Hugh Harman

Hugh N. Harman (born August 31, 1903 in Pagosa Springs , Colorado , † November 25, 1982 in Chatsworth , California ) was an American animator , director and film producer . Together with Rudolf Ising , he formed the producer duo Harman-Ising , which helped shape the development of American animated films at the beginning of the sound film era . Harman's career began working for Walt Disney in the 1920s . In the early 1930s developed Harman and Ising for Warner Bros. , the cartoon series Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies . Harman and Ising left Warner in 1933 and founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's animation studio in 1934 . In 1941 Harman left MGM to work as an independent producer on training and promotional films. Harman has produced more than 100 cartoons for Warner Bros. and MGM. It was nominated twice for an Oscar in the Best Animated Short Film category.

biography

Early years

Hugh Harman grew up as the son of a lawyer in Colorado. Both Hugh and his older brother Fred and younger brother Walker, who were both supposed to be animators, were talented draftsmen even as children. In 1916 the Harman family moved to Kansas City , Missouri , where Hugh graduated from Westpoint High School and the Kansas City Art Institute. He followed his brother Fred to the Kansas City Film Ad Company in 1922, where he met Rudolf Ising and Walt Disney. When Walt Disney left the advertising agency to produce his own cartoons, the Harmans and Ising followed him and worked as animators on Disney's Laugh-O-Grams .

Disney's Laugh-O-Gram studio had to file for bankruptcy after just a few months. Disney then went to Hollywood to make a fresh start with its Alice Comedies . Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising and the draftsman Carman Maxwell initially stayed in Kansas City to work on their own animated film series, but followed Disney to California in June 1925. Harman and Ising worked as animators on the Alice films until 1927 , then on the films with Oswald the funny rabbit , which Disney had invented together with Ub Iwerks , but whose copyrights were owned by the film studio Universal Pictures . When Disney was unexpectedly dismissed by Universal producer Charles Mintz in the spring of 1928, Mintz commissioned Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising to produce more Oswald cartoons. Winkler Pictures were in charge of the production, with Harman taking on the artistic direction as production manager . After only one year, however, Universal separated from Winkler Pictures and transferred the production of the Oswald films to Walter Lantz .

Looney Tunes

Harman and Ising then tried to interest the film studios in their own animated film series. During his time at Disney, Hugh Harman had designed a new character with Bosko , which he had registered for copyright in January 1928 . Harman and Ising produced the short film Bosko, The Talk-Ink Kid with this character , which was completed just a few months after Disney's Steamboat Willie and was the first cartoon to contain spoken dialogue. The pilot film caught the interest of producer Leon Schlesinger , who won Warner Bros. as a distributor . On January 28, 1930 Harman, Ising and Schlesinger signed a three-year production contract that provided for one animated short film per month. As the title of the new film series whose star Bosko should be, was in line with Disney's Silly Symphonies the title Looney Tunes selected.

Harman and Ising moved into three offices in Hollywood and recruited several companions from their time at Disney and Winkler, including animators Carman Maxwell and Friz Freleng . In April 1930, Sinkin 'in the Bathtub, the first Looney Tunes film, was completed. This film already ended with the saying “That's all, folks”, which later became a trademark of the Warner Bros. cartoons thanks to the character Piggy Dick . Four more Looney Tunes had been released by the end of the year , which proved to be a huge hit with audiences. In early 1931, Warner ordered a second series of cartoons from Schlesinger, the Merrie Melodies , which was to exploit music from the Warner Bros. catalog even more than the films with Bosko. Although Harman and Ising continued to produce all of their films together, Hugh Harman, with some support from Friz Freleng, focused on the Bosko films while Ising directed the Merrie Melodies .

Hugh Harman in particular was dissatisfied with the technical quality of the films and demanded higher budgets from Schlesinger. Harman was obsessed with outperforming Disney but, in Friz Freleng's view, regularly failed to implement his ambitious ideas. At the beginning of 1933 there was finally a break between Schlesinger and Harman-Ising. After fulfilling their contractual obligations in August 1933, Harman and Ising left Schlesinger. They took most of their employees with them and continued to own the rights to the character Bosko. With Schlesinger only the names Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies and the sentence “That's all, folks” remained. Schlesinger succeeded in making a fresh start with new directors and animators; at the beginning of the 1940s, Piggy Dick, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny were among the stars of the Warner Bros. cartoons.

MGM

Title card from Bosko's Parlor Pranks , a 1934 Harman Ising production for MGM

After leaving Warner Bros. Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising initially worked for Van Beuren Studios for a few months . At the beginning of 1934 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer concluded a production contract with Harman-Ising, which granted Harman the financial resources that Warner had denied and which enabled him to produce cartoons in color for the first time , albeit only using the two-color Technicolor process and not the new three-color process the Disney celebrated its success. Harman and Ising started the Happy Harmonies series , for which, as with Merry Melodies, they mostly created one-shot films without recurring characters. Harman and Ising again took turns directing, with Harman again using the character Bosko in his directing work .

