Rudolf Ising

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.