Blue Velvet Ear Had Twin, David Lynch’s Hair

Mister Ear from Blue Velvet, photo by Mike Spencer

Jeff Goodwin, the makeup artist on David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, recently talked to StarNewsOnline about “Mister Ear”, as the crew used to call the most famous prosthetic ear in the world. You know it was also hidden in the pile of dirt in Twin Peaks, right?

Originally, there were two ears. Co-star Isabella Rossellini, as the tortured singer Dorothy Vallens, was supposed to flush one down a toilet, but the scene was cut. (That scene, along with other deleted scenes, might make onto a 25th anniversary DVD due out this fall.) In the end, only the left one had screen time.

Goodwin first made a cast of his own ear, adding a little extra skin and blood. It was, after all, supposed to have been cut off. Lynch looked it over and said, “That’s great, Jeff – now make us a grown-up ear,” Goodwin recalled. Apparently Goodwin’s was too small. In the end, Goodwin used producer Fred Caruso’s ears as a model.

For some extra realism, Goodwin added some hair to adhere to the tissue. That hair came from David Lynch, recycled after a haircut.

At first, Goodwin used ordinary latex to sculpt the ear, but he wasn’t happy with the results. Then he substituted silicone so the fake ear would flop like a real one. ”That was about the first time anyone had ever tried silicone for something like that,” he said. Goodwin said he enjoyed Lynch’s aesthetic vision, which mixed elements of the 1980s with styles from the 1940s and 1950s.

“I think that’s one of the things that makes the movie so timeless,” Goodwin said.

UPDATE: Brian Linss just tipped me off that the prop currently resides at Movie Madness Video in Portland, Oregon.

UPDATE #2: Here’s a photo of the twins “reunited”. Can you recognize the ear that was used in the movie?