He began his career at the Harman-Ising studio which shut down by August 1937 when Fred Quimby raided a number of its key staff members to form the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio. Barge worked at MGM as an assistant animator and received his first screen credit as an animator on Innertube Antics, directed by George Gordon and released in 1944. Gordon's unit had been disbanded the year before, at which point Barge was placed in the William Hanna/Joseph Barbera unit which made the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Barge remained until about the time the studio closed in 1957.