Victor Heyfron's sculptures of Hank, Bruce, and Cliff

Between 1963 and 1964, Hank Marvin, Bruce Welch, and Cliff Richard had their heads sculpted and cast in bronze by sculptor Victor Heyfron. The busts were personally commissioned by themselves.

There's a photo of Cliff's, there's a photo of Hank's... but I couldn't find a photo of Bruce's, or any mention of it anywhere at all, apart from this NME clipping from 6th September 1963.

This led me to believe that it was just an error, and they actually meant to say 'Cliff Richard' and Bruce never had one made after all.

The edited photo floating about on the Internet...

And then I realised... this picture of Hank and Victor with the finished sculpture has been edited!

I came across the original image on an archived version of Heyfron's website while doing a bit of research for this post:

The original photo!

Where, as you can see, it's Hank and Victor... with a work-in-progress bust of Bruce!

Now that I look at it again, it's blindingly obvious that in the edited photo someone has just taken this exact photograph of Hank's head and stuck it on top of Bruce's on the table.

I did think that the bust looked a bit out-of-place, but never really thought too much about it. (And for some reason they've also blacked out the front of Victor's shirt and tie...?). Well, that's an unexpected answer to the question of whether Bruce even had a sculpture made, and why there seems to be no photos of it anywhere...

There is no information about where the busts are now. Probably in some private collection, or maybe they all still have theirs.

If you want to read more about Victor Heyfron, here is an obituary which gives a good overview of his life, and how he ended up sculpting many more famous people.

Hank in 1977 with Cliff's sculpture