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Tom and Jerry (MGM)
Encyclopedia
Tom and Jerry is an American series of theatrical animated cartoon
films created by William Hanna
and Joseph Barbera
for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
, centering on a never-ending rivalry between a cat
(Tom
) and a mouse
(Jerry
) whose chases and battles often involved comic violence. Hanna and Barbera ultimately wrote and directed one hundred and fourteen Tom and Jerry short
s at the MGM cartoon studio
in Hollywood between 1940
and 1957
, when the animation unit was closed. The original series is notable for having won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film
seven times, tying it with Walt Disney
's Silly Symphonies
as the theatrical animated series with the most Oscars. A longtime television staple, Tom and Jerry has a worldwide audience that consists of children, teenagers and adults, and has also been recognized as one of the most famous and longest-lived rivalries in American cinema. In 2000, TIME
named the series one of the greatest television shows of all time.
Beginning in 1960, in addition to the original 114 Hanna-Barbera
cartoons, MGM had new shorts produced by Rembrandt Films, led by Gene Deitch
in Eastern Europe. Production of Tom and Jerry shorts returned to Hollywood under Chuck Jones
's Sib-Tower 12 Productions in 1963; this series lasted until 1967, making it a total of 161 shorts. The cat and mouse stars later resurfaced in television cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera and Filmation Studios during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; a feature film, Tom and Jerry: The Movie
, in 1992 (released domestically in 1993); and in 2001, their first made-for TV short, Tom and Jerry: The Mansion Cat for Boomerang
. The most recent Tom and Jerry theatrical short, The Karate Guard, was written and co-directed by Barbera and debuted in Los Angeles cinemas on September 27, 2005.
Today, Time Warner
(via its Turner Entertainment
division) owns the rights to Tom and Jerry (with Warner Bros.
handling distribution). Since the merger, Turner has produced the series, Tom and Jerry Tales
for The CW's Saturday morning
"The CW4Kids
" lineup, as well as the recent Tom and Jerry short, The Karate Guard, in 2005 and a string of Tom and Jerry direct-to-video films — all in collaboration with Warner Bros. Animation
. In February 2010, the cartoon celebrated its 70th anniversary and a DVD collection of 30 shorts, Tom and Jerry Deluxe Anniversary Collection, was released in late June 2010 to celebrate the animated duo's seventh decade. It then had a rerun on Cartoon Network.
, or goldfish
) from being eaten by Tom, competition with another cat, and Jerry ruining Tom's attempts to seduce feline femme fatales, which Jerry does either out of disgust, jealousy, or just to be mean. Despite the sometimes heavy amount of fantasy violence, most Tom and Jerry episodes now carry a TV-G rating, although it was originally rated TV-Y.
Tom rarely succeeds in catching Jerry, mainly because of Jerry's cleverness, cunning abilities, and luck. Interestingly enough, many of the title cards show Tom and Jerry smiling at each other which seems to depict a love-hate relationship
rather than the extreme annoyance each displays towards the other in each cartoon. There are also several instances within the cartoons where they display genuine friendship (e.g., Springtime for Thomas
) and concern for each other's well-being (such as in "Jerry and the Lion", where Jerry in one instance tricks Tom into thinking that he has shot Jerry, and Tom comes running with the first aid kit). Other times the pair would have to set aside their rivalry in order to pursue a common goal, such as a baby who escaped the watch of a negligent teen babysitter, and both Tom and Jerry would need to pursue the baby and keep it away from danger.
The short episodes are infamous for some of the most comically gory gags ever devised in theatrical animation, such as Jerry slicing Tom in half, shutting his head in a window or a door, Tom using everything from axe
s, firearms, explosives, traps
and poison
to try to murder
Jerry, Jerry stuffing Tom's tail in a waffle iron
and a mangle
, kicking him into a refrigerator
, plugging his tail
into an electric socket, pounding him with a mace, club
or mallet
, causing a tree
or an electric pole to drive him into the ground, sticking matches into his feet and lighting them, tying him to a firework and setting it off, and so on. Despite all its popularity, Tom and Jerry has often been criticized as excessively violent. Despite the frequent violence, there is no blood
or gore
in any scenes of the original cartoons, and neither of the pair are ever (seriously) injured. In a very rare instance, when Tom gets sliced into pieces in the opening credits of Tom and Jerry: The Movie, blood is clearly visible, and Heavenly Puss
deals with Tom dying after being crushed by a piano, although later it is revealed to be a dream. A recurring gag involves Jerry hitting Tom when he's preoccupied, with Tom initially oblivious to the pain and only feeling the effects moments later, and vice versa; and another involves Jerry stopping Tom in mid-chase (as if calling for a time-out), before he does something, usually putting the hurt on Tom.
The cartoon is also noteworthy for its reliance on tropes, such as the blackening of characters following explosions and the use of heavy and enlarged shadows (e.g., Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse
). Resemblance to everyday objects and occurrences is arguably the main appeal of visual humor in the series. The characters themselves regularly transform into ridiculous but strongly associative shapes, most of the time involuntarily, in masked but gruesome ways.
Music
plays a very important part in the shorts, emphasizing the action, filling in for traditional sound effects, and lending emotion to the scenes. Musical director Scott Bradley
created complex scores that combined elements of jazz
, classical, and pop music; Bradley often reprised contemporary pop songs, as well as songs from MGM films, including The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me In St. Louis
. Generally, there is little dialogue as Tom and Jerry almost never speak; however, minor characters are not similarly limited, and the two lead characters are able to speak English on rare occasions and are thus not mute. For example, the character Mammy Two Shoes has lines in every episode in which she appears except The Little Orphan
. Most of the dialogues from Tom and Jerry are the high-pitched laughs and gasping screams, which may be provided by a horn or other musical instrument.
Before 1955, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in the standard Academy ratio
and format; in 1954 and 1955, some of the output was dually produced in both Academy format and the widescreen
CinemaScope
process. From 1955 until the close of the MGM cartoon studio a year later, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in CinemaScope, some even had their soundtracks recorded in Perspecta directional audio
. The 1960s Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones shorts were all produced in Academy format, but with compositions that made them compatible to be matted to Academy widescreen format as well. All of the Hanna and Barbera cartoons were produced in three-strip Technicolor
; the 1960s entries were done in Metrocolor
.
Tom
(called "Jasper" in his debut appearance) is a blue and white domestic shorthair cat
. He is the protagonist
of the story, who usually lives a pampered life, although they usually live in several lifestyles, while Jerry
is a small brown house mouse
who always lives in close proximity to him and is the deuteragonist
of the story. "Tom" is a generic name for a male cat (The Warner Bros.
cartoon character Sylvester
was originally named Thomas). Tom was seen originally in the very first short, Puss Gets the Boot
, and Jerry was seen in the short also, although it was not billed as a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Jerry possesses surprising strength for his size, lifting items such as anvils with relative ease and withstanding considerable impacts with them. Despite the typical cat-eats-mouse scenario, it is surprisingly quite rare for Tom to actually try and consume Jerry. Most of his attempts are just to torment or humiliate Jerry. Despite being very energetic and determined, Tom is no match for Jerry's brains and wits. By the final "fade-out" of each cartoon, Jerry usually emerges triumphant, while Tom is shown as the loser. However, other results may be reached; on rare occasions, Tom triumphs, usually when Jerry becomes the aggressor or when he crosses some sort of line (the best example of which occurs in The Million Dollar Cat
where, after finding out that Tom's newly acquired wealth will be taken away if he harms any animal, including a mouse, he torments Tom until Tom finally loses his temper and attacks him). Sometimes, usually ironically, they both lose, usually when Jerry's last trap potentially backfires on him after it affects Tom (An example is in Chuck Jones' Filet Meow
short where Jerry orders a shark to scare Tom away from eating a goldfish. Afterwards, the shark scares Jerry away as well) or when Jerry overlooks something at the end of the course. Sometimes, they both end up being friends (only for something to happen so that Tom will chase Jerry again). Both characters display sadistic
tendencies, in that they are equally likely to take pleasure in tormenting each other. However, depending on the cartoon, whenever one character appears to be in mortal danger (in a dangerous situation or by a third party), the other will develop a conscience and save him. Sometimes, they bond over a mutual sentiment towards an unpleasant experience and their attacking each other is more play than serious attacks. Multiple shorts show the two getting along with minimal difficulty, and they are more than capable of working together when the situation calls for it, usually against a third party who manages to torture
and humiliate them both. Sometimes this partnership is forgotten quickly when an unexpected event happens or when one character feels that the other is no longer necessary. (Example is when in Posse Cat
, when Jerry decides to pretend to get chased by Tom in exchange for half his food. Tom agrees to this, but then he goes back on his word later.) Other times however, Tom does keep his promise to Jerry and the partnerships are not quickly dissolved after the problem is solved.
Tom changes his love interest many times. The first love interest is
Toots who appears in Puss n' Toots
, and calls him "Tommy" in The Mouse Comes to Dinner
. He is also interested in a cat called Toots in The Zoot Cat
although she has a different appearance to the original Toots. The most frequent love interest of Tom's is Toodles Galore, who never has any dialogue in Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Despite five shorts ending with a depiction of Tom's apparent death, his demise is never permanent; he even reads about his own death in a flashback in Jerry's Diary
. He appears to die in explosions in Mouse Trouble
(after which he is seen in heaven
) and in Yankee Doodle Mouse, while in The Two Mouseketeers
he is guillotined offscreen.
's "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby
" in the 1946 short Solid Serenade
. In a couple of shorts, Tom, when romancing a female cat, woos her in a French-accented voice similar to that of screen actor Charles Boyer
. At the end of The Million Dollar Cat
after beginning to antagonize Jerry he says "Gee, I'm throwin' away a million dollars... BUT I'M HAPPY!" . In Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring
, Jerry says no,no,no,no,no when choosing the shop to remove his ring. In The Mouse Comes to Dinner
Tom speaks to his girlfriend while inadvertently sitting on a stove: "Gee, what's cookin'?" (The girl replies "You are, stupid.") Another instance of speech comes in Solid Serenade
and The Framed Cat
, where Tom directs Spike through a few dog tricks in a dog-trainer manner. In Mouse Trouble
, Tom says "Don't you believe it," after being beaten up by Jerry. Co-director William Hanna provided most of the squeaks, gasps, and other vocal effects for the pair, including the most famous sound effects from the series, Tom's leather-lunged scream (created by recording Hanna's scream and eliminating the beginning and ending of the recording, leaving only the strongest part of the scream on the soundtrack) and Jerry's nervous gulp. The only other reasonably common vocalization is made by Tom when some external reference claims a certain scenario or eventuality to be impossible, which inevitably, ironically happens to thwart Tom's plans - at which point, a bedraggled and battered Tom appears and says in a haunting, echoing voice "Don't you believe it!", a reference to some famous World War II propaganda
shorts of the 1940s. In the 1946 short Trap Happy
, Tom hires a mouse exterminator who, after several failed attempts to dispatch Jerry, changes profession to Cat exterminator by crossing out the "Mouse" on his title and writing "Cat", resulting in Tom spelling out the word out loud before reluctantly pointing at himself. One short, 1956's Blue Cat Blues
, is narrated by Jerry in voiceover
(voiced by Paul Frees
) as they try to win back their ladyfriends. Both Tom and Jerry speak more than once in the 1943 short The Lonesome Mouse
. Tom and Jerry: The Movie is the first (and so far only) installment of the series where the famous cat-and-mouse duos regularly speak.
