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| Royale Studio Catalogue Thumbnail for 'WHIP' |
This storyette simply shows a fight with whips between a soldier and a sailor.
Peter George, the sailor (left) has his uniform pants cut to shreds by Ron Wiltshire.
(If I didn't know it was Ron Wiltshire playing the soldier in the picture above, I would have guessed it was Fred Collins. However, the set description below gives an impeccable provenance and other images in the set show a better likeness)
According to one source, the publication of this set was responsible for Dolphin Photography (later renamed Hussar) splitting away from Royale Studio, but it's not clear why. The Royale split is discussed in the Timeline article at the blog (para 60.7).
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| Royale Studio's Catalogue Description - WHIP |
'Whip Fight' was first listed in Royale's Catalogue in July 1959 The understated catalogue description for the set, shown above, has the unmistakeable imprint of Basil Clavering's brash approach to drumming up interest. It also gives us an incidental insight into the workings of the Royale mail order business.
It's interesting to compare Clavering's mention of his high-speed camera to John Barrington's camera name dropping about his new Hassalblad 500C in his account of his 1958 photo shoot of Yves Grangeat. Clavering and Barrington were well acquainted and there's a fair amount of evidence of rivalry between them (which I will expand on in a future blog article).
The mention of 'Scherezade' is a reference to the 1947 film 'Song of Scheherazade'.
It had a scene in which two sailors fight each other with whips (link pending).
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| Royale Studio Ad in 'Man Alive', Aug & Oct 1959 |
The Whip Duel set was given prominent billing in full page advertisments in 'Man Alive' magazine in the autumn of 1959. At this point it had been renamed as Whip (not Wip!) Duel rather than Whip Fight.
Clavering clearly thought it was a highly commercial set,
in fact the Catalogue featured two thumbnail images instead of the usual one.
So far the Royale Studio Open Archive has located only 5 pictures out of the original 36.
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