Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse, the stars of a long-running series of short theatrical cartoons produced by
MGM during
The Golden Age of Animation, were the first characters created by
William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. In the first short, "
Puss Gets the Boot" (1940), the cat's name was Jasper and the mouse was not named in the short, but was originally dubbed
Jinx
by the animators. The characters acquired their present names in a
contest at MGM (animator John Carr submitted the winning names) and went
on to win seven
Academy Awards.
John Carr may (or may not) have been inspired by the names of the two young tearaways in the 19th Century
Life in London stories, or perhaps by the eggnog-like beverage known as "Tom and Jerry" (and itself named after the earlier characters).After MGM's animation unit closed in 1957, Hanna and Barbera started their
TV animation studio. No new
Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced until MGM revived the series in the early 1960s, contracting it to Czechoslovakian-based Gene Deitch.In 1965,
CBS began broadcasting a
Tom and Jerry Animated Anthology on Saturday mornings. This was two years after
Chuck Jones began directing another series of theatrical
Tom and Jerry shorts, taking over from Deitch and bringing production of the series back to Hollywood.In 1975-77,
Hanna-Barbera produced a less violent
Tom and Jerry Animated Anthology series for
ABC-TV, supported by a new character, the Great Grape Ape. This was followed in the early 1980s by
Filmation's version on CBS, which used the classic
slapstick formula. Another series,
Tom And Jerry Kids, ran on the Fox network from 1990 to 1993. From 2006 to 2008, the CW network's animation block included
Tom and Jerry Tales, which continued with the slapstick humor of the theatrical shorts, as did a series of direct-to-video films. Unfortunately,
Tom and Jerry Tales was canceled after 4KidsTV took over Kids WB, but the movies have continued.The original shorts featured Mammy Two Shoes, a black maid who would be
very
politically incorrect by today's standards. At the same time that
cartoons started to be edited to take the edge off the violence, they
also replaced Mammy with Irish-tinged housewife "Mrs. Two Shoes".
Apparently, its perfectly okay to make fun of the Irish.
Mammy was phased out during the original Hanna-Barbera shorts era in
favor of having Tom owned by George and Joan, an inoffensive (and bland)
white couple. During the Gene Deitch period, Tom was occasionally
depicted as being owned by a fat guy that looks suspiciously like "Clint
Clobber" (a character Deitch created for
Terry Toons),
who was actually more violently sadistic towards him than Jerry ever
was. (Few people remember this because few people like the cartoons from
this period)
Warner Bros.
acquired the rights to Tom and Jerry after purchasing Turner
Broadcasting System, which in 1986 had purchased MGM's entire pre-1986
library. Interestingly, since then it seems like Warner has been
treating Tom and Jerry better than their own
Looney Tunes (probably due, in part, to the commercial bombing of
Looney Tunes: Back in Action). Tom and Jerry has been the only classic cartoon series to air consistently on
Cartoon Network,
miraculously. Since acquiring the rights to Tom and Jerry, Warner has produced several direct-to-video movies - and
Tom and Jerry Tales - which, for the most part, stay true to the classic Tom and Jerry form.Thanks in large part to the lack of dialogue,
Tom and Jerry has been very popular internationally. In fact, when Japanese television network
TV Asahi ran
a nationwide survey
on the 100 most popular animated TV series in the country, it was the
only non-Japanese series to make it onto the list. Ditto for the
web poll conducted afterwards.As
of October 2011, Warner Bros. has started to re-release the classic Tom
and Jerry theatrical shorts in a new DVD and Blu-Ray series called the
Tom and Jerry Golden Collection, featuring fully-restored and strictly uncut and uncensored shorts. The previously
legally unavailable "Mouse Cleaning" and "Casanova Cat" will more than likely be included on Volume 2.On a side note,
a feature length Tom and Jerry film was released in 1992. There have also been some direct-to-video feature length Tom and Jerry films released since.Oh, and don't confuse them with that
other Tom And Jerry. It'll save you a lot of trouble.
The WMG page.
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