In his attempts to catch Jerry, Tom often has to deal with Spike (known as "Killer" in some episodes), an angry, vicious but extremely dumb guard bulldog
who tries to attack Tom for bothering his son Tyke while trying to get Jerry. Originally Spike was unnamed and mute (aside from howls and biting noises) as well as attacking indiscriminately, not caring whether it was Tom or Jerry though usually attacking Tom. In later cartoons Spike spoke often, using a voice and expressions (performed by Billy Bletcher
and later Daws Butler
) modeled after comedian Jimmy Durante
. Spike's coat has altered throughout the years between grey and creamy tan. The addition of Spike's son Tyke in the late 1940s led to both a slight softening of Spike's character and a short-lived spin-off theatrical series (Spike and Tyke
). Most cartoons with Spike in it have a system; usually Spike is trying to accomplish something (such as building a dog house or sleeping) when Tom and Jerry's antics stop him from doing it, Spike then (presumably due to prejudice) singles out Tom as the culprit and threatens him that if it ever happens again he will do "something horrible" to Tom (effectively forcing Tom to take the blame of anyone else) while Jerry overhears, afterwards Jerry usually does anything he can to interrupt whatever Spike is doing while Tom barely manages to stop him (usually getting injured in the process), usually Jerry does eventually wreck whatever Spike is doing in spectacular fashion and leaving Tom to take the blame, forcing him to flee from Spike and inevitably lose (usually due to the fact the Tom is usually framed by Jerry and that Spike just doesn't like Tom) off-screen, Spike does something to Tom and finally Tom is generally shown injured or in a bad situation while Jerry smugly cuddles up to Spike unscathed. At least once however Tom does something that benefits Spike, who promises not to interfere ever again; causing Jerry to frantically leave the house and run into the distance (in Hic-cup Pup
). Spike is well known for his famous "Listen pussy cat!" catchphrase when he threatens Tom, his other famous catchphrase is "That's my boy!" normally said when he supports or congratulates his son.
Tyke is described as a cute, sweet looking, happy and a lovable puppy. He is Spike's son, but unlike Spike, Tyke does not speak and only communicates (mostly towards his father) by barking, yapping, wagging his tail, whimpering and growling. Tyke's father Spike would always go out of his way to care and comfort his son and make sure that he is safe from Tom. Tyke loves his father and Spike loves his son and they get along like friends, although most of time they would be taking a nap or Spike would teach Tyke the main facts of life of being a dog. Like Spike, Tyke's appearance has altered throughout the years, from grey (with white paws) to creamy tan. When Tom and Jerry Kids first aired, this was the first time that viewers were able to hear Tyke speak.
. However Brewer
notes no more than an "unconscious" echo of the Victorian-era original in the naming of the cartoon.
. "We knew we needed two characters. We thought we needed conflict, and chase and action. And a cat after a mouse seemed like a good, basic thought", as he recalled in an interview. Hanna and many other employees complained that the idea wasn't very original, nevertheless the short was completed in late 1939, and released to theaters on February 10, 1940. Puss Gets The Boot centers on Jasper, a gray tabby cat trying to catch a mouse named Jinx (whose name is not mentioned), but after accidentally breaking a houseplant and its stand, the African American housemaid Mammy (later Tom's owner) has threatened to throw Jasper out ("O-W-T, out!" as Mammy spells it) if he breaks one more thing in the house. Naturally, Jinx uses this to his advantage, and begins tossing wine glass
es, ceramic plate
s, teapot
s, and any and everything fragile, so that Jasper will be thrown outside. Puss Gets The Boot was previewed and released without fanfare, and Hanna and Barbera went on to direct other (non-cat-and-mouse related) shorts such as Gallopin' Gals
and Officer Pooch
. "After all," remarked many of the MGM staffers, "haven't there been enough cat-and-mouse cartoons already?"
The pessimistic attitude towards the cat and mouse duo changed when the cartoon became a favorite with theater owners and with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
, which nominated the film for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons of 1941. It lost to another MGM cartoon, Rudolph Ising's The Milky Way
.
Producer Fred Quimby
, who ran the MGM animation studio, quickly pulled Hanna and Barbera off the other one-shot cartoons they were working on, and commissioned a series featuring the cat and mouse. Hanna and Barbera held an intra-studio contest to give the pair a new name by drawing suggested names out of a hat; animator John Carr won $50 with his suggestion of Tom and Jerry. The Tom and Jerry series went into production with The Midnight Snack
in 1941, and Hanna and Barbera rarely directed anything but the cat-and-mouse cartoons for the rest of their tenure at MGM. Barbera would create the story while Hanna would supervise production.
Tom's physical appearance evolved significantly over the years. During the early 1940s, Tom had an excess of detail—shaggy fur, numerous facial wrinkle
s, and multiple eyebrow markings, all of which were streamlined into a more workable form by the end of the 1940s—and looked like a realistic cat; in addition from his quadrupedal beginnings Tom became increasingly, and eventually almost exclusively, bipedal. By contrast, Jerry's design remained essentially the same for the duration of the series. By the mid-1940s, the series had developed a quicker, more energetic (and violent) tone, due to the inspiration from the work of their colleague in the MGM cartoon studio, Tex Avery
, who joined the studio in 1942.
Even though the theme of each short is virtually the same - cat chases mouse - Hanna and Barbera found endless variations on that theme. Barbera's storyboards and rough layouts and designs, combined with Hanna's timing, resulted in arguably MGM's most popular and successful cartoon series. Thirteen entries in the Tom and Jerry series (including Puss Gets The Boot) were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons; seven of them went on to win the Academy Award, breaking the Disney studio's winning streak in that category. Tom and Jerry won more Academy Awards than any other character-based theatrical animated series.
Tom and Jerry remained popular throughout their original theatrical run, even when the budgets began to tighten somewhat in the 1950s and the pace of the shorts slowed slightly. However, after television
became popular in the 1950s, box office
revenues decreased for theatrical films, and short subjects. At first, MGM combated this by going to all-CinemaScope production on the series. After MGM realized that their re-releases of the older shorts brought in just as much revenue as the new films, the studio executives decided, much to the surprise of the staff, to close the animation studio. The MGM cartoon studio was shut down in 1957, and the final of the 114 Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry shorts, Tot Watchers
, was released on August 1, 1958. Hanna and Barbera established their own television animation studio, Hanna-Barbera Productions, in 1957, which went on to produce famous TV shows and movies.
-based animator Gene Deitch
and produced by company owner William L. Snyder in Czechoslovakia
.
Deitch states that, being a member of the UPA
, he has always had a personal dislike of Tom and Jerry, citing them as the "primary bad example of senseless violence - humor based on pain - attack and revenge - to say nothing of the tasteless use of a headless black woman stereotype house servant." Štěpán Koníček, a student of Karel Ančerl
and conductor of the Film Symphony Orchestra, and Václav Lídl provided the musical score for the Deitch short, while Larz Bourne, Chris Jenkyns, and Eli Bauer
wrote the cartoons. The majority of vocal effects and voices in Deitch's films were provided by Allen Swift
.
For the purposes of avoiding being linked to Communism, Deitch altered the names for his crew in the opening credits
of the shorts (e.g., Štěpán Koníček became "Steven Konichek", Václav Lídl became "Victor Little"). These shorts are among the few Tom and Jerry cartoons not to carry the "Made In Hollywood, U.S.A." phrase at the end. Due to Deitch's studio being behind the Iron Curtain
, the production studio's location is omitted entirely on it. In the midst of production, Joe Vogel, the head of production, was fired from MGM, who ordered Deitch and his team to finish the shorts and rush them out to release. The contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer expired, and the final of the thirteen shorts, Carmen Get It!
, was released on December 1, 1962.
Since the Deitch/Snyder team had seen only a handful of the original Tom and Jerry shorts, and since Deitch and Snyder produced their cartoons on a tighter budget of $10,000, the resulting films were considered unusual, and, in many ways, bizarre. The characters' gestures were often performed at high speed, frequently causing heavy motion blur. As a result, the animation of the characters looked choppy and sickly. The soundtracks featured sparse music, futuristic sound effects, dialogue that was mumbled rather than spoken, and heavy use of reverb
. Fans that typically rooted for Tom criticized Deitch's cartoons for having Tom never become a threat to Jerry. Most of the time Tom only attempts to hurt him when he gets in his way. Tom's new owner, a corpulent and grumpy middle-aged white man (with serious temper problems, often going red in the face similar to Deitch's earlier "Clint Clobber" character at Terrytoons
), was also more graphically brutal in punishing Tom's mistakes as compared to Mammy Two-Shoes, beating and thrashing Tom repeatedly, searing his face with a grill, and forcing Tom to drink an entire carbonated beverage. Despite these criticisms, the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoons are still rerun today on the Cartoon Network and Boomerang channels on a semi-regular basis.
Deitch's Tom and Jerry shorts have seen limited release outside of Europe
and Asia
; all thirteen shorts are currently available in Japan
, where they have been ported to the Tom and Jerry & Droopy laserdisc
and VHS, and the United Kingdom
, where the shorts are available on the B-side of the Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection volume 5 DVD. The only short to have seen DVD release in the United States
is The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit
, where it is included on the Paws for a Holiday DVD.
All thirteen shorts were commercial successes; in 1961, the Tom and Jerry series became the highest-grossing film series of all-time, dethroning the Looney Tunes
series which had held the position for sixteen years; this success was repeated once more in 1962. However, unlike the Hanna and Barbera shorts, none of Deitch's films were nominated nor did they win an Academy Award. The episodes created by Deitch have generally been less favorably received by audiences. In his review for Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection, Paul Kupperberg of Comicmix called the shorts "perfectly dreadful" and "too often released", as well as a result of "cheap labor". Deitch has frequently defended his films; in an interview with the New York Times, when asked about working on the Tom and Jerry series, Deitch responded "All the experts say [my shorts are] the worst of the 'Tom and Jerry's, [...] I was a UPA man -- my whole background was much closer to the Czechs. 'Tom and Jerry' I always considered dreck, but they had great timing, facial expressions, double takes, squash and stretch," all of which the interviewer stated were "techniques the Czechs had to learn," adding, "The Czech style had nothing in common with these gag-driven cartoons."
, who had been fired from his thirty-plus year tenure at Warner Bros. Cartoons, started his own animation studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions, with partner Les Goldman. Beginning in 1963, Jones and Goldman went on to produce 34 more Tom and Jerry shorts, all of which carried Jones' distinctive style (and a slight psychedelic influence). However, despite being animated by essentially the same artists who worked with Jones at Warners, these new shorts had varying degrees of critical success.
Jones had trouble adapting his style to Tom and Jerrys brand of humor, and a number of the cartoons favored full animation, personality and style over storyline. The characters underwent a slight change of appearance: Tom was given thicker eyebrow
s (resembling Jones' Grinch or Count Blood Count), a less complex look (including the color of his fur becoming gray), sharper ears, and furrier cheeks, while Jerry was given larger eyes and ears, a lighter brown color, and a sweeter, Porky Pig
-like expression.
Some of Jones' Tom and Jerry cartoons are reminiscent of his work with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, included the uses of blackout gags and gags involving characters falling from high places. Jones co-directed the majority of the shorts with layout artist Maurice Noble
. The remaining shorts were directed by Abe Levitow
and Ben Washam
, with Tom Ray
directing two shorts built around footage from earlier Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Hanna and Barbera, and Jim Pabian directed a short with Maurice Noble. Various vocal characteristics were made by Mel Blanc
and June Foray
. Jones' efforts are considered superior to the previous Deitch efforts (and most cartoons made during that time, albeit visually), and contain the memorable opening theme, in which Tom is trapped inside the "O" of his name.
Though Jones managed to recapture some of the magic from the original Hanna-Barbera efforts, MGM ended production on Tom and Jerry in 1967, by which time Sib Tower 12 had become MGM Animation/Visual Arts
. Jones had moved on to television specials and the feature film The Phantom Tollbooth
.
Beginning in 1965, the Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoons began to appear on television in heavily edited form. The Jones team was required to take the cartoons featuring Mammy Two-Shoes and remove her by pasting over the scenes featuring her with new scenes. Most of the time, she was replaced with a similarly fat White Irish woman; occasionally, as in Saturday Evening Puss
, a thin white teenager took her place instead, with both characters voiced by June Foray
. However, recent telecasts on Cartoon Network
and Boomerang
retain Mammy with new voiceover work performed by Thea Vidale
to remove the stereotypical black jargon featured on the original cartoon soundtracks.
Debuting on CBS
' Saturday morning schedule on September 25, 1965, Tom and Jerry moved to CBS Sundays two years later and remained there until September 17, 1972.
