Tom And Jerry Part ( 5 )

Tom and Jerry, two of the most honored cartoon characters in motion pictures, were created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Their plot centered on a never-ending battle, in other words, a chase between a housecat and a brown mouse. The Hanna- Barbera duo had written and directed 114 Tom and Jerry cartoons from 1940 to 1957, at the MGM cartoon studio in Hollywood.

The pair won a total of 7 Oscar awards for Best Animated Short Subject, more than any other character-based theatrical animated series. The series has also been named as the ‘Greatest Television Shows of All Time’ by TIME, in 2000. 

 Tom and Jerry was also placed at the 66th position, in the ‘Top 100 Animated TV Shows’ by IGN, in January 2009. Read on to know interesting and amazing information on the history, origin and background of Tom and Jerry.

Joseph Barbera, a storyman and character designer, paired up with an experienced director, William Hanna to create a cat-and-mouse cartoon. The first cartoon was titled ‘Puss Gets the Boot’ and it released in theatres on February 10, 1940. 

Having lost to another MGM cartoon at the Academy Awards, Hanna and Barbera held a contest to give the cat and mouse a new name and look. Animator John Carr won the contest, with his suggestion of Tom and Jerry. The series went into production and eventually, Hanna and Barbera went on to direct only the cat-and-mouse cartoon, for the rest of their tenure at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).

The main protagonist, Tom was a blue-grey longhair cat while Jerry, the second protagonist, was a small & brown, house mouse. The physical appearances of both Tom and Jerry were evolved over the years. 

The series developed into a quicker, more energetic tone. Though the original theme of the series, cat chases mouse, remained the same, Hanna and Barbera came up with numerous variations on this theme. The final shot of Hanna and Barbera was ‘Tot Watchers’, which released on August 1, 1958, after the MGM cartoon studio closed down in 1957. Later, Hanna and Barbera opened up their own television studio, Hanna-Barbera Productions, in 1957 and went on to produce various famous TV shows and movies.

In 1960, Czech-based animation director, Gene Deitch from Rembrandt Films was contracted by MGM to produce new Tom and Jerry shorts. A total of 13 shorts were released under this contract. These episodes were not very favorably received by the general audience. 

In the early 1963, Chuck Jones, who was fired from Warner Bros. Cartoons, started his own animation studio and produced a total of 34 Tom and Jerry shorts. The main characters were given a changed appearance, with Tom getting thicker eyebrows, a less complex look, sharper ears and furrier cheeks. Jerry got larger eyes and ears, a lighter brown color and a sweeter Porky Pig-like expression. The year 1965 saw the Hanna and Barbera cartoon series airing on television, in heavily edited form.

The Jones series featured Mammy Two-Shoes. Eventually, she was replaced by a fat White Irish woman, as in ‘Saturday Evening Puss’. The series were translated into various foreign languages, since it had almost no dialogues. It started broadcasting in Japan in 1964. Since then, Tom and Jerry cartoons have been airing on television everyday in Germany, South East Asia, the Middle East, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Argentina, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Venezuela, other Latin American countries and in eastern European countries. 

Tom and Jerry (Part IV)

 

Tom and Jerry cartoon is created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbara for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. No kid in this world would have escaped the charm of both Tom and Jerry. The fight between this cat and the mouse is always amusing for kids.

Almost a decade before MGM's famed cat-and-mouse team, Amadee J. Van Beuren's New York studio had another pair of stars named Tom and Jerry.

Van Beuren, who'd lost Paul Terry and other creative staffers in 1929, needed breakthrough cartoon characters to put his studio on the map. Terry's directorial replacement, John Foster, first singled out a pair of mice, but their resemblance to Disney's Mickey was too close for comfort. A better Foster decision was to develop a Mutt and Jeff-like cat and dog pair, but success still eluded Van Beuren. The turning point came only when Foster was joined by New York artists George Stallings and George Rufle — who brought with them the idea of turning the cat and dog into humans.

      

At first, Tom and Jerry — the pair's new name — were drawn in a literal style that directly recalled Mutt and Jeff. By mid-1932, though, they were streamlined to incorporate an increasingly rubbery graphical style.

 The first Tom and Jerry short was 1931's WOT A NIGHT, similar in style to the earlier cat and dog cartoons. As the series progressed, though, the films became increasingly bawdy, boozy and bizarre. Van Beuren was second only to Fleischer in depicting surreal, impossible feats on screen; Tom, Jerry, and their surroundings did it all. 

    

 In 1933, Van Beuren fired Foster and promoted Stallings to his position. Under Stallings, the Tom and Jerry series seemed to lose much of its earlier charm. The last cartoon to star the original Tom and Jerry would be 1933's THE PHANTOM ROCKET.

Over the years the original Tom and Jerry drifted into obscurity. On TV they were first renamed Dick and Larry, then put entirely on the shelf. Today, however, they're back on DVDs .

Tom and Jerry (Part III)

Tom and Jerry speaking

Although many supporting and minor characters speak, Tom and Jerry rarely do so themselves. Tom, most famously, sings while wooing female cats; for example, Tom sings Louis Jordan's "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby" in the 1946 short Solid Serenade. 

Butch is a black cat who also wants to eat Jerry. He is the most frequent adversary of Tom. However, for most of the episodes he appears in, he's usually seen rivaling Tom over Toodles. Butch also was Tom's pal or chum as in some cartoons, where Butch is leader of Tom's buddies, who are Meathead and Topsy. Butch talks more often than Tom or Jerry in most episodes.