Royale's Airmen, The 'Eagle' Gym Vest (updated Sat 4th Feb)

In Royale 05, 'Airman's Gym Spanking', Peter George wears a singlet/vest with an eagle motif on the chest which looks like that used by the RAF, suggesting he is a member of that branch of the services.  The vest itself looks as it might be pale blue, in keeping with RAF colours. 

Royale openly promoted Peter's pictures using this military connection. Thus in Royale Studio's notes for Peter George's solo set '3-PUN', he is described as "Corporal Peter George, a Physical Training Instructor". This occupation was also referenced in beefcake magazines of the time that printed his pictures. Royale's brochure description did not specify which branch of the services he was in.

This image and the accompanying words, printed in Man Alive 5, Jun 1959 

seems to clear up any uncertainty. 

The badge on Peter's top looks absolutely authentic, but it's actually illegal for non-servicemen to wear military uniforms (other than for plays) or for anyone to bring the uniform into disrepute (1894 Uniforms Act) so Royale were playing with fire here. Significantly I've not seen this particular picture or the top shown in it anywhere else. 

The eagle on Royale's PT vest is very similar to that used by the RAF, but it's usually contained within a roundel on their official badges as in Peter's picture above. I haven't found one that looks exactly like the Royale vest motif. Royale made a speciality of tailoring clothes to squeeze their models into so it's not hard to imagine them producing their own eagle vest to imply his background without breaking any laws.

This is the official badge worn by RAF PT Instructors. 

I don't know why it features cutlasses.

Above, a cheery RAF PTI of the modern era, I love those colour-coded, 'muscle' singlets 

(the Army version has sexy red edging). 

Sadly they post-date the Royale era. 

RAF gymnasts in the Royal Tournament 1964 RAF gymnastics display wore plain white vests. That video happens to be contemporaneous with the Royal era (but it's not possible to spot Peter in it!)

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Royale model, Pete Beale in 'Eagle vest' set PEB-3

Peter George was not the only Royale model to wear the 'Eagle' Airforce vest, Pete Beale also posed for a set wearing it*.  I dare say it's his expressive shorts that have caught your eye rather than the vest! Royale described them as 'form fitting' and Beale himself as a 'magnificent specimen, if a trifle big'.

*Or at least the logo is identical, Pete's vest looks lighter in colour, but I think it probably is the same piece of kit. It's clearly darker than his shorts. Peter George's vest is also 'bleached' by the lighting in some of the later gym spanking pictures. 

Beale like Peter George was described as a PT Instructor  in Royale's catalogue, 

but I've not found a reference specifying the RAF yet. 

This set (3-PEB) can be dated to Jan 1959 by a reference in Royale's Catalogue, List VI.

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Royale Model, Steve Wilson in 'Eagle' Vest, PT Kit

Steve Wilson also shimmied into the same kit for a Jan 1960 series of pictures (2-STW in Royale's Catalogue, List X). It promised 'novel angles' of him swapping his pyjamas for shorts for his morning exercises. His chunky thighs can rarely have looked better than they do in this picture. 

Wilson was described as an RAF PT Corporal, exactly the same as Peter George. Notice that all three models are also wearing the same long socks suggesting that the images were taken around the same time despite the last two being published a year apart.

These two sets provide clues to the possible dating of Peter George's gym spanking set (Royale 05).

This is discussed in more detail in Peter George's Career page.

Introducing the 'mitchmen' Royale Studio blog

Royale Studio - Sailor tied to Rigging

Welcome to the 'mitchmen' Royale Studio blog where Mitchell the gay fetish artist and founder of the 'mitchmen' fetish art site is sharing his collection of images produced by the British beefcake photographers, Basil Clavering and John Parkhurst who founded Royale Studio in the 1950's and its later associates Hussar Studio and Dolphin Studio.   

Besides conventional, beefcake photos of male body-builders, Royale and its associates specialised in 'storyettes' - narrative sequences of 12-36 photos featuring gay, male stereotypes - Military men, Sportsmen and Bikers, dressed in tight fitting clothes (see 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. They also attracted adverse attention due their practice of openly claiming that their models were serving members of the armed forces 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 Studio names) but both ultimately closed down ca.1963. In the late 70's 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 it suffered the same fate.

