Dating of Royale/Hussar Picture Sets

This article describes the methodology used to estimate the dates of storyettes published by the Royale Group. 

  Knowing the dates when Royale photo sets were produced and their sequence is of interest in tracking the evolution of their work and putting it alongside the social environment at a key period for gay liberation in the UK. In the absence of documents like diaries, we cannot know the dates when any Royale photographs were actually taken, but publication dates are the next best thing.

Using The Royale Catalogue 

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 Royale Catalogue List Dates 

This table dates the publication of sets within Lists VI to X (i.e. 6-10) to the nearest quarter. Those in Lists I-IV (1-4) had been amalgamated into List A by 1960 and can only be dated as being in the range Oct 57 to Oct 58 by this method, but other sources can be used to refine this, see below.

Storyettes/Playlets published after January 1960 cannot be dated this way as we don't have a later catalogue. Nor can we identify pre-1960 sets that had been deleted from the catalogue by 1960.

Using Beefcake Magazines

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 often 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, storyette names are sometimes mentioned in the Studio's own ads, sometimes with a thumbnail illustration.

 

 The dates when solo images of storyette cast members were first published in the beefcake mags can assist in establishing probable storyette dates, since the solo shots ought to be in similar time frame to their storyettes. This is particularly useful with early sets which were deleted from the catalogue and later republished under the Hussar name. Multiple cast members help circumvent the problem of 'regulars' like Fred Collins, who starred in so many sets over a long period of time that his presence is of little help in dating the later ones.

Unfortunately, the 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. 'Tomorrow's Man' was the only publication that consistently printed issue dates throughout the Royale era.  

 

Dates of later issues for the others can sometimes be deduced from their 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. AI can be some help in working out why and when breaks happened and the most likely actual dates.

 

Occasionally, an editorial, copyright statement or advertisement in an undated issue may mention a year explicitly. More rarely, the text in a magazine will give a precise datable reference e.g. Reg Gutteridge winning Mr Britain. A Christmas issue or reference to summer also helps to narrow ranges of uncertainty. 

Those publications that carried adverts for other magazines can also sometimes be dated approximately by finding the cross-referencing issue illustrated in the ad. 

 

In the final analysis, the dates quoted in the storyette list and the profile pages are my best, educated guess.