The intros of each episode shown on TV and DVD today are re-issues from the 1950s–1960s, with the exception of Puss Gets the Boot
and The Night Before Christmas, which still retain their original opening and closing credits from the early 1940s.
and Mumbly
cartoons, to create The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape Show, The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show, and The Tom and Jerry/Mumbly Show, all of which initially ran on ABC Saturday Morning between September 6, 1975 and September 3, 1977. In these cartoons, Tom and Jerry (now with a red bow tie), who had been enemies during their formative years, became nonviolent pals who went on adventures together, as Hanna-Barbera had to meet the stringent rules against violence for children's TV. The Tom and Jerry Show is still airing on the Canadian channel, Teletoon
, and its classical counterpart, Teletoon Retro
.
(in association with MGM Television
) also tried their hands at producing a Tom and Jerry TV series. Their version, The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show
, debuted in 1980, and also featured new cartoons starring Droopy, Spike (another bulldog created by Tex Avery), and Barney Bear
, not seen since the original MGM shorts. The Filmation Tom and Jerry cartoons were noticeably different from Hanna-Barbera's efforts, as they returned Tom and Jerry to the original chase formula, with a somewhat more "slapstick
" humor format. This incarnation, much like the 1975 version, was not as well received by audience
s as the originals, and lasted on CBS
Saturday Morning from September 6, 1980 to September 4, 1982. Its animation style bore a strong resemblance to that of The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle
.
. Turner sold the company a short while later, but retained MGM's pre-1986 film library, thus Tom and Jerry became the property of Turner Entertainment
(where the rights stand today via Warner Bros.
), and have in subsequent years appeared on Turner-run stations, such as TBS, TNT
, Cartoon Network
, The WB
, Boomerang
, and Turner Classic Movies
.
stars, and on March 2, 1990, Tom and Jerry Kids, co-produced by Turner Entertainment and Hanna-Barbera Productions (which would be sold to Turner in 1991) debuted on Fox Kids
and for a couple of years, aired on British children's show, CBBC
. It featured a youthful version of the famous cat-and-mouse duo chasing each other. As with the 1975 H-B series, Jerry wears his red bowtie, while Tom now wears a red cap. Spike and his son Tyke (who now had talking dialogue) and Droopy and his son Dripple, appeared in back-up segments for the show, which ran until November 18, 1994.
. It featured Joe Barbera (who was also a creative consultant) as the voice of Tom's owner, whose face is never seen. In this cartoon, Jerry, housed in a habitrail
, is as much of a house pet as Tom is, and their owner has to remind Tom to not "blame everything on the mouse".
In 2005, a new Tom and Jerry theatrical short, entitled The Karate Guard, which had been written and directed by Barbera and Spike Brandt, storyboard
ed by Joseph Barbera and Iwao Takamoto
and produced by Joseph Barbera, Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone premiered in Los Angeles cinemas on December 16, 2005. As part of the celebration of Tom and Jerrys sixty-fifth anniversary, this marked Barbera's first return as a writer, director and storyboard artist on the series since his and Hanna's original MGM cartoon shorts. Director/animator, Spike Brandt was nominated for an Annie award for best character animation. The short debuted on Cartoon Network on January 27, 2006.
was produced at Warner Bros. Animation
. Thirteen half-hour episodes (each consisting of three shorts, some of them—like The Karate Guard—were produced and completed in 2003 as part of a 30-plus theatrical cartoon schedule aborted after the financial disaster of Looney Tunes Back in Action) were produced, with only markets outside of the United States and United Kingdom signed up. The show then came to the UK in February 2006 on Boomerang, and it went to the U.S. on The CW4Kids
on The CW
. Tales is the first Tom and Jerry TV series that utilizes the original style of the classic shorts, along with the violence. The series was canceled on March 22, 2008.
(from 1967 to 2000, usually on the BBC
) Tom and Jerry cartoons were not cut for violence and Mammy was retained. As well as having regular slots (mainly after the evening BBC News with around 2 episodes shown every evening and occasionally shown on children's network CBBC
in the morning), Tom and Jerry served the BBC in another way. When faced with disruption to the schedules (such as those occurring when live broadcasts overrun), the BBC would invariably turn to Tom and Jerry to fill any gaps, confident that it would retain much of an audience that might otherwise channel hop. This proved particularly helpful in 1993, when Noel's House Party
had to be cancelled due to an IRA
bomb scare at BBC Television Centre
- Tom and Jerry was shown instead, bridging the gap until the next programm. In 2006, a mother complained to OFCOM
of the smoking scenes shown in the cartoons, since Tom often attempts to impress love interests with the habit, resulting in reports that the smoking scenes in Tom and Jerry films may be subject to censorship.
Due to its lack of dialogue, Tom and Jerry was easily translated into various foreign languages. Tom and Jerry began broadcast in Japan
in 1964. A 2005 nationwide survey taken in Japan by TV Asahi
, sampling age groups from teenagers to adults in their sixties, ranked Tom and Jerry #85 in a list of the top 100 "anime
" of all time; while their web poll taken after the airing of the list ranked it at #58 - the only non-Japanese animation on the list, and beating anime classics like Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
, A Little Princess Sara, and the ultra-classics Macross
and Ghost in the Shell
(it should be noted that in Japan, the word "anime" refers to all animation regardless of origin, not just Japanese animation). Tom and Jerry is long-time licensed mascots for Nagoya-based Juuroku Bank.
Tom and Jerry have long been popular in Germany
. However, the cartoons are overdubbed with rhyming German language
verse that describes what is happening onscreen, sometimes adding or revising information. The different episodes are usually embedded in the episode Jerry's Diary
(1949), in which Tom reads about past adventures.
In India
, South East Asia, Armenia
, the Middle East, Egypt
, Kazakhstan
, Pakistan
, Lebanon
, Chile
, Argentina
, Mexico
, Colombia
, Brazil
, Venezuela
, other Latin American countries, and in eastern European countries (such as Romania
), Cartoon Network still airs Tom and Jerry cartoons every day. In Russia
, local channels also air the show in their daytime programming slot. Tom and Jerry was one of the few cartoons of western origin broadcast in Czechoslovakia (1988) and Romania (until 1989) before the fall of Communism
in 1989.
cast members stated that Tom and Jerry is one of their biggest influences for slapstick comedy.
when the film was released overseas to theaters in Europe
of that year and then domestically by Miramax Films
in . Barbera served as creative consultant for the picture, which was produced and directed by Phil Roman
. A musical film with a structure similar to MGM's blockbusters, The Wizard of Oz
and Singin' in the Rain
, the movie was criticized by reviewers and audiences alike for being predictable and for giving the pair dialogue (and songs) through the entire movie. As a result, it failed at the box office. In 2001, Warner Bros. (which had, by then, merged with Turner and assumed its properties) released the duo's first direct-to-video movie, Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring
, in which Tom covets a ring which grants mystical powers to the wearer, and has become accidentally stuck on Jerry's head. It would mark the last time Hanna and Barbera co-produced a Tom and Jerry cartoon together, as William Hanna died shortly after The Magic Ring was released.
Four years later, Bill Kopp
scripted and directed two more Tom and Jerry DTV features for the studio, Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars
and Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry
, the latter one based on a story by Barbera. Both were released on DVD in 2005, marking the celebration of Tom and Jerry's 65th anniversary. In 2006, another direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers
, tells the story about the pair having to work together to find the treasure. Joe came up with the storyline for the next film, Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale
, as well as the initial idea of synchronizing the on-screen actions to music from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. This DTV, directed by Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone, would be Joe Barbera's last Tom and Jerry project due to his passing in December 2006. The holiday-set animated film was released on DVD in late 2007, and dedicated to Barbera. A new direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes
, was released on August 24, 2010. It is the first made-for-video Tom and Jerry movie produced without any of the characters' original creators. The most recent direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry and the Wizard of Oz
, was released on August 23, 2011 and was the first made-for-video Tom and Jerry movie made for Blu-ray
. It had a preview showing on Cartoon Network.
Warner Bros.
has plans for a theatrically released film starring Tom and Jerry. The film will be, according to Variety
, "an origin story that reveals how Tom and Jerry first meet and form their rivalry before getting lost in Chicago and reluctantly working together during an arduous journey home". So far Dan Lin
will be producing the film, while screenwriter Eric Gravning is also hired on the project. Warner Bros., in their Variety review, replied they are using Tom and Jerry to create their own "Alvin and the Chipmunks
family franchise".
Like a number of other animated cartoons in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Tom and Jerry was not considered politically correct
in later years. Many shorts featured racial stereotypes, such as characters shown in blackface
following an explosion. Joseph Barbera, who was responsible for these gags, claimed that years earlier he had an African American
friend, and that the racial gags in Tom and Jerry did not reflect his racial opinion they were just common in Hollywood films at the time. However by modern cultural standards Blackface is associated with racial stereotyping and is regarded as racist. Most of the blackface gags have been cut when shown on television today, although The Yankee Doodle Mouse
blackface gag as well as another blackface gag at the end of Safety Second
, and a short scene from The Dog House remain intact, depending on the country. The black maid, Mammy Two Shoes, is often considered a racist stereotype because she is depicted as a poor black woman who has a rodent problem. Her voice was redubbed by Turner in the mid-1990s in hopes of making the character sound less stereotypical; the resulting accent sounded more Irish. One cartoon in particular, His Mouse Friday
, is often completely out of television rotation due to the cannibals being seen as racist stereotypes. If shown, the cannibals' dialogue is edited out, although their mouths can be seen moving.
In 2006, United Kingdom channel Boomerang
made plans to edit Tom and Jerry cartoons being aired in the UK where the characters were seen to be smoking in a manner that was "condoned, acceptable or glamorized." This followed a complaint from a viewer that the cartoons were not appropriate for younger viewers, and a subsequent investigation by UK media watchdog OFCOM
. It has also taken the U.S. approach by editing out blackface gags, though this seems to be random as not all scenes of this type are cut.
s in 1942, as one of the features in Our Gang Comics. In 1949, with MGM's live-action Our Gang
shorts having ceased production five years earlier, the series was renamed Tom and Jerry Comics. The pair continued to appear in various books for the rest of the 20th century.
The pair have also appeared in a number of video games as well, spanning titles for systems from the Nintendo Entertainment System
and Super NES
and Nintendo 64
to more recent entries for PlayStation 2
, Xbox
, and Nintendo GameCube
.
Author Steven Millhauser
wrote a short story called Cat 'n' Mouse
which pits the duo against one another as antagonist and protagonist in literary form. Millhauser allows his reader access to the thoughts and emotions of the two characters in a way that wasn't done in the cartoon.
characters, Itchy & Scratchy, the featured cartoon on the Krusty the Clown Show, are spoofs of Tom and Jerry – a "cartoon within a cartoon." The cartoon violence of Tom and Jerry is parodied and intensified, as Itchy (the mouse) dispatches Scratchy in a variety of gratuitous, gory methods.
In another episode, "Krusty Gets Kancelled
", the short cartoon "Worker and Parasite", is a reference to the Eastern European
Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Gene Deitch. To produce the animation, director David Silverman
photocopied several drawings and made the animation very jerky.
In 1945, Jerry made an appearance in the live-action MGM musical feature film Anchors Aweigh
, in which, through the use of special effects, he performs a dance routine with Gene Kelly
. In this sequence, Gene Kelly is telling a class of school kids a fictional tale of how he earned his Medal of Honor
: Jerry is the king of a magical world populated with cartoon animals, which he has forbidden to dance as he himself does not know how. Gene Kelly's character then comes along and guides Jerry through an elaborate dance routine, resulting in Jerry awarding him with a medal. Jerry speaks and sings in this short film; his voice is performed by Sara Berner. Tom has a cameo in the sequence as one of Jerry's servants. This sequence was later lifted and reanimated frame-for-frame in an episode of Family Guy, where Jerry was replaced with Stewie.
Both Tom and Jerry appear with Esther Williams
in a dream sequence in another big-screen musical, Dangerous When Wet
. In the film, Tom and Jerry are chasing each other underwater, when they run into Esther Williams, with whom they perform an extended synchronized swimming routine. Tom and Jerry have to save Williams from a lecherous octopus, who tries to lure and woo her into his (many) arms.