In common with other male photography studios of the 50's/60's, 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 50's, these were joined by beefcake magazines with more erotically flavoured imagery and texts that were more artistic 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 and Royale seems to have been founded in the wake of that momentous event. 

Despite this, the British Police continued to vigorously pursue gay publishers using obscenity and decency laws. 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). 

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In 2010, the gay artist, Mitchell pubished 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 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 sets/storyettes which is how they were originally published and contain all the available images, good and bad. It also cross-references them to the models which have been largely unknown hitherto. This blog publishes new additions to the Archive as they become available through a linked Royale Gallery site. It also complements the Open Archive with comment, news and information. The hope is to formally preserve some at least of the work and knowledge of the studio which represents an important segment of 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

About The Organisation of this Archive

Royale Studio - Corporal Punishment (from The Arrest, ERTR-1)

The mitchmen Royale Studio Open Archive is presently under construction and housed in a Google Drive folder belonging to the mitchmen blog. Anyone can access it using the link below.

mitchmen Royale Studio Open Archive

In the mitchmen Royale Studio Archive, the pictures produced by Royale, Hussar and Dolphin Studios are grouped mainly by Model Name or by Storyette (or Playlet as they were later called by Hussar). There are also a few themed Collections of miscellaneous photos which I cannot assign to either of these groups.  

The Drive database is supplemented by two blogs: 

1. The Royale Studio Gallery blog has articles which present most or all of the images in each set with comments and information about the background to the storyettes and models who appear in them. Many of the pictures have been AI-enhanced for presentation purposes but the originals can be found in the Archive folders. The Gallery has a variety of display options* that, for example, show thumbnails of the articles for visual selection.  You can access these formats through the tab at the extreme left of the top bar which defaults to 'Magazine'. 

*Sorry, but this 'dynamic' feature doesn't seem to be available on my iPhone 
but it works on my PC and android tablet.

2. This blog, The Royale Studio blog, contains articles about the history of Royale, Basil Clavering, the man who set it up and how they operated. Also in the right hand column there's a handy index of Royale Storyettes and Models which provides direct links to articles of interest in the Gallery blog.

(There are more articles at the mitchmen blog, which is where this project started. These will gradually be transferred to this blog but in the meantime I will create temporary linking posts here to simplify access. Ultimately the mitchmen articles will be recast as trailers pointing to this dedicated blog.)

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I have tried to assign Royale's original names to each storyette but it's not possible to identify them in every case. Where storyettes circulate under other names I usually point this out in the blog article relating to it. Some stories were given acronyms by Royale e.g. Navy Gash = NAGA. Sometimes the names of the models were used for identification (e.g. ERTR in the picture above which stands for Eric and Trevor/Trefor). I quote these acronyms in the Archive folder name and in the filename where appropriate.

The Storyettes and Collections have been numbered by me in no particular order, purely for convenience in identifying them and naming the files which belong to them and do not represent any sort of sequence. Thus Royale 02 - Navy Romeo is abbreviated to R02 in the file names of pictures, which have the form 'R02-picture sequence number-title'. 

I have not separated out the sets by studio names. Hussar seems to have eventually superseded both Royale and Dolphin  but I am still trying to establish how or why they were differentiated by Royale (see article on Studio names and timelines). I have retained their original attributions where I know them but some were published under both names at different times. I am trying to date the stories where I can but there don't seem to be many reliable sources and I doubt that I will ever be able to justify reorganising them into date sequence. 

Royale's Rigging Prop

Peter Watts - Sailor tied in the Rigging

Royale's 'Sailors in the Rigging' images are amongst the sexiest  they ever produced.
I use the one above regularly to headline announcements at the mitchmen blog. 

Royale - Peter George & buddy - Sailors in the Rigging 1

Royale actually had two rigging props (both shown here) but they were not not identical, the far one has four upward running strands, the nearer only three. The 3-strand version permits sexy positioning of the central rope between the model's legs . 

The three strand variant only appears in the two sets shown above and the well known flogging image featuring Ron Wiltshire (i.e. Sets C, D and E). The other eight use the four stranded variant.

see Sailors in the Rigging Sets

How Royale Sold Their Pictures

 The Royale Catalogue images included in the British Photographer's collection are a valuable source of information about the early years of Royale, what they did and how they traded. 

