One of the puzzles of the Royale, 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)? Is Spike, seen also in picture
14 (centre) the same Spike we see taunting Ted in picture
28 and later departing the scene in picture
36? 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, despite their military pedigrees they don't even
have tattoos, which are normally a great aid to identification.
However, Royale also published a series
labeled 'DTS' which they said featured the same 3 men (see catalogue note below). It consisted of 20 pictures, but most of them seem to have been lost
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Royale Studio - 'DTS' Catalogue Thumbnail Image, DTS01
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In the thumbnail you can see they are wearing similar
uniforms to the men in NARO with one in boots and gaiters
Royale generally used the initials
of the actor's/model's names in set ID's, except when it had a
story code, like NARO. There's no obvious clue to such a title in the
DTS catalogue blurb (although it might mean Drilling Three Sailors, I suppose). S here could represent Spike and T Tom or Ted but who is D? It serves to seed a more
doubts about identities
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Royale Studio - DTS02 Garden Trio
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The catalogue description refers to a
garden setting for some of the DTS pictures. This is presumed by me
to be one of them, it's clearly the same three men as the DTS
thumbnail, looking very hunky in clinging Royal Navy shirts. The garden
setting points to a connection with NARO Part 2 and it's quite easy
to identify them individually there.
Tom, (on the left), presents fewest ID
problems, we see a lot of his face in Part 2 (pictures 17,
18,
32)
and it's clearly the same man. He's also wearing the same distinctive
white shoes.
Ted (in the middle) is plausibly, the
same Ted we see being pulled out of the car (in 16)
and being manhandled in 17
and 18.
His face is not really seen clearly after that in Part 2 apart from
the NARO thumbnail (numbered as picture 23)
but that Ted isn't obviously the same man, despite his similar curly
hair and the distinctive gaiters and boots.
Spike (on the right) is a pretty good
match for Spike in 17,
31
and 36,
complete with white shoes.
Having linked names to faces, if Ted is 'D', Tom is 'T' and Spike is 'S', then the left to right sequence of the men in the thumbnail photo at the top of the post exactly matches the title, DTS. Convinced? No, I'm not sure either!
~
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.
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| 1950's Hair Care (featuring cricket star, Dennis Compton) |
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The water-throwing images also seem
to feature a different-looking Ted. I suppose it's conceivable these
images were re-shot with different models but I can't find any
obvious clues for that, except perhaps the strangely altered roping in 28
where Spike's face also appears particularly different. However there
is a detail in 28 that does link Spike from NARO 2 into the DTS group and
it is brought out in the better quality version below
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Royale Studio - DTS03 Three Bare-Top Sailors
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This is a version of the thumbnail
picture with the legs cropped out. Ted and Tom look a bit glum, like
criminals in a line-up. Perhaps it's those wet trousers to blame,
Ted's are particularly unflattering although they do all look nicely laundered in this image.
Spike is the only one who seems to be
keen to make the most of breaking into the world of modeling. Notice that he has
a characteristic way of resting his left hand on his thigh, hooking
his thumb into the front flap of his sailor's trousers. It helps to
accentuate his 'bulge' here of course, but Spike in NARO 2 strikes the same pose in 28
and in the 'gloating pictures' 31
and 32.
Linking The Cast Members In Parts 1 and 2
Spike's hand-on-thigh pose also appears in NARO Part 1, in picture
14 and the DTS picture above gives us
other circumstantial evidence for linking to Spike into both Parts 1
and 2 – it's the tiny tear on his right thigh (which I pointed out
in my Part 2 commentary), it's visible in both NARO 1 (10
) and NARO 2 (21) as well as this DTS picture. Having said that, Spike is not the only man who wears these split trousers, more of that in later articles.
Unfortunately none of the model's faces are seen clearly in Part 1, many of the pictures show only back views and the rest are
mostly oblique angles or otherwise obscured.
The
best shots of Spike are 09
and 14
but these are not very helpful in identifying him as the man in the
picture above (apart from the curly hair in 09). 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 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.
Tying Ted into Part 1 is also
problematic thanks again 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.
Like Spike his dark hair is confusing here (again possibly the result of
using a greasy hair product like Brylcreem!). 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, also
pairs reasonably with well with the way he looks in No
31.
Tom's identfication is easy in Part 2 but in Part 1 it is the most
difficult of all to verify. 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 Part 2 (extreme left).
But just when the identity issue seems (more or less) resolved up pops this...........
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Royales Studio - DTS04 Sailors Sitting On A Bench
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This is the only other DTS-like image I have
found and you can spot Ted (left) and Spike (centre) right away,
However the man on the right is scarcely recognisable as Tom apart
from his hair. Spike's dark shoes link this photo to the NARO
1 shoot, where Tom did appear to have a relatively gaunt appearance,
but he doesn't look like this at all in the DTS thumbnail at the top which
is also linked to NARO 1.
It's possible this is just a trick of the lighting,
I guess. You can see he's strongly lit from one side. There could also have been a different shoot with another man
in Tom's place but that doesn't seem likely, Perhaps he's simply a
4th man who happened to temporarily join in the DTS shoot,
a technician or visitor perhaps who wanted to try his hand at being a
wet sailor! This might even be a previously unknown shot of Basil
Clavering or of Scott the photographer, who knows?
~
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| Royale Studios - Catalogue Thumbnail for set TOH |
Like other Studios, Royale produced
solo sets of most of their models and we have a thumbnail (but nothing else) from the
one that Tom posed for, labeled 'TOH'. The photographer has cannily chosen
an upward looking viewpoint to make the most of the
carefully-prepared crotch area. This open legged stance, very
masculine and suggestive of confrontation and simmering belligerence,
is typical of Royale's output
The catalogue blurb tells us that the
model's full name is Tom Harding and he appears in several other
Royale sets as we shall soon see. Tom's wearing his Navy kit again here
but these solo shoots were often pure beefcake sessions in swimming
trunks or posing straps and these sometimes turn up on vintage
beefcake sites, sometimes under different model names. However, I've
not found any examples of Tom in this form yet.
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| Royale Studios - Catalogue Thumbnail for set SPM |
This thumbnail is supposedly for
Spike's solo set, full name Spike Millican. Despite the corroborating
evidence of the catalogue entry below, it's very hard to see this man
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 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.
I've not found a reference for Spike in any other Royale set and there is a simple explanation for this last puzzle, but I will reserve that for the next post!
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 as 'Dave' or 'Dennis'!
The original mitchmen Royale
series (2010) is currently being extensively revised and extended.
This
completely new article is the 3rd post in the
'Navy Romeo' Set, together they replace the original Royale post No 2.
