Rudolf Ising | |
|---|---|
 Ising withBosko inBosko, the Talk-Ink Kid (1929) | |
| Born | Rudolf Carl Ising (1903-08-07)August 7, 1903 Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | July 18, 1992(1992-07-18) (aged 88)[1][2] |
| Resting place | Pacific View Memorial Park, Newport Beach |
| Years active | 1922–1960 |
| Known for | Harman-Ising Productions |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 1[1] |
| Military career | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch | |
| Service years | 1942–1946 |
| Rank | Major |
| Unit | 18th AAF Base Unit |
| Conflicts | World War II |
Rudolf Carl Ising (/ˈaɪzɪŋ/EYE-zing;[3] August 7, 1903 – July 18, 1992) was an American animator, film producer, film director, voice actor, and United States Army major. A veteran of the earlyWalt Disney studio and a key figure in theGolden Age of American animation, Ising and his longtime collaboratorHugh Harman foundedHarman-Ising Pictures in 1929. Harman-Ising created theLooney Tunes andMerrie Melodies cartoon series forWarner Bros., and Warners' first cartoon star,Bosko, setting the foundation for what would later become theWarner Bros. Cartoons studio.[4]
Moving the distribution of their cartoons toMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1934, Harman and Ising started theHappy Harmonies series. This led, after the 1938 termination their contract, to the creation of theMGM cartoon studio, where Harman and Ising would both work as producer/directors.[4] At MGM, Ising created and initially voicedBarney Bear, and in 1940 producedWilliam Hanna andJoseph Barbera's first cartoon,Puss Gets the Boot, which introduced the cat and mouse characters later known asTom and Jerry.[5][6]
Ising left MGM in 1942 to join theUnited States Army Air Forces[5], where he ran the animation unit of the Army'sFirst Motion Picture Unit[7] – producers of animated training films for use by the military duringWorld War II.[5]
Rudolf Carl Ising was born inKansas City, Missouri on August 7, 1903.[1]Ising spent his teenage years working at a photographic studio before joiningWalt Disney'sLaugh-O-Gram Studio alongside other Kansas City youths.[1][2] He soon became close friends with one of his Laugh-O-Gram colleagues,Hugh Harman, with whom he attempted to start a new animation business after the Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt and Walt Disney moved to Los Angeles in 1923.
Ising and Harman's plans for a series ofArabian Nights-inspired cartoons via their own Arabian Nights Studio fell through, and in 1924 they moved to Hollywood to rejoin Disney, who'd starteda new cartoon studio to produce the live-action/animation hybridAlice Comedies.[8][2] Several other Laugh-O-Gram alumnae such asUb Iwerks,Carman Maxwell andIsadore "Friz" Freleng would also make the move from Missouri to California.
By 1927, the Walt Disney studio was producing theOswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon series for producerCharles Mintz'sWinkler Pictures and distributorUniversal Pictures. Ising, Harman, and many of their colleagues became disgruntled working for the mercurial Disney. When they were approached by Mintz's brother-in-lawGeorge Winkler to start a new studio under Mintz - who intended to fire Disney and make theOswalds himself - they accepted. Of their Kansas City colleagues, only Ub Iwerks stayed with Walt Disney after the latter finally fell out with Mintz in February 1928.[9] Iwerks and Disney would move on to launch a new cartoon character,Mickey Mouse, by the end of the year.
Ising, Harman, Freleng, and an industry veteran recruited from New York,Walter Lantz, becameOswald's directors at the new Winkler Pictures studio, which opened in May 1928 with George Winkler as their producer and general manager.[9] Universal was dissatisfied with the quality of their output, and in April 1929, just under a year later, terminated the Mintz contract.[9] The Winkler staffers were laid off - Mintz would bring hisKrazy Kat unit from the East Coast to take over their building, and Lantz signed on with Universal to co-produce and co-directOswald cartoons withBill Nolan.[9]
Ising and Harman decided to make a second attempt at starting their own cartoon studio,Harman-Ising Pictures. In late 1929, they produced a briefproof-of-concept film featuringBosko, a "littleNegro boy"[9] character created by Harman just before he and Ising left the Disney studio.[9] The film,Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid (playing up the short's focus on dialogue and music at a time when the film industry was still converting tosound), stars a live-action Ising as a cartoonist who draws the animated Bosko, but is pestered by the character before Ising sends back into the inkwell.[9]
In January 1930, Harman-Ising Pictures gained a contract withLeon Schlesinger,[10] an independent film producer who then contracted withWarner Bros. to provide the distributor with a series of Bosko cartoons.[10] The first, 1930'sSinkin' in the Bathtub, launched theLooney Tunes series - the series name being derivative of Disney's recently launchedSilly Symphonies cartoons.[10] The cartoons were successful enough, particularly in their focus on music mostly licensed from Warner-owned music publishing catalogs, that Warners ordered a spin-off series, to be calledMerrie Melodies, after the first year.[10]
With Harman focused on the BoskoLooney Tunes, Ising became the head director of theMerrie Melodies. TheMerrie Melodies cartoons were contractually required to feature a Warners song in each short, which would also be titled after the featured tune.[10] As a result, Ising'sMerrie Melodies cartoons share titles with popular Warner-controlled compositions such asSmile, Darn Ya, Smile!,One Step Ahead of My Shadow, andWe're in the Money.[10] The first fiveMerrie Melodies featured recurring characters; the first of these,Foxy, bore such a resemblance toMickey Mouse[10] that Walt Disney asked Ising to stop using the character after three shorts. Eventually, Ising settled into a pattern of one-shot musical shorts for the series.[10] His voice was often featured on several of these early cartoons, mostly as deep-voiced villains or caricaturing celebrities of the era.