In 1988, the duo were lined up to appear in the Oscar-winning Disney
/Amblin Entertainment
film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit
, a homage to classic American animation. However when the executive producer Steven Speilberg went to ask for the rights in 1986, M.G.M's pre-1986 library (which Tom and Jerry were a part of) was being purchased by Turner Entertainment
who were not willing to lend their most popular cartoon characters at this time (however they did give the rights to Droopy). Also, William Hanna
and Joseph Barbera
claimed since they created Tom and Jerry, Hanna-Barbera
owned them. Due to these legal difficulties Speilberg was unable to acquire the rights and Tom and Jerry's inclusion in the film was scrapped.
Johnny Knoxville
from Jackass
has stated that watching Tom and Jerry inspired many of the stunts in the movies.
1 (the United States and Canada), including a series of two-disc sets known as the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection
. There have been negative responses to Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, due to some of the cartoons included on each having cuts and redubbed Mammy Two-Shoes dialogue. A replacement program offering uncut versions of the shorts on DVD was later announced. There are also negative responses to Vol. 3, due to Mouse Cleaning
and Casanova Cat
being excluded from these sets and His Mouse Friday having an extreme zooming-in towards the end.
There have been two Tom and Jerry DVD sets in Region
2. In Western Europe, most of the Tom and Jerry shorts have been released (only two, The Million Dollar Cat
and Busy Buddies
, were not included) under the name Tom and Jerry — The Classic Collection. Almost all of the shorts contain re-dubbed Mammy Two-Shoes tracks. Despite these cuts, His Mouse Friday, the only Tom and Jerry cartoon to be completely taken off the airwaves in some countries due to claims of racism, is included, unedited with the exception of extreme zooming-in towards the end to avoid showing a particularly race based caricature. These are regular TV prints sent from the U.S. in the 1990s. Shorts produced in CinemaScope are presented in pan and scan
. Fortunately Mouse Cleaning
and Casanova Cat
are presented uncut on as part of these sets.
Tom and Jerry — The Classic Collection is available in 6 double-sided DVDs (issued in the United Kingdom) and 12 single-layer DVDs (issued throughout Western Europe, including the United Kingdom). Another Tom and Jerry Region
2 DVD set is available in Japan. As with Tom and Jerry — The Classic Collection in Western Europe, almost all of the shorts (including His Mouse Friday) contain cuts. Slicked-up Pup
, Tom's Photo Finish
, Busy Buddies
, The Egg and Jerry
, Tops with Pops
and Feedin' the Kiddie
are excluded from these sets. However, these episodes are included in the UK version. Shorts produced in CinemaScope are presented in pan and scan
for showing on the 4:3 aspect ratio
television screen.
The Chuck Jones-era Tom and Jerry shorts were released in a two-disc set entitled Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection on June 23, 2009. The MGM/UA laserdisc box sets issued in the 1990s, "The Art of Tom & Jerry" volumes 1 and 2, contain all the MGM shorts up to (but not including) the Deitch Era, including letter-box versions of the shorts filmed in CinemaScope, shown in their original aspect ratio. These are in fact the best source of uncut cartoons, as they are all intact save for His Mouse Friday
(dialogue has been wiped) and Saturday Evening Puss
which is the re-drawn version with June Foray's voice added. A "The Art of Tom & Jerry" volume 3 contain all the Chuck Jones-era Tom and Jerry shorts.
On December 1, 2010, animation expert Jerry Beck
announced on the Shokus Internet Radio call-in talk program, Stu's Show that there are "far-in-the-future" plans for a Tom and Jerry Golden Collection
, done at the highest level, with material not yet seen before, aimed at the collector in a way that the previous "Spotlight
" DVD releases never were. The first volume of the "Golden Collection" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 25, 2011.
:
These cartoons were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons, but did not win:
These cartoons were nominated for the Annie Award
in the Individual Achievements Category: Character Animation, but did not win:
Animated cartoon
An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...
films created by William Hanna
William Hanna
William Denby Hanna was an American animator, director, producer, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of people for much of the 20th century. When he was a young child, Hanna's family moved frequently, but they settled in Compton, California, by...
and Joseph Barbera
Joseph Barbera
Joseph Roland Barbera was an influential American animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of fans worldwide for much of the twentieth century....
for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
, centering on a never-ending rivalry between a cat
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
(Tom
Tom Cat
Thomas "Tom" Cat is a fictional character and half of the academy-award winning Tom and Jerry cartoon cat-and-mouse duo. He is a blue/grey anthropomorphic cat who first appeared in the 1940 animated short Puss Gets the Boot...
) and a mouse
Mouse
A mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
(Jerry
Jerry Mouse
Jerry Mouse is a fictional animated character, one of the main characters in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's series of Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoon short films. Created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, Jerry is a brown anthropomorphic mouse, who first appeared in the 1940 MGM animated short Puss...
) whose chases and battles often involved comic violence. Hanna and Barbera ultimately wrote and directed one hundred and fourteen Tom and Jerry short
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
s at the MGM cartoon studio
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio
The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio was the in-house division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion picture studio in Hollywood, California during the Golden Age of American animation, responsible for producing animated short subjects to accompany MGM feature films in Loew's Theaters...
in Hollywood between 1940
1940 in film
The year 1940 in film involved some significant events, including the premieres of the Walt Disney classics Pinocchio and Fantasia.-Events:*February 7 - Walt Disney's animated film Pinocchio is released....
and 1957
1957 in film
The year 1957 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* October 21 - The movie Jailhouse Rock, starring Elvis Presley, opens.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue-Awards:...
, when the animation unit was closed. The original series is notable for having won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film
Academy Award for Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....
seven times, tying it with Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's Silly Symphonies
Silly Symphonies
Silly Symphonies is a series of animated short subjects, 75 in total, produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939, while the studio was still located at Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles...
as the theatrical animated series with the most Oscars. A longtime television staple, Tom and Jerry has a worldwide audience that consists of children, teenagers and adults, and has also been recognized as one of the most famous and longest-lived rivalries in American cinema. In 2000, TIME
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
named the series one of the greatest television shows of all time.
Beginning in 1960, in addition to the original 114 Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
cartoons, MGM had new shorts produced by Rembrandt Films, led by Gene Deitch
Gene Deitch
Eugene Merril "Gene" Deitch is an American illustrator, animator and film director. He has been based in Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia and the present-day Czech Republic, since 1959. Since 1968, Deitch has been the leading animation director for the Connecticut organization Weston...
in Eastern Europe. Production of Tom and Jerry shorts returned to Hollywood under Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
's Sib-Tower 12 Productions in 1963; this series lasted until 1967, making it a total of 161 shorts. The cat and mouse stars later resurfaced in television cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera and Filmation Studios during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; a feature film, Tom and Jerry: The Movie
Tom and Jerry: The Movie
Tom and Jerry: The Movie is a 1992 American animated musical film directed by Phil Roman, and produced by Film Roman and Turner Pictures. It is a film adaptation of the Tom and Jerry series of theatrical shorts....
, in 1992 (released domestically in 1993); and in 2001, their first made-for TV short, Tom and Jerry: The Mansion Cat for Boomerang
Boomerang (TV channel)
Boomerang is a 24-hour American cable television channel owned by Turner Broadcasting System, a division of Time Warner. Boomerang specializes in reruns of animated programming from Time Warner's extensive archives, including pre-1986 MGM, Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
. The most recent Tom and Jerry theatrical short, The Karate Guard, was written and co-directed by Barbera and debuted in Los Angeles cinemas on September 27, 2005.
Today, Time Warner
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...
(via its Turner Entertainment
Turner Entertainment
Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. is an American media company founded by Ted Turner. Now owned by Time Warner, the company is largely responsible for overseeing its library for worldwide distribution Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. (commonly known as Turner Entertainment Co.) is an American...
division) owns the rights to Tom and Jerry (with Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
handling distribution). Since the merger, Turner has produced the series, Tom and Jerry Tales
Tom and Jerry Tales
Tom and Jerry Tales is an animated television series which began production in 2005, and premiered in the United States on September 23, 2006 and cancelled on March 22, 2008 on Kids' WB!. It is the fourth television show in the franchise that continues the chase and violence of the cat and mouse...
for The CW's Saturday morning
Saturday morning cartoon
A Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming that has typically been scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the present; the genre's peak in popularity mostly ended in the 1990s while the popularity of...
"The CW4Kids
The CW4Kids
The CW4Kids is a Saturday morning cartoon block on The CW Television Network that premiered on May 24, 2008 in the place of Kids' WB...
" lineup, as well as the recent Tom and Jerry short, The Karate Guard, in 2005 and a string of Tom and Jerry direct-to-video films — all in collaboration with Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation is the animation division of Warner Bros., a subsidiary of Time Warner. The studio is closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros...
. In February 2010, the cartoon celebrated its 70th anniversary and a DVD collection of 30 shorts, Tom and Jerry Deluxe Anniversary Collection, was released in late June 2010 to celebrate the animated duo's seventh decade. It then had a rerun on Cartoon Network.
Plot and format
The series features comedic fights between an iconic set of enemies, a house cat and mouse. The plots of each short usually center on Tom's numerous attempts to capture Jerry and the mayhem and destruction that ensues. Since Tom rarely attempts to eat Jerry and because the pair actually seem to get along in some cartoon shorts, and they sometimes even put their differences aside whenever they have to, it is sometimes unclear why Tom chases Jerry so much. Some reasons given may include normal feline/murine enmity, duty according to his owner, Jerry's attempt at ruining a task that Tom is entrusted with, Jerry eating Tom's master's food which Tom has been entrusted with safeguarding, revenge, Jerry saving other potential prey (such as ducks, canariesDomestic Canary
The Domestic Canary, often simply known as the canary, is a domesticated form of the wild Canary, a small songbird in the finch family originating from the Macaronesian Islands ....
, or goldfish
Goldfish
The goldfish is a freshwater fish in the family Cyprinidae of order Cypriniformes. It was one of the earliest fish to be domesticated, and is one of the most commonly kept aquarium fish....
) from being eaten by Tom, competition with another cat, and Jerry ruining Tom's attempts to seduce feline femme fatales, which Jerry does either out of disgust, jealousy, or just to be mean. Despite the sometimes heavy amount of fantasy violence, most Tom and Jerry episodes now carry a TV-G rating, although it was originally rated TV-Y.
Tom rarely succeeds in catching Jerry, mainly because of Jerry's cleverness, cunning abilities, and luck. Interestingly enough, many of the title cards show Tom and Jerry smiling at each other which seems to depict a love-hate relationship
Love-hate relationship
A love–hate relationship is an interpersonal relationship involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and hate. This relationship does not have to be of a romantic nature, and may be instead of a sibling one...
rather than the extreme annoyance each displays towards the other in each cartoon. There are also several instances within the cartoons where they display genuine friendship (e.g., Springtime for Thomas
Springtime for Thomas
Springtime for Thomas is a 1946 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 23rd Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby.- Plot :...
) and concern for each other's well-being (such as in "Jerry and the Lion", where Jerry in one instance tricks Tom into thinking that he has shot Jerry, and Tom comes running with the first aid kit). Other times the pair would have to set aside their rivalry in order to pursue a common goal, such as a baby who escaped the watch of a negligent teen babysitter, and both Tom and Jerry would need to pursue the baby and keep it away from danger.
The short episodes are infamous for some of the most comically gory gags ever devised in theatrical animation, such as Jerry slicing Tom in half, shutting his head in a window or a door, Tom using everything from axe
Axe
The axe, or ax, is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood; to harvest timber; as a weapon; and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol...
s, firearms, explosives, traps
Trap (tactic)
A trap is a device intended to catch an intruder or prey. "Trap" may also refer to the tactic of catching or harming an adversary. Conversely it may also mean a hindrance for change, being caught in a trap.-Device:*Animal trapping*Bird trapping...
and poison
Poison
In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
to try to murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
Jerry, Jerry stuffing Tom's tail in a waffle iron
Waffle iron
A waffle iron is a cooking appliance used to make waffles.It usually consists of two hinged metal plates, molded to create the honeycomb pattern found on waffles...
and a mangle
Mangle (machine)
A mangle or wringer is a mechanical laundry aid consisting of two rollers in a sturdy frame, connected by cogs and, in its home version, powered by a hand crank or electrically...