Royale solicited enquiries by placing ads in beefcake magazines of the era

Royale Studio - Advertisement in a Magazine

This one for storyettes appeared in 'Man Alive' No 7 in October 1959. It depicts a surprising selection of tantalising, homoerotic ingredients - domination, humiliation, whipping, arrests, stripping and whipping, all involving men in tight fitting and scanty clothes. Later advertisements became more discreet.

Usually there would be other Royale pictures in the body of the magazine, but in general they were conventional beefcake shots, not taken from the storyettes. 

You could write to Royale requesting the latest listings of photograph sets and a sample catalogue sheet of one of the sets for the sum of 10/- (Ten shillings or £0.50 in modern money)

Back then in 1959 the average weekly wage in Britain was £9, 
The price of a copy of Man Alive 7 was 3/6p or about £0.18

For US readers a dollar then was about £0.36

Royale Catalogue - List 'A' (click to enlarge)

What you got in return was 'Lists' of photo sets like the one above.
Each List contained descriptions of the sets and pricing information. 

(see Royale's 1960 Catalogue in full)

Royale Catalogue - Key List 'A' (click to enlarge)

Each 'List' of photo sets was accompanied by a 'Key List' which was a sheet of thumbnails with one sample picture (usually) from each set in the descriptions list. These sample pictures gave customers a better idea of the contents of each set. They could then order a detailed catalogue sheet for a specific set which interested them.

Suppose you were interested in 'FJSS' ( which I've highlighted in the images above).
The description is tantalising, it reads:

CAT. FJSS               "SOLDIER...SAILOR". FRED COLLINS & JOHN SKILLING CHANGE
(21 pix) 10/-             INTO WHITE NAVY PANTS & SHORTS, KHAKI SHORTS. THEY QUARREL
SET 7x5 50/-            & ARE TIED UP TO COOL DOWN.  

The first price shown on the left is the cost of the catalogue for the set, which would have been a sheet of what we would call thumbnails today showing all the 21 pictures in the set (see below). 

Typically a 12 pix catalogue sheet cost 5/- (£0.25 in modern money) 
bigger sets of 24 (say) were twice the cost 10/- (0.50p). 

At this point you would have spent £1 of your £9 wage.

More about pre-decimal coinage. 

Royale Studio Catalogue Sheet for FJSS, 'Soldier Sailor'
click to enlarge

This is the catalogue sheet for FJSS, it would have arrived printed on foolscap paper (13" x 8") which is a shade bigger than modern A4. 

This catalogue image would have been created originally by arranging separate physical photos on a back sheet and photographing the result. It was then possible to make multiple copies of the composite image from the negative.  

The image quality was good so this sheet of small pictures may have sufficed  for some customers and there are examples of pictures in circulation which have obviously been snipped from sheets like this.

Royale Studio Order Form

 

There was a further option of ordering individual prints (7"x5" or 10"x8") of the pictures the customer particularly liked, using the form above. List 'A' above doesn't quote the price of enlargements but in a list from a year or so later (List IX) it's given as 3/6d (roughly £0.18) for a 7"x5" with a dozen for £1.50.

For the 'FJSS' set the List 'A' description (above) specifies the option of ordering the full size set of 21 pictures  directly, without buying the more detailed Catalogue Sheet first. 

The cost was 50/- (fifty shillings) equivalent to 2/6 per picture 

which is £2.50 in modern money, roughly £0.12 per picture. 

Back then your half a crown (2/6 per picture) would have bought a loaf of bread ( a proper one, unwrapped and not sliced) or half a pound of butter. 

On an average wage of £9 per week, fifty shillings (£2.50) plus £1 for the catalogues was quite a significant outlay. 

Dolphin Studio - Order Acknowledgment

This copy of a covering letter sent with a delivered order shows that the Studio's approach was perfectly business-like. This letter was sent by Dolphin Studio which was a later off-shoot of Royale 

(see Studio Names article).

It's signed by Clavering's business partner John Parkhurst. 

The ordered photographs were sent to customers through the regular post which was completely illegal as they were deemed to be indecent. They used plain envelopes to minimise the risk of interception by postal employees. Of course, there were plenty of legitimate photos also being sent through the post. Probably the greatest risk in the days of paper envelopes was of them splitting open while the Post Office had them. 

