Rudolf Ising (August 7, 1903 - July 18, 1992) was a director and producer for Happy Harmonies and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoons. He created the Barney Bear short film series. He also co-founded Harman-Ising Productions with Hugh Harman.
Biography[]
Rudolf Ising began his animation career in the early 1920s at Walt Disney's Kansas City studio. After Disney moved to California, Ising, Hugh Harman, and Carman Maxwell tried but failed to launch their own studio, eventually returning to work on Disney's Alice Comedies and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. During this period, Harman and Ising developed a drawing style later widely associated with Disney. When producer Charles Mintz took over the Oswald series, Harman and Ising followed him to a new Winkler-run studio, where the Oswald shorts they produced in 1928–1929 displayed the style that would define their later Warner Bros. work. Universal soon replaced Mintz with Walter Lantz, leaving the pair jobless.
Warner Bros.[]
While out of work, Harman and Ising produced a demonstration short titled Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid, featuring Bosko interacting with his animator, played in live action by Ising. They showed the short to several film distributors and finally came across Leon Schlesinger, who was very impressed with the short, brought them to Warner Bros. to launch a new cartoon series he titled Looney Tunes, a play on Disney's Silly Symphonies. Their first short, Sinkin' in the Bathtub in 1930, was a success. Harman continued directing Looney Tunes starring Bosko, while Ising handled the related Merrie Melodies, which featured one-off characters and stories. Budget conflicts with Schlesinger led the pair to leave Warner Bros. in 1933.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer[]
In 1934, Harman and Ising moved to MGM to make new Bosko shorts and the Happy Harmonies series. When their Happy Harmonies series exceeded its budget in 1937, MGM stopped contracting them and instead created an internal animation department under Fred Quimby. They would produce a series based on The Captain and the Kids comics and also hire Milt Gross to make two shorts on his Count Screwloose comic series.
During this time, Harman and Ising continued freelancing, even loaning their ink-and-paint staff to Walt Disney during the crunch period of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Disney commissioned them to produce the Silly Symphony short Merbabies, but later backed out of plans for two additional shorts. Harman and Ising sold these films to MGM, after which Quimby rehired them and gave them their own units. Around this time, Ising created Barney Bear, partly inspired by his own sleepy demeanor. He would appear regularly in shorts until 1954. Ising's unit also produced The Milky Way, which would win an Oscar.
Ising left the studio in 1942 to join the military's cartoon department. His unit was taken over by George Gordon until he left for John Sutherland Productions.
Later career[]
By 1951, Ising had reunited with Hugh Harman to produce industrial and commercial films, including Good Wrinkles for the California prune industry. In 1960, they created an unsold TV pilot, The Adventures of Sir Gee Whiz on the Other Side of the Moon, later featured on Cartoon Dump. Ising himself voiced Sir Gee Whiz. He would continue working until the 1980s until he retired. During this time, he was helping Hugh Harman keep afloat, who had fallen into poverty and was receiving money and support from Ising, Friz Freleng and Roy O. Disney.
Rudolf Ising died of cancer in 1992 at the age of 88. He was buried in Pacific View Memorial Park in Newport Beach, California.
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