.jpg "Royale Studio - Sailor tied to Rigging (Basil Clavering)") |
| Royale Studio - Sailor tied to Rigging |
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 above). The plots generally revolved around domination, punishment and combat with spanking, bondage, wrestling often featured.
Royale never did frontal nudity, but the storyette models were provocatively dressed and simply placing them in proximity together 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 only 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. Some British magazines resorted to printing in the USA and (I believe) secretly importing them through less repressive European countries like Holland and Denmark.
Hussar Studio split from Royale in 1961 for reasons that are unclear (see Timeline article) but both had closed down by 1963. In the late 70s the concept was briefly revived 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.
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 Body Building magazines, which were permitted under the law if they had a self-improvement, health or sporting purpose. Wholesome, in other words. In the 50s, these were joined by beefcake magazines with erotically flavoured imagery and texts that sought to be artistic rather than educational.
In the UK, the Wolfenden report, published in September 1957 (after 3 years of review) 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.
Despite the changing times, the British Police continued to vigorously pursue gay publishers using obscenity and decency laws (and this continued after 'decriminalisation'). As a result, much of Royale, Hussar and Dolphin's original material seems to have been lost apart from that which reached the public domain through the beefcake magazines. Private collections and individual photographs do turn up from time to time, notably the 'Originals' Collection of Sailor Al, much of which was published on the internet a few years ago (see Sources article). To date, however, these private collections remain private.
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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 it 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 internet collections in that it is not a random collection of juicy images, but organised into the sets/storyettes, which are 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 solo sets of them posing are 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.
If you have any other Royale images from this or previously published groups and would like to include them to the mitchmen Open Archive please contact me via my profile page link.
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Read more about the Organisation of the mitchmen Royale Archive
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