, kicking him into a refrigerator
Refrigerator
A refrigerator is a common household appliance that consists of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump that transfers heat from the inside of the fridge to its external environment so that the inside of the fridge is cooled to a temperature below the ambient temperature of the room...
, plugging his tail
Tail
The tail is the section at the rear end of an animal's body; in general, the term refers to a distinct, flexible appendage to the torso. It is the part of the body that corresponds roughly to the sacrum and coccyx in mammals, reptiles, and birds...
into an electric socket, pounding him with a mace, club
Club (weapon)
A club is among the simplest of all weapons. A club is essentially a short staff, or stick, usually made of wood, and wielded as a weapon since prehistoric times....
or mallet
Mallet
A mallet is a kind of hammer, usually of rubber,or sometimes wood smaller than a maul or beetle and usually with a relatively large head.-Tools:Tool mallets come in different types, the most common of which are:...
, causing a tree
Tree
A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
or an electric pole to drive him into the ground, sticking matches into his feet and lighting them, tying him to a firework and setting it off, and so on. Despite all its popularity, Tom and Jerry has often been criticized as excessively violent. Despite the frequent violence, there is no blood
Blood
Blood is a specialized bodily fluid in animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells....
or gore
Graphic violence
Graphic violence is the depiction of especially vivid, brutal and realistic acts of violence in visual media such as literature, film, television, and video games...
in any scenes of the original cartoons, and neither of the pair are ever (seriously) injured. In a very rare instance, when Tom gets sliced into pieces in the opening credits of Tom and Jerry: The Movie, blood is clearly visible, and Heavenly Puss
Heavenly Puss
Heavenly Puss is a 1949 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 42nd Tom and Jerry short, created in 1948, and released on 9 July 1949. It was directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, and produced by Fred Quimby...
deals with Tom dying after being crushed by a piano, although later it is revealed to be a dream. A recurring gag involves Jerry hitting Tom when he's preoccupied, with Tom initially oblivious to the pain and only feeling the effects moments later, and vice versa; and another involves Jerry stopping Tom in mid-chase (as if calling for a time-out), before he does something, usually putting the hurt on Tom.
The cartoon is also noteworthy for its reliance on tropes, such as the blackening of characters following explosions and the use of heavy and enlarged shadows (e.g., Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse is a 1947 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 30th Tom and Jerry short. The cartoon was released on 14 June 1947, and was directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, produced by Fred Quimby and animated by Ed Barge, Michael Lah, Kenneth Muse and Al Grandmain. The episode...
). Resemblance to everyday objects and occurrences is arguably the main appeal of visual humor in the series. The characters themselves regularly transform into ridiculous but strongly associative shapes, most of the time involuntarily, in masked but gruesome ways.
Music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
plays a very important part in the shorts, emphasizing the action, filling in for traditional sound effects, and lending emotion to the scenes. Musical director Scott Bradley
Scott Bradley
Scott Bradley was an American composer, pianist and conductor.Bradley is best remembered for scoring the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer theatrical cartoons, including those starring Tom and Jerry , Droopy , Barney Bear , and the many one-shot cartoons.Bradley was a...
created complex scores that combined elements of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, classical, and pop music; Bradley often reprised contemporary pop songs, as well as songs from MGM films, including The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me In St. Louis
Meet Me in St. Louis
Meet Me in St. Louis is a 1944 musical film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which tells the story of an American family living in St. Louis at the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair in 1904...
. Generally, there is little dialogue as Tom and Jerry almost never speak; however, minor characters are not similarly limited, and the two lead characters are able to speak English on rare occasions and are thus not mute. For example, the character Mammy Two Shoes has lines in every episode in which she appears except The Little Orphan
The Little Orphan
The Little Orphan is a 1949 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 40th Tom and Jerry short, released in theatres on April 30, 1949 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. It was produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with music by Scott Bradley...
. Most of the dialogues from Tom and Jerry are the high-pitched laughs and gasping screams, which may be provided by a horn or other musical instrument.
Before 1955, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in the standard Academy ratio
Academy ratio
The Academy ratio of 1.375:1 is an aspect ratio of a frame of 35mm film when used with 4-perf pulldown. It was standardized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the standard film aspect ratio in 1932, although similar-sized ratios were used as early as 1928.The Academy ratio is...
and format; in 1954 and 1955, some of the output was dually produced in both Academy format and the widescreen
Widescreen
Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film....
CinemaScope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
process. From 1955 until the close of the MGM cartoon studio a year later, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in CinemaScope, some even had their soundtracks recorded in Perspecta directional audio
Perspecta
Perspecta was a directional motion picture sound system, invented by the laboratories at Fine Sound Inc. in 1954. As opposed to magnetic stereophonic soundtracks available at the time, its benefits were that it did not require a new sound head for the projector and thus was a cheaper...
. The 1960s Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones shorts were all produced in Academy format, but with compositions that made them compatible to be matted to Academy widescreen format as well. All of the Hanna and Barbera cartoons were produced in three-strip Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
; the 1960s entries were done in Metrocolor
Metrocolor
Metrocolor is the trade name used by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for films processed at their laboratory. Virtually all of these films were actually shot on Kodak's Eastmancolor film.-External links:* at Internet Movie Database...
.
Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse
Tom Cat
Thomas "Tom" Cat is a fictional character and half of the academy-award winning Tom and Jerry cartoon cat-and-mouse duo. He is a blue/grey anthropomorphic cat who first appeared in the 1940 animated short Puss Gets the Boot...
(called "Jasper" in his debut appearance) is a blue and white domestic shorthair cat
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
. He is the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
of the story, who usually lives a pampered life, although they usually live in several lifestyles, while Jerry
Jerry Mouse
Jerry Mouse is a fictional animated character, one of the main characters in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's series of Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoon short films. Created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, Jerry is a brown anthropomorphic mouse, who first appeared in the 1940 MGM animated short Puss...
is a small brown house mouse
House mouse
The house mouse is a small rodent, a mouse, one of the most numerous species of the genus Mus.As a wild animal the house mouse mainly lives associated with humans, causing damage to crops and stored food....
who always lives in close proximity to him and is the deuteragonist
Deuteragonist
In literature, the deuteragonist is the second most important character, after the protagonist and before the tritagonist. The deuteragonist may switch from being with or against the protagonist depending on the deuteragonist's own conflict/plot.-History:Greek drama began with simply one actor,...
of the story. "Tom" is a generic name for a male cat (The Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
cartoon character Sylvester
Sylvester (Looney Tunes)
Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr., Sylvester the Cat or simply Sylvester, is a fictional character, a three-time Academy Award-winning anthropomorphic Tuxedo cat in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies repertory, often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper...
was originally named Thomas). Tom was seen originally in the very first short, Puss Gets the Boot
Puss Gets the Boot
Puss Gets the Boot is a one-reel animated cartoon and the first Tom and Jerry short, although not billed as such in the cartoon. It was released on June 24, 1940 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
, and Jerry was seen in the short also, although it was not billed as a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Jerry possesses surprising strength for his size, lifting items such as anvils with relative ease and withstanding considerable impacts with them. Despite the typical cat-eats-mouse scenario, it is surprisingly quite rare for Tom to actually try and consume Jerry. Most of his attempts are just to torment or humiliate Jerry. Despite being very energetic and determined, Tom is no match for Jerry's brains and wits. By the final "fade-out" of each cartoon, Jerry usually emerges triumphant, while Tom is shown as the loser. However, other results may be reached; on rare occasions, Tom triumphs, usually when Jerry becomes the aggressor or when he crosses some sort of line (the best example of which occurs in The Million Dollar Cat
The Million Dollar Cat
The Million Dollar Cat is a 1944 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 14th Tom and Jerry short. It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on May 6, 1944 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
where, after finding out that Tom's newly acquired wealth will be taken away if he harms any animal, including a mouse, he torments Tom until Tom finally loses his temper and attacks him). Sometimes, usually ironically, they both lose, usually when Jerry's last trap potentially backfires on him after it affects Tom (An example is in Chuck Jones' Filet Meow
Filet Meow
Filet Meow is a 1966 Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by Abe Levitow and produced by Chuck Jones.- Plot :Tom sneaks into the house and sees a female goldfish swimming in a bowl. Tom does not want to eat such a sweet creature at first, but he assuages himself that he must eat...
short where Jerry orders a shark to scare Tom away from eating a goldfish. Afterwards, the shark scares Jerry away as well) or when Jerry overlooks something at the end of the course. Sometimes, they both end up being friends (only for something to happen so that Tom will chase Jerry again). Both characters display sadistic
Sadism and masochism
Sadomasochism broadly refers to the receiving of pleasure—often sexual—from acts involving the infliction or reception of pain or humiliation. The name originates from two authors on the subject, Marquis de Sade and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch...
tendencies, in that they are equally likely to take pleasure in tormenting each other. However, depending on the cartoon, whenever one character appears to be in mortal danger (in a dangerous situation or by a third party), the other will develop a conscience and save him. Sometimes, they bond over a mutual sentiment towards an unpleasant experience and their attacking each other is more play than serious attacks. Multiple shorts show the two getting along with minimal difficulty, and they are more than capable of working together when the situation calls for it, usually against a third party who manages to torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
and humiliate them both. Sometimes this partnership is forgotten quickly when an unexpected event happens or when one character feels that the other is no longer necessary. (Example is when in Posse Cat
Posse Cat
Posse Cat is the 81st one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1952. As with all Tom and Jerry cartoons at the time, it was directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby with music by Scott Bradley...
, when Jerry decides to pretend to get chased by Tom in exchange for half his food. Tom agrees to this, but then he goes back on his word later.) Other times however, Tom does keep his promise to Jerry and the partnerships are not quickly dissolved after the problem is solved.
Tom changes his love interest many times. The first love interest is
Toots who appears in Puss n' Toots
Puss n' Toots
Puss n' Toots is a 1942 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 6th Tom and Jerry short. It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on May 30, 1942 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer and re-issued in 1957...
, and calls him "Tommy" in The Mouse Comes to Dinner
The Mouse Comes to Dinner
The Mouse Comes to Dinner is a 1945 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 18th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby.- Plot :...
. He is also interested in a cat called Toots in The Zoot Cat
The Zoot Cat
The Zoot Cat is a 1944 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 13th Tom and Jerry short. It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on February 26, 1944 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
although she has a different appearance to the original Toots. The most frequent love interest of Tom's is Toodles Galore, who never has any dialogue in Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Despite five shorts ending with a depiction of Tom's apparent death, his demise is never permanent; he even reads about his own death in a flashback in Jerry's Diary
Jerry's Diary
Jerry's Diary is a 1949 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 45th Tom and Jerry short released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, produced by Fred Quimby, scored by Scott Bradley, and animated by Kenneth Muse and Ed Barge.-Plot:Tom places a bunch of traps in front...
. He appears to die in explosions in Mouse Trouble
Mouse Trouble
Mouse Trouble is a 1944 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 17th Tom and Jerry short produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with music by Scott Bradley . The cartoon was animated by Ray Patterson, Irven Spence, Ken Muse and Pete Burness...
(after which he is seen in heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
) and in Yankee Doodle Mouse, while in The Two Mouseketeers
The Two Mouseketeers
The Two Mouseketeers is a 1952 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 65th Tom and Jerry short, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on March 15, 1952 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. It was produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with musical supervision...
he is guillotined offscreen.
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 JordanLouis Jordan
Louis Thomas Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the...
's "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby
Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby
"Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby" is a 1944 Louis Jordan song, released as the B-side of single with "G.I. Jive". "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" reached #1 on the US folk/country charts. The Louis Jordan recording also peaked at number two for three weeks on the pop chart and peaked at...
" in the 1946 short Solid Serenade
Solid Serenade
Solid Serenade is a 1946 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 26th Tom and Jerry short, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on August 31, 1946 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
. In a couple of shorts, Tom, when romancing a female cat, woos her in a French-accented voice similar to that of screen actor Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer was a French actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found success in movies during the 1930s. His memorable performances were among the era's most highly praised romantic dramas,...
. At the end of The Million Dollar Cat
The Million Dollar Cat
The Million Dollar Cat is a 1944 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 14th Tom and Jerry short. It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on May 6, 1944 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
after beginning to antagonize Jerry he says "Gee, I'm throwin' away a million dollars... BUT I'M HAPPY!" . In Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring
Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring
Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring is a 2001 animated direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry. This was the first made-for-video attempt to recapture the style of Hanna and Barbera's original Tom & Jerry theatricals...
