Birth name Ismail Noormohamed Abdul Rehman. He met his future partner, James Ivory, at a screening of Ivory's documentary The Sword and the Flute (1959) in New York City. Merchant and Ivory formed Merchant Ivory Productions in May 1961. Their first picture was The Householder (1963) in 1963. The National Portrait Gallery in London has paintings of Ismail and his partners, James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - even though they all live in New York City and none of them are English. (Ruth is German/Polish, Ismail is Indian, and James is American).