Bing Crosby: Paramount promotional shots of the early 1930s (with glued back ears)

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It took me awhile to figure it out. Now and then I would come across a photo labeled Bing Crosby that stood out. Is it him? Maybe a brother. The face in these shots looks fuller and longer somehow. Why does he look so different?

Ears. Less of them.

Paramount Pictures glued Bing’s ears to his head until, according to the trivia section of the IMDb Crosby biography page, partway through She Loves Me Not (1934). And therein hangs a tale…or an ear.

Anecdotage.com, citing an article from The Observer dated 16 October 1977, quotes Bing on the subject:

When I first started in movies they said my ears stuck out too far. They said I looked like a taxi with both doors open. Know what they did? Before every scene they glued them to my head. Then I looked like a whippet.

Trouble was, when I got on the set, the hot lights caused the glue to melt and I’d be halfway through a scene when my ears would spring back to their natural position. Then they’d take me back to make-up and more glue. That went on for some time. Then one day my ears popped in the middle of a scene and they wanted to send me back for more glue, but I refused. I’d made a couple of pictures by that time which were fairly successful, so they didn’t argue.