, Jerry says no,no,no,no,no when choosing the shop to remove his ring. In The Mouse Comes to Dinner
The Mouse Comes to Dinner
The Mouse Comes to Dinner is a 1945 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 18th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby.- Plot :...
Tom speaks to his girlfriend while inadvertently sitting on a stove: "Gee, what's cookin'?" (The girl replies "You are, stupid.") Another instance of speech comes in Solid Serenade
Solid Serenade
Solid Serenade is a 1946 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 26th Tom and Jerry short, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on August 31, 1946 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
and The Framed Cat
The Framed Cat
The Framed Cat is a 1950 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 53rd Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby. It was animated by Ed Barge, Kenneth Muse, Irven Spence and Ray Patterson.- Plot :...
, where Tom directs Spike through a few dog tricks in a dog-trainer manner. In Mouse Trouble
Mouse Trouble
Mouse Trouble is a 1944 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 17th Tom and Jerry short produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with music by Scott Bradley . The cartoon was animated by Ray Patterson, Irven Spence, Ken Muse and Pete Burness...
, Tom says "Don't you believe it," after being beaten up by Jerry. Co-director William Hanna provided most of the squeaks, gasps, and other vocal effects for the pair, including the most famous sound effects from the series, Tom's leather-lunged scream (created by recording Hanna's scream and eliminating the beginning and ending of the recording, leaving only the strongest part of the scream on the soundtrack) and Jerry's nervous gulp. The only other reasonably common vocalization is made by Tom when some external reference claims a certain scenario or eventuality to be impossible, which inevitably, ironically happens to thwart Tom's plans - at which point, a bedraggled and battered Tom appears and says in a haunting, echoing voice "Don't you believe it!", a reference to some famous World War II propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
shorts of the 1940s. In the 1946 short Trap Happy
Trap Happy
Trap Happy is a 1946 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 25th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby. It was animated by Ed Barge, Kenneth Muse, Michael Lah, Ray Patterson and Pete Burness. The music was composed by Scott Bradley...
, Tom hires a mouse exterminator who, after several failed attempts to dispatch Jerry, changes profession to Cat exterminator by crossing out the "Mouse" on his title and writing "Cat", resulting in Tom spelling out the word out loud before reluctantly pointing at himself. One short, 1956's Blue Cat Blues
Blue Cat Blues
Blue Cat Blues is the 103rd one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1956, directed and produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with music by Scott Bradley...
, is narrated by Jerry in voiceover
VoiceOver
VoiceOver is a screen reader built into Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, iOS and iPod operating systems. By using VoiceOver, the user can access their Macintosh or iOS device based on spoken descriptions and, in the case of the Mac, the keyboard. The feature is designed to increase accessibility for blind...
(voiced by Paul Frees
Paul Frees
Paul Frees was an American voice actor and character actor.-Biography:He was born Solomon Hersh Frees in Chicago...
) as they try to win back their ladyfriends. Both Tom and Jerry speak more than once in the 1943 short The Lonesome Mouse
The Lonesome Mouse
The Lonesome Mouse is a 1943 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 10th Tom and Jerry short. This is notable for being the first speaking role of the cat and mouse duo. It was created and released in 1943, and re-released to theatres in 1950. It was directed by William Hanna and Joseph...
. Tom and Jerry: The Movie is the first (and so far only) installment of the series where the famous cat-and-mouse duos regularly speak.
Spike and Tyke
American Bulldog
The American Bulldog is a breed of working dog that was developed in the United States. There are generally considered to be three types of American bulldog: the Bully or Classic type , the Standard or Performance type , and the Hybrid type...
who tries to attack Tom for bothering his son Tyke while trying to get Jerry. Originally Spike was unnamed and mute (aside from howls and biting noises) as well as attacking indiscriminately, not caring whether it was Tom or Jerry though usually attacking Tom. In later cartoons Spike spoke often, using a voice and expressions (performed by Billy Bletcher
Billy Bletcher
William "Billy" Bletcher was an American actor, comedian, and voice artist, a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.-Career:...
and later Daws Butler
Daws Butler
Charles Dawson "Daws" Butler was a voice actor originally from Toledo, Ohio. He worked mostly for Hanna-Barbera and originated the voices of many famous animated cartoon characters, including Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound.Daws Butler trained many working actors...
) modeled after comedian Jimmy Durante
Jimmy Durante
James Francis "Jimmy" Durante was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s...
. Spike's coat has altered throughout the years between grey and creamy tan. The addition of Spike's son Tyke in the late 1940s led to both a slight softening of Spike's character and a short-lived spin-off theatrical series (Spike and Tyke
Spike and Tyke
Spike & Tyke is a short-lived theatrical animated short subject series, based upon the bulldog father-and-son team from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Tom and Jerry cartoons...
). Most cartoons with Spike in it have a system; usually Spike is trying to accomplish something (such as building a dog house or sleeping) when Tom and Jerry's antics stop him from doing it, Spike then (presumably due to prejudice) singles out Tom as the culprit and threatens him that if it ever happens again he will do "something horrible" to Tom (effectively forcing Tom to take the blame of anyone else) while Jerry overhears, afterwards Jerry usually does anything he can to interrupt whatever Spike is doing while Tom barely manages to stop him (usually getting injured in the process), usually Jerry does eventually wreck whatever Spike is doing in spectacular fashion and leaving Tom to take the blame, forcing him to flee from Spike and inevitably lose (usually due to the fact the Tom is usually framed by Jerry and that Spike just doesn't like Tom) off-screen, Spike does something to Tom and finally Tom is generally shown injured or in a bad situation while Jerry smugly cuddles up to Spike unscathed. At least once however Tom does something that benefits Spike, who promises not to interfere ever again; causing Jerry to frantically leave the house and run into the distance (in Hic-cup Pup
Hic-cup Pup
Hic-cup Pup is the 82nd one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1952 directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby with music by Scott Bradley. The cartoon was animated by Ed Barge, Kenneth Muse, Ray Patterson and Irven Spence with backgrounds by Robert Gentle...
). Spike is well known for his famous "Listen pussy cat!" catchphrase when he threatens Tom, his other famous catchphrase is "That's my boy!" normally said when he supports or congratulates his son.
Tyke is described as a cute, sweet looking, happy and a lovable puppy. He is Spike's son, but unlike Spike, Tyke does not speak and only communicates (mostly towards his father) by barking, yapping, wagging his tail, whimpering and growling. Tyke's father Spike would always go out of his way to care and comfort his son and make sure that he is safe from Tom. Tyke loves his father and Spike loves his son and they get along like friends, although most of time they would be taking a nap or Spike would teach Tyke the main facts of life of being a dog. Like Spike, Tyke's appearance has altered throughout the years, from grey (with white paws) to creamy tan. When Tom and Jerry Kids first aired, this was the first time that viewers were able to hear Tyke speak.
Butch and Toodles Galore
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.History and evolution
"Tom and Jerry" was a commonplace phrase for youngsters indulging in riotous behaviour in 19th-century London. The term comes from Life in London, or Days and Nights of Jerry Hawthorne and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom (1823) by Pierce EganPierce Egan
Pierce Egan was an early British journalist, sportswriter, and writer on popular culture.Egan was born in the London suburbs, where he spent his life. By 1812 he had established himself as the country's leading 'reporter of sporting events', which at the time meant mainly prize-fights and...
. However Brewer
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, sometimes referred to simply as Brewer's, is a reference work containing definitions and explanations of many famous phrases, allusions and figures, whether historical or mythical.-History:...
notes no more than an "unconscious" echo of the Victorian-era original in the naming of the cartoon.
Hanna-Barbera era (1940–1958)
Willliam Hanna and Joseph Barbera were both part of the Rudolf Ising unit at the MGM cartoon studio in the late 1930s. After the financial disaster of the Captain and the Kids series, Barbera, a storyman and character designer, was paired (out of desperation) with Hanna, an experienced director, to start directing films for the Ising unit. In their first discussion for a cartoon, Joseph Barbera suggested Cat-and-Mouse cartoon entitled Puss Gets the BootPuss Gets the Boot
Puss Gets the Boot is a one-reel animated cartoon and the first Tom and Jerry short, although not billed as such in the cartoon. It was released on June 24, 1940 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
. "We knew we needed two characters. We thought we needed conflict, and chase and action. And a cat after a mouse seemed like a good, basic thought", as he recalled in an interview. Hanna and many other employees complained that the idea wasn't very original, nevertheless the short was completed in late 1939, and released to theaters on February 10, 1940. Puss Gets The Boot centers on Jasper, a gray tabby cat trying to catch a mouse named Jinx (whose name is not mentioned), but after accidentally breaking a houseplant and its stand, the African American housemaid Mammy (later Tom's owner) has threatened to throw Jasper out ("O-W-T, out!" as Mammy spells it) if he breaks one more thing in the house. Naturally, Jinx uses this to his advantage, and begins tossing wine glass
Wine glass
A wine glass is a type of glass stemware that is used to drink and taste wine. It is generally composed of three parts: the bowl, stem, and foot...
es, ceramic plate
Plate (dishware)
A plate is a broad, concave, but mainly flat vessel on which food can be served. A plate can also be used for ceremonial or decorative purposes.-Materials:...
s, teapot
Teapot
A teapot is a vessel used for steeping tea leaves or a herbal mix in near-boiling water. Tea may be either in a tea bag or loose, in which case a tea strainer will be needed, either to hold the leaves as they steep or to catch the leaves inside the teapot when the tea is poured...
s, and any and everything fragile, so that Jasper will be thrown outside. Puss Gets The Boot was previewed and released without fanfare, and Hanna and Barbera went on to direct other (non-cat-and-mouse related) shorts such as Gallopin' Gals
Gallopin' Gals
Gallopin' Gals is an animated film directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby and was released by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer in 1940...
and Officer Pooch
Officer Pooch
Officer Pooch is a 1941 short cartoon produced by Fred Quimby, directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The cartoon is mostly done in pantomime.-Plot:...
. "After all," remarked many of the MGM staffers, "haven't there been enough cat-and-mouse cartoons already?"
The pessimistic attitude towards the cat and mouse duo changed when the cartoon became a favorite with theater owners and with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
, which nominated the film for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons of 1941. It lost to another MGM cartoon, Rudolph Ising's The Milky Way
The Milky Way (1940 short film)
The Milky Way is a one-reel animated cartoon short subject, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres in 1940 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. The short, produced and directed by Rudolf Ising with musical supervision by Scott Bradley, explores the adventures of the "three little kittens who lost...
.
Producer Fred Quimby
Fred Quimby
Frederick C. "Fred" Quimby was an American cartoon producer, best known as a producer of Tom and Jerry cartoons, for which he won seven Academy Awards...
, who ran the MGM animation studio, quickly pulled Hanna and Barbera off the other one-shot cartoons they were working on, and commissioned a series featuring the cat and mouse. Hanna and Barbera held an intra-studio contest to give the pair a new name by drawing suggested names out of a hat; animator John Carr won $50 with his suggestion of Tom and Jerry. The Tom and Jerry series went into production with The Midnight Snack
The Midnight Snack
The Midnight Snack is a 1941 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 2nd Tom and Jerry short, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on July 19, 1941 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer and re-released in 1948 and 1957. It was produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with...
in 1941, and Hanna and Barbera rarely directed anything but the cat-and-mouse cartoons for the rest of their tenure at MGM. Barbera would create the story while Hanna would supervise production.
Tom's physical appearance evolved significantly over the years. During the early 1940s, Tom had an excess of detail—shaggy fur, numerous facial wrinkle
Wrinkle
A wrinkle is a fold, ridge or crease in the skin. Skin wrinkles typically appear as a result of aging processes such as glycation or, temporarily, as the result of prolonged immersion in water. Wrinkling in the skin is caused by habitual facial expressions, aging, sun damage, smoking, poor...
s, and multiple eyebrow markings, all of which were streamlined into a more workable form by the end of the 1940s—and looked like a realistic cat; in addition from his quadrupedal beginnings Tom became increasingly, and eventually almost exclusively, bipedal. By contrast, Jerry's design remained essentially the same for the duration of the series. By the mid-1940s, the series had developed a quicker, more energetic (and violent) tone, due to the inspiration from the work of their colleague in the MGM cartoon studio, Tex Avery
Tex Avery
Frederick Bean "Fred/Tex" Avery was an American animator, cartoonist, voice actor and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros...
