Hugh Harman (August 31, 1903 – November 25, 1982) was an American animator, film producer, and film director. An early collaborator of Walt Disney and a key figure in the Golden Age of American animation, Harman and his longtime collaborator Rudolf Ising founded Harman-Ising Pictures in 1929, through which they created the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon series and set the foundation for what would later become the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio.
Career
A native of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, Hugh Harman began his animation career in Kansas City, Missouri in 1922, when he and his older brother Fred Harman began working for Walt Disney on Disney's early Laugh-O-Gram Cartoons. When that company went bankrupt, Harman and partner Rudolf Ising tried to start a new series based on the Arabian Nights, but were unable to obtain funding. Disney called them back when he began work for Winkler Pictures, producing the Alice Comedies live-action/animation hybrid shorts and the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons.
After Disney left Winkler over a budget dispute with producer Charles Mintz, Mintz lured most of his animators, Harman and Ising included, to join him at his in-house studio. An attempt to convince Carl Laemmle to oust Mintz in favor of Harman and Ising ended in vain with a young Walter Lantz being granted the right to produce the series in early 1929. Harman and Ising, alongside a number of former Oswald animators put together a pilot short, "Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid", featuring a character Harman created in 1928 as sound films were becoming popular. The short gained them a contract with Warner Bros. Pictures to produce animated cartoons with Leon Schlesinger as manager. Harman and Ising started the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons in 1930 and 1931, respectively (Harman would direct the Looney Tune shorts), and produced them until 1933. Following a number of clashes with Schlesinger over budgets, they decided to leave WB and look for another distributor. Harman and Ising took Bosko with them, having previously copyrighted him to avoid facing the same situation Disney had with Oswald. In the meantime, Harman-Ising Pictures outsourced a number of Cubby Bear cartoons for The Van Beuren Corporation.
MGM Cartoons and later career
In early 1934, Harman and Ising were hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which launched the "Happy Harmonies" series in color (incidentally replacing fellow 1920s-era Disney veteran Ub Iwerks), in which Harman redeveloped Bosko into a realistic black kid. After yet another money-related quarrel, Harman and Ising were fired by MGM in 1937, being replaced by an in-house cartoon studio headed by Fred Quimby. That same year, Disney borrowed the Harman-Ising Ink and Paint unit for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the studio also outsourced a number of cartoons for the Silly Symphonies series, although Disney ultimately only accepted Merbabies, the other shorts being released by MGM in early 1938, which after a rocky start with the in-house studio, decided to take Harman and Ising back some time later as production supervisors. In 1943, the duo signed a deal with Orson Welles to adapt The Little Prince, in which Welles would play the role of the aviator while a random child actor would portray the prince. A few months later, Welles fell ill with hepatitis, nearly dying while recovering in Florida. After this, the deal fell through and the film was scrapped. After a two year hiatus, Harman returned to the animation industry with The Littlest Angel, a collaboration between his company and Coronet Films. He also wrote the Woody Woodpecker short Convict Concerto. Harman's final film (albeit incomplete and entirely shipped to Coronet, completed by Gordon A. Sheehan) was Tom Thumb in King Arthur's Court. Harman worked on the film extensively with Mel Shaw, but ultimately gave production to Coronet because he couldn't complete it.
Later life
After Harman-Ising Studios closed in 1960, Harman fell in a state of abject poverty. He lived in a ramshackle house, no longer being able to afford a car, although he often disguised his precarious state by frequently having breakfast at a Beverly Hills restaurant. He had to constantly borrow money from Ising, as well as colleagues Friz Freleng and Roy O. Disney in the 1970s to keep afloat. He also received a monthly allowance from his brother Fred, until Fred's death in January 1982. After that point, Harman was moved into a house on Chatsworth, the rent being paid by his friends, among them animator Mark Kausler and historian Jim Korkis, who had both met Harman through Bob Clampett in 1973.
On November 25, 1982, Harman died after a long illness in his home.