. This blog complements the Open Archive and Gallery with comment, news and information. The hope is to formally preserve some at least of the work and knowledge of this Studio group, which represents an important milestone in British Gay Liberation history.
Read more about the Organisation of the mitchmen Royale Archive
If you have, or know of, any Royale, Dolphin or Hussar images not represented here and would like to include them to the mitchmen Open Archive please contact me via my profile page link.
Copyright Disclaimer
This Archive does not claim ownership of the images presented in the Gallery. These have been assembled from sources believed to be in the public domain and in danger of disappearing altogether due to the lack of any known copyright owner. Any images in breach of this rule with be removed immediately on request by the copyright owner.
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