In the letter above there's a reference to 'Poste Restante', which was used to circumvent another delivery risk. It's a system whereby the Mail Service does not deliver the package to the recipient's address but holds it at a local office for the customer to collect. It's a simple way to prevent wives or other members of the household opening the unexpected package or asking about the contents. Back then it was invaluable to closeted gay men.

For more background articles click on the 'About Royale' label just below.

Dating of Royale/Hussar Picture Sets

Knowing the dates when Royale photo sets were published and their sequence is of interest in tracking the evolution of their work and putting it alongside the social atmosphere at a key period for gay liberation in the UK. 

Royale sets that appear in the 1960 Royale Catalogue can be dated fairly precisely. Some of the 6 lists that make up the catalogue are explicitly dated and the dates of the others can be deduced knowing that Royale issued them at quarterly intervals. 

View the Table of List Dates 

This table dates the publication of sets within Lists VI to X (i.e. 6-10) to the nearest quarter. Those in List A can only be dated as in the range Oct 57 to Oct 58 by this method but other sources can refine this, see below.

I don't have a later catalogue

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The second source of dates is the beefcake magazines of the era which published Royale pictures. These are a more approximate guide but finding the earliest published example of a picture from a given set gives us a 'not later than' date. They seem quite close to the dates we know from the 1960 catalogue.

Pictures from Royale storyettes were rarely printed in the body of beefcake mags, probably due to their controversial nature -  they didn't really fit into the permitted categories of Health, Bodybuilding, Fashion or Art. However in some cases Royale mentioned the sets in their ads, sometimes with a thumbnail.

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Magazines themselves were not always dated, many started off with publication dates on the cover or contents page but stopped providing them in later years. Dates of later issues can sometimes be deduced from the publication intervals (e.g. monthly, bi-monthly) but it was not uncommon for there to be long breaks in publication due to technical issues or other mishaps. 

Those that carried adverts for other magazines can sometimes be approximately dated by finding the cover illustrated in the ad. 

Rarely, the text in a magazine will give a precise datable reference e.g. Reg Gutteridge winning  Mr Britain. 

Sometimes the editorial mentions a year explicitly. 

A Christmas issue or reference to summer also helps narrow ranges of uncertainty.

Identifying the Navy Romeo/DTS models

 

Navy Romeo 14, Part 1 

One of the puzzles of Royale's Navy Romeo series is the bewildering changes in the appearance and build of the actors from one scene to another. For example, is the handsome Ted (far right in picture 14 of Part 1) the same person as we see emerging from the car in picture 16 (Part 2) below? 

Navy Romeo 16, Part 2 

Is Spike, also seen also in the middle of picture 14 (top),

 the same Spike we just glimpse taunting Ted in picture 28 below.

Navy Romeo 28, Part 2 

Is he the same Spike we see later departing the scene in picture 36?  (middle, shown below)

Navy Romeo 36, Part 2 

Are any of the men in Part 1 actually the same as those in Part 2? Or were these Parts produced separately and married together which the discontinuities in style and plot seem to suggest?

Even allowing for the imperfect quality of most of the surviving images, we rarely see clear, close-up pictures of the men's faces in this series and despite their military pedigrees they don't even have tattoos, which are normally a great aid to identification. 

TOM HARDING

Tom Harding presents the fewest ID problems. The only place he's fully named is in Navy Gash, in Navy Romeo he's called Tom and not named at all in DTS. However we see a lot of his face in Navy Romeo Part 2 (pictures 17, 18, 32) and in in DTS and it's clearly the same man as in Navy Gash. Identifying Tom in Romeo Part 1, however, is more difficult. The nearest we get to a decent shot of his face is a series of indistinct profiles (e.g. 03) in which he looks much more lean and youthful than the frontal images in DTS and NARO2. However we can see his dark, curly hair and there is something of that lean look in the rear view of him seen in 19 from Romeo Part 2 (extreme left)

TED

Ted doesn't appear in Navy Gash, he is named in Navy Romeo and the Ted we see being pulled out of the car in Navy Romeo 16 and being manhandled in 17 and 18 is plausibly the same Ted we see in the middle of  DTS02. The Ted we see tied up in Romeo Part 2 picture 23 isn't obviously the same man, but does have similar curly hair and the distinctive gaiters and boots.