, who joined the studio in 1942.
Even though the theme of each short is virtually the same - cat chases mouse - Hanna and Barbera found endless variations on that theme. Barbera's storyboards and rough layouts and designs, combined with Hanna's timing, resulted in arguably MGM's most popular and successful cartoon series. Thirteen entries in the Tom and Jerry series (including Puss Gets The Boot) were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons; seven of them went on to win the Academy Award, breaking the Disney studio's winning streak in that category. Tom and Jerry won more Academy Awards than any other character-based theatrical animated series.
Tom and Jerry remained popular throughout their original theatrical run, even when the budgets began to tighten somewhat in the 1950s and the pace of the shorts slowed slightly. However, after television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
became popular in the 1950s, box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
revenues decreased for theatrical films, and short subjects. At first, MGM combated this by going to all-CinemaScope production on the series. After MGM realized that their re-releases of the older shorts brought in just as much revenue as the new films, the studio executives decided, much to the surprise of the staff, to close the animation studio. The MGM cartoon studio was shut down in 1957, and the final of the 114 Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry shorts, Tot Watchers
Tot Watchers
Tot Watchers is the 114th one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1957, produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with music by Scott Bradley. The short was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on August 1, 1958, over a year after it was produced...
, was released on August 1, 1958. Hanna and Barbera established their own television animation studio, Hanna-Barbera Productions, in 1957, which went on to produce famous TV shows and movies.
Gene Deitch era (1960–1962)
In 1960, MGM revived the Tom and Jerry franchise, and contacted European animation output Rembrandt Films to produce thirteen Tom and Jerry shorts overseas. All thirteen shorts were directed by PraguePrague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
-based animator Gene Deitch
Gene Deitch
Eugene Merril "Gene" Deitch is an American illustrator, animator and film director. He has been based in Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia and the present-day Czech Republic, since 1959. Since 1968, Deitch has been the leading animation director for the Connecticut organization Weston...
and produced by company owner William L. Snyder in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
.
Deitch states that, being a member of the UPA
United Productions of America
United Productions of America, better known as UPA, was an American animation studio of the 1940s through present day, beginning with industrial films and World War II training films. In the late 1940s, UPA produced theatrical shorts for Columbia Pictures, most notably the Mr. Magoo series. In...
, he has always had a personal dislike of Tom and Jerry, citing them as the "primary bad example of senseless violence - humor based on pain - attack and revenge - to say nothing of the tasteless use of a headless black woman stereotype house servant." Štěpán Koníček, a student of Karel Ančerl
Karel Ancerl
Karel Ančerl , was a Czech conductor, known for his performances of contemporary music and for his interpretations of music by Czech composers...
and conductor of the Film Symphony Orchestra, and Václav Lídl provided the musical score for the Deitch short, while Larz Bourne, Chris Jenkyns, and Eli Bauer
Eli Bauer
Elias "Eli" Bauer was born in The Bronx, New York to Max and Goldie Bauer. It was his passion for art that took him out of the Bronx and into Manhattan, where he attended the School of Industrial Arts....
wrote the cartoons. The majority of vocal effects and voices in Deitch's films were provided by Allen Swift
Allen Swift
Ira Stadlen , known professionally as Allen Swift, was an American voice actor, known for playing characters including Simon Bar Sinister and Riff-Raff on the Underdog cartoon show...
.
For the purposes of avoiding being linked to Communism, Deitch altered the names for his crew in the opening credits
Opening credits
In a motion picture, television program, or video game, the opening credits are shown at the very beginning and list the most important members of the production. They are now usually shown as text superimposed on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. There...
of the shorts (e.g., Štěpán Koníček became "Steven Konichek", Václav Lídl became "Victor Little"). These shorts are among the few Tom and Jerry cartoons not to carry the "Made In Hollywood, U.S.A." phrase at the end. Due to Deitch's studio being behind the Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
, the production studio's location is omitted entirely on it. In the midst of production, Joe Vogel, the head of production, was fired from MGM, who ordered Deitch and his team to finish the shorts and rush them out to release. The contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer expired, and the final of the thirteen shorts, Carmen Get It!
Carmen Get It!
Carmen Get It! was the 13th and final Tom and Jerry cartoon produced by William L. Snyder and directed by Gene Deitch in the present-day Czech Republic , released on December 1, 1962 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer...
, was released on December 1, 1962.
Reverberation
Reverberation is the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed. A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound is produced in an enclosed space causing a large number of echoes to build up and then slowly decay as the sound is absorbed by the walls and air...
. Fans that typically rooted for Tom criticized Deitch's cartoons for having Tom never become a threat to Jerry. Most of the time Tom only attempts to hurt him when he gets in his way. Tom's new owner, a corpulent and grumpy middle-aged white man (with serious temper problems, often going red in the face similar to Deitch's earlier "Clint Clobber" character at Terrytoons
Terrytoons
Terrytoons was an animation studio founded by Paul Terry. The studio, located in suburban New Rochelle, New York, operated from 1929 to 1968. Its most popular characters included Mighty Mouse, Gandy Goose, Sourpuss, Dinky Duck, Deputy Dawg, Luno and Heckle and Jeckle; these cartoons and all of its...
), was also more graphically brutal in punishing Tom's mistakes as compared to Mammy Two-Shoes, beating and thrashing Tom repeatedly, searing his face with a grill, and forcing Tom to drink an entire carbonated beverage. Despite these criticisms, the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoons are still rerun today on the Cartoon Network and Boomerang channels on a semi-regular basis.
Deitch's Tom and Jerry shorts have seen limited release outside of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
; all thirteen shorts are currently available in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, where they have been ported to the Tom and Jerry & Droopy laserdisc
Laserdisc
LaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
and VHS, and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, where the shorts are available on the B-side of the Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection volume 5 DVD. The only short to have seen DVD release in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
is The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit
The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit
The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit is a Tom and Jerry cartoon produced and released in 1962. It was directed by Gene Deitch and produced by William L. Snyder. Despite mixed reception, it is mainly known as the most critically acclaimed of the Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry shorts among members of the Tom and...
, where it is included on the Paws for a Holiday DVD.
All thirteen shorts were commercial successes; in 1961, the Tom and Jerry series became the highest-grossing film series of all-time, dethroning the Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
series which had held the position for sixteen years; this success was repeated once more in 1962. However, unlike the Hanna and Barbera shorts, none of Deitch's films were nominated nor did they win an Academy Award. The episodes created by Deitch have generally been less favorably received by audiences. In his review for Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection, Paul Kupperberg of Comicmix called the shorts "perfectly dreadful" and "too often released", as well as a result of "cheap labor". Deitch has frequently defended his films; in an interview with the New York Times, when asked about working on the Tom and Jerry series, Deitch responded "All the experts say [my shorts are] the worst of the 'Tom and Jerry's, [...] I was a UPA man -- my whole background was much closer to the Czechs. 'Tom and Jerry' I always considered dreck, but they had great timing, facial expressions, double takes, squash and stretch," all of which the interviewer stated were "techniques the Czechs had to learn," adding, "The Czech style had nothing in common with these gag-driven cartoons."
Chuck Jones era (1963–1967)
After the last of the Deitch cartoons were released, Chuck JonesChuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
, who had been fired from his thirty-plus year tenure at Warner Bros. Cartoons, started his own animation studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions, with partner Les Goldman. Beginning in 1963, Jones and Goldman went on to produce 34 more Tom and Jerry shorts, all of which carried Jones' distinctive style (and a slight psychedelic influence). However, despite being animated by essentially the same artists who worked with Jones at Warners, these new shorts had varying degrees of critical success.
Jones had trouble adapting his style to Tom and Jerrys brand of humor, and a number of the cartoons favored full animation, personality and style over storyline. The characters underwent a slight change of appearance: Tom was given thicker eyebrow
Eyebrow
The eyebrow is an area of thick, delicate hairs above the eye that follows the shape of the lower margin of the brow ridges of some mammals. Their main function is to prevent sweat, water, and other debris from falling down into the eye socket, but they are also important to human communication and...
s (resembling Jones' Grinch or Count Blood Count), a less complex look (including the color of his fur becoming gray), sharper ears, and furrier cheeks, while Jerry was given larger eyes and ears, a lighter brown color, and a sweeter, Porky Pig
Porky Pig
Porky Pig is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He was the first character created by the studio to draw audiences based on his star power, and the animators created many critically acclaimed shorts using the fat little pig...
-like expression.
Some of Jones' Tom and Jerry cartoons are reminiscent of his work with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, included the uses of blackout gags and gags involving characters falling from high places. Jones co-directed the majority of the shorts with layout artist Maurice Noble
Maurice Noble
Maurice Noble was an American animation background artist and layout designer whose contributions to the industry spanned more than 60 years. He was a long-time associate of animation director Chuck Jones, most notably at Warner Bros. in the 1950s...
. The remaining shorts were directed by Abe Levitow
Abe Levitow
Abraham "Abe" Levitow was an American animator who worked at Warner Bros. Cartoons, UPA and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ....
and Ben Washam
Ben Washam
Benjamin Alfred Washam was an American animator who is best known for working under director Chuck Jones for nearly 30 years. Washam worked at Warner Bros. Cartoons from 1941 until 1962, mainly under the direction of Chuck Jones. He also worked on made-for-television cartoons in the early 1960s...
, with Tom Ray
Tom Ray
Thomas Archer Ray was an American animator.-Career:Ray was born in Williams, Arizona. He began work at Warner Bros. Cartoons in 1937. Over the first two decades of his career, he was a junior animator who received no screen credit until Destination Earth in 1956. In 1958, he became a master...
directing two shorts built around footage from earlier Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Hanna and Barbera, and Jim Pabian directed a short with Maurice Noble. Various vocal characteristics were made by Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...
and June Foray
June Foray
June Foray is an American voice actress, best known as the voice of many animated characters...
. Jones' efforts are considered superior to the previous Deitch efforts (and most cartoons made during that time, albeit visually), and contain the memorable opening theme, in which Tom is trapped inside the "O" of his name.
Though Jones managed to recapture some of the magic from the original Hanna-Barbera efforts, MGM ended production on Tom and Jerry in 1967, by which time Sib Tower 12 had become MGM Animation/Visual Arts
MGM Animation/Visual Arts
MGM Animation/Visual Arts was an animation studio established in 1962 by animation director/producer Chuck Jones and producer Les Goldman as Sib Tower 12 Productions...
. Jones had moved on to television specials and the feature film The Phantom Tollbooth
The Phantom Tollbooth (film)
The Phantom Tollbooth is a 1970 American live-action/animated film based on Norton Juster's 1961 children's book The Phantom Tollbooth. This film was produced by Chuck Jones at MGM Animation/Visual Arts. Jones also directed the film, save for the live action bookends directed by fellow Warner Bros....
.
Tom and Jerry hit television
Saturday Evening Puss
Saturday Evening Puss is a 1950 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 48th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera who created the cat and mouse duo ten years earlier...
, a thin white teenager took her place instead, with both characters voiced by June Foray
June Foray
June Foray is an American voice actress, best known as the voice of many animated characters...
. However, recent telecasts on Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....
and Boomerang
Boomerang (TV channel)
Boomerang is a 24-hour American cable television channel owned by Turner Broadcasting System, a division of Time Warner. Boomerang specializes in reruns of animated programming from Time Warner's extensive archives, including pre-1986 MGM, Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
retain Mammy with new voiceover work performed by Thea Vidale
Thea Vidale
Thea Vidale , is an American stand-up comedian and actress.She began her career doing stand-up comedy in comic clubs in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles...
to remove the stereotypical black jargon featured on the original cartoon soundtracks.
Debuting on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
' Saturday morning schedule on September 25, 1965, Tom and Jerry moved to CBS Sundays two years later and remained there until September 17, 1972.
