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| Royale Studio - Urgay wrestles with Lamprill, Catalogue Image |
Royale is better known for it's Corporal Punishment scenarios than wrestling but many of the story-lines revolve around fights and there are at least 13 sets which might be described as purely wrestling and they are certainly not short of erotic moments. This one featuring Tibor Urgay grappling with Brian Lamprill is one the earliest and best documented.
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| click to enlarge |
'TIBL' was listed in Royale's Catalogue List VIII in July 1959 but the first appearance in print was earlier, in the March 1959, No 4 issue of 'Man Alive'. There were 24 pictures in the set, the Royale Studio Open Archive at mitchmen has copies of 13 of them.
The TIBL models were posed completely naked with oiled bodies. This required careful positioning of both men throughout and it must have made for a very erotic shoot for all concerned. One group of images from this set published in 'Manual' in December of that year actually showed the models dressed in thongs, but these look painted on, although I've not found any un-doctored versions that confirm this. We don't know if it represents editorial caution or a response to Police action against earlier publications, see footnote*.
Royale weren't the only British studio doing shoots like this, that same No 4 issue of 'Man Alive' also carried images of men wrestling which had been photographed by Scott of London and by Vic White. Their models wore posing pouches in the main but the example shown below shows Mike Tozer (pouched) manoeuvring a nude Brian Thomas into position apparently for a bare ass spanking.
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| Mike Tozer dominates Brian Thomas (Vic White, 1959) |
This isn't really wrestling of course, but statically posed representations of it, set up with an eye to the erotic. In the best images there's a great sense of domination with painful leverages inducing helpless submission in the victim.
*Images like these must almost certainly offended the homophobic authorities. At that time, wrestling was a legitimate, popular entertainment with troupes of fighters touring and pitching up in towns much as circuses and funfairs did, plastering the hoardings which were still erected round WWII bomb sites with their flyers. They didn't perform nude of course, but in high-waisted trunks that left everything to the imagination. The wearing of skimpier clothes and oiling bodies for body-building contests was also an established practice, but happened largely out of the sight of the public, who by and large regarded the flaunting of bodies (by men, that is, not women) as a highly dubious activity. Gay men back then were much inclined to look back to classical antiquity to legitimise their art but the claim that the Greeks wrestled nude in the original Olympic Games won't have cut much ice with the Police who were liable to seize anything that showed men even looking at each other, let alone touching and certainly not interacting closely when undressed.
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