In mid-1935 Harman and Ising were able to fall back on Technicolor's three-color process, which enabled natural colors throughout. Although, in the opinion of the film historian Michael Barrier, the films rarely had a successful plot, Harman's directorial work was particularly convincing in terms of drawing. Harman's The Old Mill Pond was nominated for an Oscar in the category “Best Animated Short Film” in 1937, a year earlier Isings Im Land der Kuscheltiere had already received a nomination (Harman and Ising were nominated as producers of both films).

However, the escalating production costs of the ambitious films led MGM to terminate the contract with Harman-Ising in February 1937. Harman and Ising were initially able to continue operating their studio as independent producers. Ironically, Harman's competitor Walt Disney asked her for support, he hired numerous cartoonists for the production of his first full-length cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and commissioned Harman-Ising to produce the short film Merbabies for the Silly Symphonies series . After this film was completed, Harman and Ising had to file for bankruptcy in July 1938.

At the same time MGM had set up its own animation studio, but it had great difficulties starting. Fred Quimby became the first studio manager , while William Hanna , who had worked under Harman, and Friz Freleng, who had been poached by Warner , were appointed as directors . When the success of the newly designed MGM cartoons failed to materialize, Harman and Ising accepted in October 1938 the offer to return to MGM and work there as producers under Quimby. From then on Harman and Ising worked separately at MGM. While Ising produced films such as the Oscar winner The Milky Way and invented the character Barney Bear , Harman specialized in musical and more sophisticated short films. Harman's masterpiece is Peace on Earth , which was published shortly after the outbreak of World War II and earned MGM another Oscar nomination.

After a year and a half, Hugh Harman let his contract with MGM expire. He was succeeded by Tex Avery , who moved from Warner Bros. to MGM. Rudolf Ising stayed with MGM until 1942 before he offered his services to the United States Army Air Forces .

Late years

After leaving MGM, Hugh Harman worked with former Disney animator Mel Shaw . You originally planned to make a full-length cartoon about King Arthur , but ultimately could only make a number of training films for the US Army. After the end of the Second World War, Harman and Ising came together again and founded Harman-Ising Pictures to produce training and advertising films.

In the 1950s, Hugh Harman slowly withdrew from the film business. In the following years he was a welcome guest at film festivals, where the forgotten early cartoons found new audiences. 1976 Harman and Ising's merits were to the animated film with the Winsor McCay Award of Asifa appreciated. Harman died six years later at the age of 79.

literature

• Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons. American Animation in its Golden Age . Oxford University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 978-0-19-516729-0 .
• Jeff Lenburg: Who's Who in Animated Cartoons . Applause Theater & Cinema Books, New York 2006, ISBN 978-1-55783-671-7 .

Web links

• Hugh Harman in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Hugh Harman on Turner Classic Movies (English)
• Interview with Hugh Harman from 1973 on MichaelBarrier.com (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ some sources name 1908 as the year of birth
2. ^ The New York Times : Hugh Harman, 79, Creator Of 'Looney Tunes' Cartoons , Nov. 30, 1982.
3. ↑ Timothy S. Susanin: Walt Before Mickey: Disney's Early Years, 1919-1928 . University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2011, ISBN 978-1-60473-960-2 , p. 13.
4. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons , pp. 38-39.
5. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons , p. 153.
6. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons , p. 155.
7. ^ Jean Ann Wright: Animation Writing and Development: From Script Development to Pitch . Focal Press, Burlington 2005, ISBN 0-240-80549-6 , p. 15.
8. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons , p. 157.
9. ↑ Jeff lenburg: Who's Who in Animated Cartoons , S. 154th
10. ↑ Hank Sartin: From Vaudeville to Hollywood, from Silence to Sound: Warner Bros. Cartoons of the Early Sound Era . In: Kevin S. Sandler (Ed.): Reading the Rabbit: Explorations in Warner Bros. Animation . Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick 1998, ISBN 0-8135-2537-3 , pp. 67-68.
11. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons , pp. 163-164.
12. ↑ Steve Schneider: That's All Folks !. The Art of Warner Bros. Animation. Holt, New York 1988, ISBN 0-8050-0889-6 , p. 40.
13. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons , p. 190.
14. ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons , p. 291.
15. ↑ Jeff lenburg: Who's Who in Animated Cartoons , S. 129th
16. ^ Charles Solomon: Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1989, ISBN 0-394-54684-9 , p. 120.