Tying Ted into Part 1 is more problematic thanks to the lack of clear, full face shots. There are two glimpses of him where there is a fair amount of similarity, however - in picture 05 and in the mirror reflection in picture 02. There is other circumstantial evidence linking his appearances in Parts 1 and 2 - the gaiters, of course, but also Ted's chunky build in picture 04 is a good match for his figure in No 34 in Part 2. His very different appearance in 14, which first triggered my doubts on this identification issue, actually pairs reasonably with well with the way he looks in No 31.

 I've not found a solo shoot for Ted in the Royale Catalogues despite his attractive muscular build, nor any other mention of him in other Royale sets. I'm still wondering if he has another identity.

SPIKE + NED WILLIGAN

The model called Ned Willigan in Navy Gash is pretty obviously the same man we see on the right in   DTS02 and is a pretty good match for the man called Spike in Romeo 17, 31 and 36.

Spike has a slightly different look in the water-throwing pictures in Part 2 (e.g 24, 25), where the slicked-down, dark hair at the back of his head doesn't seem to fit with the light curls we see tumbling from under his cap in the front views (just above). However his eyes in 24 do match those in 31. In this and other pictures of Spike in Part 2, (e.g. 21, 22), he does have curls at the front, but it's layered elsewhere and fairly well greased (perhaps with a contemporary product called Brycreem) which would explain the darkening. 

1950's Hair Care (featuring cricket star, Dennis Compton)

 Spike's face also appears particularly different in 28 . However the distinctive hand-on-thigh pose he uses is also seen in the 'gloating pictures' 31 and 32, in NARO Part 1, picture 14  and in DTS03. The DTS picture gives us other circumstantial evidence for linking to Spike into both Romeo Parts 1 and 2 – it's the tiny tear on his right thigh which is also visible in both NARO 1 (10 ) and NARO 2 (21). Having said that, Spike is not the only man who wears these split trousers at Royale.

The best facial shots of Spike in Navy Romeo 1 are 09 and 14 but these are not very helpful in identifying him as Ned from DTS and Navy Gash. However the eye and cheek area seen in the rear, three quarter views in 03 and 04 could credibly be the same man we see in the gloating images of Navy Romeo Part 2. The tiny glimpse of his face reflected in the mirror in 08 is also unexpectedly persuasive, when seen in the original image.

Incidentally, Spike is wearing dark shoes in the Part 1 pictures e.g. 08, 14 and in the DTS thumbnail above. But he wears white shoes in the Garden trio also above and throughout Part 2. This tiny discontinuity supports the theory that Parts 1 and 2 were created in separate shoots.

SPIKE MILLICAN

But just when the identity issue seems (more or less) resolved up pops this...........

This reference implies 'Spike' is Spike Millican not Ned Willigan.

Royale Studios - Catalogue Thumbnail for set SPM

It's very hard to see the man in this thumbnail as the boyish Spike from the closing scenes of NARO 2 although he does have the same tousled hair at the front and the same distinctive cleft chin. 

His gaunt look here is rather like “Tom's” shocking appearance in the DTS04 bench trio but I'm pretty sure it's not that man. It's the same side lighting effect though and unusually for Royale, his whole crotch area is hidden in shadow bar a suggestive 'ridge'. From his face and stance it looks almost as though he's just had a bucket of water tossed over him. Or perhaps it's his modeling - or romantic - aspirations which have just been doused.

There are 2 possible, simple explanations for the names puzzle. 

What may have happened is that the writer for the catalogues has simply mixed up the names Willigan and Millican. That's easily done, these were probably not real names anyway and confusion would have been fueled by the similarity of both names to that of a very well-known, zany comedian of the time, Spike Milligan (famously one of 'The Goons'). His odd appearance and bizarre personality must have led to some joking at the expense of any model with a similar name. Indeed 'Spike' may a nickname based on this association, Millican certainly looks crazy enough to earn it in his solo photo above and Ned shows similar 'crazy' traits in his taunting of Ted tied to the tree. Thus it may be that Ned Willigan and Spike Millican are the same man and the SPM thumbnail is just a terrible portrayal of him.

Alternatively the curly-haired man in Navy Romeo is Ned Willigan and not Spike Millican and Millican's catalogue entry referencing Navy Romeo is simply incorrect. 

 Unfortunately I haven't been to dig out corroboration for this but sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that the Navy Gash catalogue description is not error-free either, check the words on the shirt there against the photo.