Budgetary disagreements severed Harman-Ising Pictures' relationship with Schlesinger by 1933 - they wanted more money per cartoon with their next contract renewal, and Warners was reducing the amount of its advances to Schlesinger.[10] When their contract ended in August 1933, Schlesinger started his own studio, which would become the famousWarner Bros. Cartoons studio ofBugs Bunny,Daffy Duck, and more.[10] Harman-Ising did work as subcontractors on a number of cartoons for New York'sVan Beuren Studios and attempted, without pay, its own adaptation ofThe Nutcracker.[10] In February 1934, Ising and Harman signed a new contract withMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer to create a new series of cartoons under theHappy Harmonies moniker,[11][12] replacing the output of their old Disney colleagueUb Iwerks'Animated Pictures, Inc..[13]
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.[11] Ising'sThe Old Plantation, released in September 1935, was the first non-Disney cartoon filmed in the new three-stripTechnicolor process.[14] Walt Disney had signed an exclusive contract which prevented other cartoon producers from using the three-strip process (not counting Ted Esbaugh's unreleasedThe Wizard of Oz cartoon in 1933).[15]
MGM decided to end its contract with Harman-Ising in 1937 over money disputes, and delivered their lastHappy Harmony,The Little Bantamweight, in early 1938.[16] The duo kept their studio afloat by doing work as sub-contractors for their old employer Walt Disney, producing theSilly Symphony cartoonMerbabies and doingink-and-paint and background artwork for Disney's first animated feature,Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.[16] 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 theirnew in-house cartoon studio.[16]
Ising and Harman joined MGM in October 1938 as producer/directors, assigned to run separate production units, under MGM animation headFred Quimby, a veteran executive from the studio's live-action shorts department.[16] 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 createdBarney Bear, based partly on and voiced by himself. Barney Bear first appeared inThe Bear that Couldn't Sleep (1939) and would star in his own series of cartoons at MGM throug 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 theAcademy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons)|.
Among the animators and directors who worked in the Ising unit were George Gordon, Mexican cartoonistGus Arriola, Jerry Brewer, Bob Allen, and a recently formed duo of animators, Harman-Ising alumnusWilliam Hanna and formerTerrytoons animatorJoseph Barbera. Hanna and Barbera's first directorial foray, 1940'sPuss Gets the Boot, introduced the cat-and-mouse pair later known asTom and Jerry.[17] 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.[17] By the timePuss 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.[17]
In October 1942,[6] Ising left MGM to join theUnited States Army not long after the U.S. enteredWorld War II.[7] He was commissioned as a major in 1943 and assigned to the Army Air Forces'First Motion Picture Unit as head of its animation department.[7] Under his supervision, the animation department, staffed by many of Ising's enlisted colleagues formally of the Schlesinger and MGM studios, produced classified animated infographics and training films.[6] A separate motion picture unit, the 834th Signal Service Photographic Detachment under ColonelFrank Capra, supervised production of thePrivate Snafu cartoons, outsourced to Schlesinger/Warner Bros. and supervised by Major Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known asDr. Seuss).[7][6]
After the war, Ising formed his own production company. In 1951, Ising hired Hugh Harman after following the closure of Hugh Harman Productions, which Harman had formed in 1942 after leaving MGM, reestablishing Harman-Ising Studios.[2]
Ising's final major work was a failed TV pilot namedSir Gee Whiz on the Other Side of The Moon in 1960.[18] Harman-Ising Studios closed in the early 1960s, after which Ising took to painting, mostly to give Harman, who endured dire financial straits, 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 theInternational Animated Film Association (ASIFA) in 1976.[2]
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.[2]
Ising died ofcancer inNewport Beach on July 18, 1992. He is buried atPacific View Memorial Park in California.[1]
Many years ago, I wrote about Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising for Millimeter magazine: "Harman and Ising did not so much create characters as they created studios. The Warner Bros. and MGM studios owed their existence to Harman and Ising. In both cases, Harman and Ising produced cartoons on their own, for distribution by the parent company, but they set patterns that were perpetuated when the releasing companies established their own cartoon units." Throughout the 1930s, it was the Harman-Ising cartoons—first their Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros., then their Happy Harmonies for MGM—that invited the most serious comparisons with Walt Disney's cartoons.
