09 Escape (Jan 1960)

Royale Studio's 'Escape' is a story of two free men who are captured, tormented and used for forced labour until they rebel and escape.

The Cast of Royale Studio's, 'Escape' Storyette

The Plot 

There isn't an authoritative plot description available for this 1960 Royale photo set. The images available are strikingly similar to Royale's great 'Unapproved School' saga of 1959 and like Unapproved School, it is largely staged in the famous Royale garden and underground cellar locations. In addition, both sets have capture, captivity, harsh punishment and escape scenes, so it's tempting to assume that 'Escape' has the same pessimistic storyline. Indeed, an earlier article on this set at mitchmen blog assumed just this.

There is no image numbering or thumbnail sheet available to confirm it either way. However, the look and feel of 'Escape' seems intended to be different, so the outline at the top of this post is a storyline option which more closely matches the name of the set. I have used continuity cues to come up with the photo sequence.  

I have also prepared an alternative storyline (Escape-2, below) which is closer to the darker, 'Unapproved School' plot - i.e. Captivity-Escape-Recapture-Punishment. 

The Gay? Characterisations 

This storyette differs from 'Unapproved School' in that it depicts a much stronger relationship between the two captives, a comradeship which seems close to homosexual love. Studios in this era did occasionally publish 'duo' images showing two poseurs as friends, sometimes surreptitiously holding hands, but to the best of my knowledge the mutual massaging and comforting depicted in 'Escape' is ground-breaking - for a British Studio at least. The title, 'Escape', thus acquires a much deeper social and political significance.

The Setting

'Escape' depicts a quasi-military, detention scenario. However, it differs from almost every other Royale military set in that none of the participants are portrayed as UK servicemen (see cast picture above). The captives wear civilian jeans and their guards wear military style shorts, belts and boots, but with no specific service identity. Their commandant bizarrely wears a sort of tuxedo jacket with his shorts (and a safari helmet later on), which creates the impression of a fantasy kingdom, somewhere hot, but definitely not in Britain. This distancing from Royale's normal world may be an attempt to disguise as satire the protest against the oppression of homosexuals which Clavering seems to make in this set. 

The Cast 

The set stars Peter George (2nd from left in the picture above) and on his immediate left (I believe) Hansjorg Heiner as the two prisoners/escapers. The Commandant (far left) is probably David Tomkins (with distinctive ears), he also appears in Royale's 'Winner Take All' storyette around this time. The two guards look as though they might be two of the many models of Hungarian extraction who posed for Royale, having arrived after the 1956 uprising.

The Photographs 

'Escape' was first mentioned in a Royale ad in Man Alive No 8 in January 1960. It later appeared linked to a recognisable thumbnail from the set in the July 1960 issue of Zing! 

 The Royale Studio Open Archive has 31 images from the set. Most of them came from the now-defunct 'CosmoLeather' site (Source 13) labelled as 'Captivity'. There are continuity gaps and, like Unapproved School and Navy Romeo, it has distinctly separate studio-based and outdoor segments suggesting it could have originally been a set in two parts. This might account for the alternative naming by CosmoLeather

View the Complete 'Escape' storyette by Royale

View 'Escape 2' with an alternative plot sequence.