Early career with Walt Disney Rudolf Carl Ising was born in
Kansas City, Missouri on August 7, 1903. replacing the output of their old Disney colleague
Ub Iwerks'
Animated Pictures, Inc.. Just as they had done for Warner Bros., Ising made one-shot musical comedy cartoon shorts, while Harman mostly directed shorts featuring a revamped version Bosko. Ising's
The Old Plantation, released in September 1935, was the first non-Disney cartoon filmed in the new three-strip
Technicolor process. Walt Disney had signed an exclusive contract which prevented other cartoon producers from using the three-strip process (not counting Ted Esbaugh's unreleased
The Wizard of Oz cartoon in 1933). MGM decided to end its contract with Harman-Ising in 1937 over money disputes, and delivered their last
Happy Harmony,
The Little Bantamweight, in early 1938. The duo kept their studio afloat by doing work as sub-contractors for their old employer Walt Disney, producing the
Silly Symphony cartoon
Merbabies and doing
ink-and-paint and background artwork for Disney's first animated feature,
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Without new work coming in, Ising and Harman filed for bankruptcy in July 1938 - only to be offered jobs by MGM after a year of failed projects at their
new in-house cartoon studio.
Working at MGM Ising and Harman joined MGM in October 1938 as producer/directors, assigned to run separate production units, under MGM animation head
Fred Quimby, a veteran executive from the studio's live-action shorts department. As the duo's brand of cartoons featuring cutesy characters with light plots had fallen out of favor by the end of the 1930s, Ising opted to adapt with the times and created
Barney Bear, based partly on and voiced by himself. Barney Bear first appeared in ''The Bear that Couldn't Sleep'' (1939) and would star in his own series of cartoons at MGM through the early 1950s. One of Ising's one-shot shorts as producer/director,
The Milky Way (1940), became the first non-Disney film to win the
Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons). Among the animators and directors who worked in the Ising unit were George Gordon, Mexican cartoonist
Gus Arriola, Jerry Brewer, Bob Allen, and a recently formed duo of animators, Harman-Ising alumnus
William Hanna and former
Terrytoons animator
Joseph Barbera. Hanna and Barbera's first directorial foray, 1940's
Puss Gets the Boot, introduced the cat-and-mouse pair later known as
Tom and Jerry. Ising's role in the production - on which he was given the only on-screen credit as "A Rudolf Ising Production" - was limited to helping Hanna and Barbera with writing the story. By the time
Puss Gets the Boot was completed in late 1939, Ising had fallen out with the duo and Quimby had given Hanna and Barbera their own production unit.
Later years In October 1942, Ising left MGM to join the
United States Army not long after the U.S. entered
World War II. Harman-Ising Studios closed in the early 1960s, after which Ising took to painting, mostly to give Harman, who had fallen into hard times, some financial support. After decades of relative obscurity, the semi-retired Ising became a well-known name to animation fans through interviews made by Mark Kausler among other historians. He was honored by the
International Animated Film Association (ASIFA) in 1976.
Personal life Rudolf Ising was married twice. His first wife was Maxine Jennings, whom he married in 1936 and divorced in 1940. In 1941, he married Cynthia Westlake, with whom he remained until his death. Ising and Westlake had one child, their son Rudolf Ising Jr. Ising died of
cancer in
Newport Beach on July 18, 1992. He is buried at
Pacific View Memorial Park in California. ==See also==