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Bill Hanna almost worked for Disney
He would have never met Joe Barbera!
When we study cartoon history, we encounter lots of "what if scenarios", like what if Bill Hanna worked for Disney? What if he had never made it to MGM and met Joe Barbera? Bill Hanna, co-creator of the great Hanna-Barbera empire, who made his mark on cartoon history through Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, and countless other cartoons he created with Joe Barbera, nearly left his first animation job to work for Disney.
In the 1930s, Hanna was in his early twenties and working for Harman-Ising studios creating Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for Leon Schlesinger and Warner Bros. In his third year, he was thriving as the leader of the inking and painting department. Hanna was a perfect fit for the fledgling studio because he was reliable in all elements of cartoon production; he could draw, write short scripts, write and record songs, and even voice act on occasion. He was willing and able to do anything to complete animation on time, making him indispensable to Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising. Hanna even considered the two animators to be his close friends and, Hanna mentions this many times in his memoir, he loved making cartoons and working there. He was fueled by creative passion and said of his time working for them "I had found my life's calling at last. Every aspect of animation production enthralled me and seemed to provide me with a satisfying channel for creative passion...I decided I would be blissfully happy if I could make cartoons for the rest of my life."
One day a new hire joined Hanna's department: Irene Hamilton, Ising's girlfriend. Hanna recalled the moment in his memoir, A Cast of Friends, "This was fine with me until I learned that she had been given a starting salary of sixty dollars a week!" After working at the studio for three years, Hanna's weekly salary was thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents. In today's money, Hamilton would be making about $54,000 per year, while Hanna would be making about $34,000.
This was, obviously, very unfair and a blow to Hanna, who said "The blatant injustice of this arrangement raised my blood to the boiling point. After all, I reasoned, I had remained as the head of that department loyally committed to Hugh and Rudy for a long time and had worked my way up to a level where I felt I was performing many valuable production tasks. Sheer necessity and my own self-respect demanded that I resolve this issue of just dues." Hanna went to the only real competitor to Harman and Ising: Walt Disney.
Hanna went to the Disney Studio, applied for a job, and met with Walt Disney. It was the first time the two animators met and after listening to Hanna explain the situation, Disney informed him that the role was already filled and instructed him to go back to Ising. After the meeting, Hanna went to Harman-Ising Studios and was met by Ising, who told him he was getting a raise to sixty dollars a week. Reflecting on the quick turnaround, Hanna said "I've always believed that Disney must have picked up the telephone and called Rudolph Ising after I left his office..." This restored Hanna's loyalty to Harman and Ising, which would later rely on.
In 1933, Leon Schlesinger ended his contract with Harman and Ising to start his own animation studio. Like a hungry coyote, Schlesinger descended on the Harman-Ising animators and offered them higher-paying jobs. One of the few employees who never left their side was Bill Hanna, who happily took on freelance commercial jobs while Harman and Ising searched for a new studio home. When they landed at MGM, Hanna was rewarded with a new job and opportunities to start developing and directing his own cartoons, but more importantly MGM is where he would meet his lifelong collaborator, Joe Barbera. It's fun to imagine how different Disney animations would have been with Bill Hanna on board, but imagining a world where Hanna and Barbera never meet is like imagining Tom without Jerry.
