Photographer: Alan Purnell

Alan Purnell was a British fashion photographer who was also editor of HIM Monthly (aka HIM Exclusive and HIM International), published from 1976 thru the early 1980s. Purnell also edited Playguy (unrelated to the US magazine of the same title), SAM and Zipper. As a photographer, Purnell was influenced by the work of Basil Clavering and John Parkhurst via their Royale Studio, who in turn had been influenced by the earlier work of Charles Montague Glover.

In 1967, the Sexual Offences Act may have decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men in England and Wales, but it required both parties be 21 or older, and it did not extend such rights to Scotland or Northern Ireland. This led to a spectrum of tabloid-driven scandals using the letter of the law to justify using claims of pedophilia if either party was even so much as a day short of 21. These details are important to understanding the so-called Playland scandal that errupted in 1975.

Purnell, along with photographers Charles Koetser (Fifty-seven Photography) and Colin Clarke, were caught up in a scandal in early 1975 when the Daily Mirror and the News of the World, tabloid newspapers in the UK, published stories about members of the Household Cavalry Regiment having appeared nude singly and in sexual groupings in magazines edited by Purnell.

The scandal and resulting inquiry dragged on until May 1976, with as many as 100 enlisted men and officers in units all across the UK being forced out of the military. Some had merely posed for a quick cash bump, others were actively operating as male prostitutes, some had been hiring non-military male prostitutes, some of them minors under the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, individually or to "entertain" at parties.

In 1977, having survived the scandal, Purnell directed Hard Dollar Hustler, the first full-length gay porn with sound to be produced in the UK, an accomplishment for which Alan Purnell was rightly proud. The Millivres Prowler Group distributed Hard Dollar Hustler in the UK and Europe. So far as I have been able to determine, Hard Dollar Hustler was never released in the US.

Hard Dollar Hustler starred Joe Hill. Hill was a popular model and (later) porn actor in the UK gay scene. Photos of Mike Hill by Purnell and Mike Arlen from Hard Dollar Hustler appear after the sources.

Purnell went on to produce two more porn films, New York City Pro (1982) and Workout (1982), both of which were distributed in the USA by HIS Video.

Sources:

• "Banned in Britain" (advertisement). Mandate V8N11 Feb 1983.
• Barnett, Jerry. Porn Panic! Sex and Censorship in the UK. Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2016.
• Daly, Anthony. Playland: Secrets of a Forgotten Scandal. London: Mirror Books, 2018.
• Lewis, Brian. British Queer History: New approaches and perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Mensior, John R. "Video" Torso V1N9 Mar 1983.
• Rowberry, John W. Gay Video: A Guide to Erotica. San Francisco: G. S. Press, 1986.
• Smith, Charles. The Evolution of the Gay Male Public Sphere in England and Wales, 1967-c.1983. Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire, UK, 2015.