AN EAR-Y TALE

Evening Star, Issue 23729, 9 November 1940, Page 5

AN EAR-Y TALE

Fourteen elephants from far-off India are wandering peevishly about Hollywood, trying to figure what they’ve ever done to deserve such treatment.

For among the tilings they’ll never forget is the day that on their 1-4 mammoth heads hung 14 pairs of ears that didn’t belong to them! They were working in Paramount’s ‘ Safari.’ That was all right with them, for ranting animals from circuses are customary in Hollywood, and they were used to picture work. And they admired the close-up views they were getting of Madeleine Carroll, Douglas Fairbanks, jinx., Muriel Angelas, and other members of the cast. What the elephants didn’t know—but what Director Edward H. Griffith did—was that African elephants and Indian elephants may have much in common—but not ears. The appendages differ. So the studio’s property department had to make huge, flapping ears, some 6ft across, and fasten them to the heads of the citizens from India. It looked okay to the camera, but not to the elephants.