[2][3] 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.

[4] Disney called them back when he began work for Charles Mintz, producing the Alice Comedies live-action/animation hybrid shorts and the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons.

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.

[8][9][10] 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.

[16] Harman's final film (albeit incomplete and entirely shipped to Coronet, completed by Gordon A. Sheehan) was Tom Thumb in King Arthur's Court.

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.