The intros of each episode shown on TV and DVD today are re-issues from the 1950s–1960s, with the exception of Puss Gets the Boot
Puss Gets the Boot
Puss Gets the Boot is a one-reel animated cartoon and the first Tom and Jerry short, although not billed as such in the cartoon. It was released on June 24, 1940 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
and The Night Before Christmas, which still retain their original opening and closing credits from the early 1940s.
Second Hanna-Barbera era (1975–1977)
In 1975, Tom and Jerry were reunited with Hanna and Barbera, who produced new Tom and Jerry cartoons for Saturday mornings. These 48 seven-minute short cartoons were paired with The Great Grape ApeThe Great Grape Ape Show
The Great Grape Ape Show is a Saturday morning cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions that was broadcast on ABC from 1975 to 1978.-Summary:...
and Mumbly
Mumbly
The Mumbly Cartoon Show was a Saturday morning cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions which aired on ABC from 1976-77.-Bio:Mumbly is a cartoon dog character famous for his wheezy laugh, voiced by Don Messick. Mumbly bears a strong resemblance to Muttley from the animated series Wacky Races...
cartoons, to create The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape Show, The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show, and The Tom and Jerry/Mumbly Show, all of which initially ran on ABC Saturday Morning between September 6, 1975 and September 3, 1977. In these cartoons, Tom and Jerry (now with a red bow tie), who had been enemies during their formative years, became nonviolent pals who went on adventures together, as Hanna-Barbera had to meet the stringent rules against violence for children's TV. The Tom and Jerry Show is still airing on the Canadian channel, Teletoon
Télétoon (Canadian TV channel)
Télétoon is a Canadian French language Category A specialty channel that specializes in animation programming. Télétoon is owned by Teletoon Canada Inc; a 50/50 partnership between Astral Media and Corus Entertainment...
, and its classical counterpart, Teletoon Retro
Teletoon Retro
Teletoon Retro is a Canadian English language Category B specialty channel based on the Teletoon programming block Teletoon Retro. The service consists of animation series from Canada and around the world, all of which commenced production at least 10 years prior to their exhibition...
.
Filmation era (1980–1982)
Filmation StudiosFilmation
Filmation Associates was an American production company that produced animation and live action programming for television during the latter half of the 20th century. Located in Reseda, California, the animation studio was founded in 1963...
(in association with MGM Television
MGM Television
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television is an American television production/distribution launched in 1955 and a subsidiary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc....
) also tried their hands at producing a Tom and Jerry TV series. Their version, The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show
The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show
The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show is an animated television program produced by Filmation for MGM Television in 1980, on CBS for Saturday mornings. The show lasted two seasons and the individual episodes were eventually added to syndicated Tom and Jerry packages, and also occasionally appeared on...
, debuted in 1980, and also featured new cartoons starring Droopy, Spike (another bulldog created by Tex Avery), and Barney Bear
Barney Bear
Barney Bear was a series of animated cartoon short subjects produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio. The titular character was an anthropomorphic cartoon character, a sluggish, sleepy bear who often is in pursuit of nothing but peace and quiet....
, not seen since the original MGM shorts. The Filmation Tom and Jerry cartoons were noticeably different from Hanna-Barbera's efforts, as they returned Tom and Jerry to the original chase formula, with a somewhat more "slapstick
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
" humor format. This incarnation, much like the 1975 version, was not as well received by audience
Audience
An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any medium...
s as the originals, and lasted on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
Saturday Morning from September 6, 1980 to September 4, 1982. Its animation style bore a strong resemblance to that of The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle
The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle
The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle is an updated version of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle cartoons from the 1940s. The television series was produced by Filmation, and aired from 1979 to 1981 on CBS with over 32 episodes produced...
.
Tom and Jerrys new owners
In 1986, MGM was purchased by WTBS founder Ted TurnerTed Turner
Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...
. Turner sold the company a short while later, but retained MGM's pre-1986 film library, thus Tom and Jerry became the property of Turner Entertainment
Turner Entertainment
Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. is an American media company founded by Ted Turner. Now owned by Time Warner, the company is largely responsible for overseeing its library for worldwide distribution Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. (commonly known as Turner Entertainment Co.) is an American...
(where the rights stand today via Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
), and have in subsequent years appeared on Turner-run stations, such as TBS, TNT
Turner Network Television
Turner Network Television is an American cable television channel created by media mogul Ted Turner and currently owned by the Turner Broadcasting System division of Time Warner...
, Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....
, The WB
The WB Television Network
The WB Television Network is a former television network in the United States that was launched on January 11, 1995 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and Tribune Broadcasting. On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and Warner Bros...
, Boomerang
Boomerang (TV channel)
Boomerang is a 24-hour American cable television channel owned by Turner Broadcasting System, a division of Time Warner. Boomerang specializes in reruns of animated programming from Time Warner's extensive archives, including pre-1986 MGM, Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
, and Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
.
Tom and Jerry Kids (1990–1994)
One of the biggest trends for Saturday morning television in the 1980s and 1990s was the "babyfication" of older, classic cartoonstars, and on March 2, 1990, Tom and Jerry Kids, co-produced by Turner Entertainment and Hanna-Barbera Productions (which would be sold to Turner in 1991) debuted on Fox Kids
Fox Kids
Fox Kids was the Fox Broadcasting Company's American children's programming division and brand name from September 8, 1990 until September 7, 2002. It was owned by Fox Television Entertainment airing programming on Monday–Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings.Depending on the show, the...
and for a couple of years, aired on British children's show, CBBC
CBBC
CBBC is one of two brand names used for the BBC's children's television strands. Between 1985 and 2002, CBBC was the name given to all the BBC's programmes on TV for children aged under 14...
. It featured a youthful version of the famous cat-and-mouse duo chasing each other. As with the 1975 H-B series, Jerry wears his red bowtie, while Tom now wears a red cap. Spike and his son Tyke (who now had talking dialogue) and Droopy and his son Dripple, appeared in back-up segments for the show, which ran until November 18, 1994.
Individual episodes (2001 and 2005)
In 2001, a new television special entitled Tom and Jerry: The Mansion Cat premiered on BoomerangBoomerang (TV channel)
Boomerang is a 24-hour American cable television channel owned by Turner Broadcasting System, a division of Time Warner. Boomerang specializes in reruns of animated programming from Time Warner's extensive archives, including pre-1986 MGM, Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
. It featured Joe Barbera (who was also a creative consultant) as the voice of Tom's owner, whose face is never seen. In this cartoon, Jerry, housed in a habitrail
Habitrail
Habitrail, a product made by the Hagen corporation, is a series of translucent plastic tubes and "houses" for use in home terrariums, designed especially for small pets such as mice or hamsters. The design of the Habitrail is modular and can be configured however the owner likes, as well as...
, is as much of a house pet as Tom is, and their owner has to remind Tom to not "blame everything on the mouse".
In 2005, a new Tom and Jerry theatrical short, entitled The Karate Guard, which had been written and directed by Barbera and Spike Brandt, storyboard
Storyboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....
ed by Joseph Barbera and Iwao Takamoto
Iwao Takamoto
Iwao Takamoto was a Japanese-American animator, television producer, and film director. He was most famous as being a production and character designer for Hanna-Barbera Productions shows such as Scooby-Doo....
and produced by Joseph Barbera, Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone premiered in Los Angeles cinemas on December 16, 2005. As part of the celebration of Tom and Jerrys sixty-fifth anniversary, this marked Barbera's first return as a writer, director and storyboard artist on the series since his and Hanna's original MGM cartoon shorts. Director/animator, Spike Brandt was nominated for an Annie award for best character animation. The short debuted on Cartoon Network on January 27, 2006.
Warner Bros. era (2006–2008)
During the first half of 2006, a new series called Tom and Jerry TalesTom and Jerry Tales
Tom and Jerry Tales is an animated television series which began production in 2005, and premiered in the United States on September 23, 2006 and cancelled on March 22, 2008 on Kids' WB!. It is the fourth television show in the franchise that continues the chase and violence of the cat and mouse...
was produced at Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation is the animation division of Warner Bros., a subsidiary of Time Warner. The studio is closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros...
. Thirteen half-hour episodes (each consisting of three shorts, some of them—like The Karate Guard—were produced and completed in 2003 as part of a 30-plus theatrical cartoon schedule aborted after the financial disaster of Looney Tunes Back in Action) were produced, with only markets outside of the United States and United Kingdom signed up. The show then came to the UK in February 2006 on Boomerang, and it went to the U.S. on The CW4Kids
The CW4Kids
The CW4Kids is a Saturday morning cartoon block on The CW Television Network that premiered on May 24, 2008 in the place of Kids' WB...
on The CW
The CW Television Network
The CW Television Network is a television network in the United States launched at the beginning of the 2006–2007 television season. It is a joint venture between CBS Corporation, the former owners of United Paramount Network , and Time Warner's Warner Bros., former majority owner of The WB...
. Tales is the first Tom and Jerry TV series that utilizes the original style of the classic shorts, along with the violence. The series was canceled on March 22, 2008.
Tom and Jerry outside the United States
When shown on terrestrial television in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
(from 1967 to 2000, usually on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
) Tom and Jerry cartoons were not cut for violence and Mammy was retained. As well as having regular slots (mainly after the evening BBC News with around 2 episodes shown every evening and occasionally shown on children's network CBBC
CBBC
CBBC is one of two brand names used for the BBC's children's television strands. Between 1985 and 2002, CBBC was the name given to all the BBC's programmes on TV for children aged under 14...
in the morning), Tom and Jerry served the BBC in another way. When faced with disruption to the schedules (such as those occurring when live broadcasts overrun), the BBC would invariably turn to Tom and Jerry to fill any gaps, confident that it would retain much of an audience that might otherwise channel hop. This proved particularly helpful in 1993, when Noel's House Party
Noel's House Party
Noel's House Party was a BBC television light entertainment show hosted by Noel Edmonds that was broadcast live on Saturday evenings throughout the 1990s. It was set in a large house in the fictional village of Crinkley Bottom, leading to much innuendo. The show was broadcast during the...
had to be cancelled due to an IRA
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
bomb scare at BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre at White City in West London is the headquarters of BBC Television. Officially opened on 29 June 1960, it remains one of the largest to this day; having featured over the years as backdrop to many BBC programmes, it is one of the most readily recognisable such facilities...
- Tom and Jerry was shown instead, bridging the gap until the next programm. In 2006, a mother complained to OFCOM
Ofcom
Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...
of the smoking scenes shown in the cartoons, since Tom often attempts to impress love interests with the habit, resulting in reports that the smoking scenes in Tom and Jerry films may be subject to censorship.
Due to its lack of dialogue, Tom and Jerry was easily translated into various foreign languages. Tom and Jerry began broadcast in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
in 1964. A 2005 nationwide survey taken in Japan by TV Asahi
TV Asahi
, also known as EX and , is a Japanese television network headquartered in Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The company writes its name in lower-case letters, tv asahi, in its logo and public-image materials. The company also owns All-Nippon News Network....
, sampling age groups from teenagers to adults in their sixties, ranked Tom and Jerry #85 in a list of the top 100 "anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
" of all time; while their web poll taken after the airing of the list ranked it at #58 - the only non-Japanese animation on the list, and beating anime classics like Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
is a shōnen manga series written and illustrated by the manga artist group Clamp. It takes place in the same fictional universe as many of Clamp's other manga series, most notably xxxHolic. The plot follows how Sakura, the princess of the Kingdom of Clow, loses her soul and how Syaoran, a young...
, A Little Princess Sara, and the ultra-classics Macross
Macross
is a series of science fiction mecha anime, directed by Shōji Kawamori of Studio Nue in 1982. The franchise features a fictional history of Earth/Humanity after the year 1999. It consists of three TV series, four movies, six OVAs, one light novel and five manga series, all sponsored by Big West...
and Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell
is a Japanese multimedia franchise composed of manga, animated films, anime series, video games and novels. It focuses on the activities of the counter-terrorist organization Public Security Section 9 in a futuristic, cyberpunk Japan ....
(it should be noted that in Japan, the word "anime" refers to all animation regardless of origin, not just Japanese animation). Tom and Jerry is long-time licensed mascots for Nagoya-based Juuroku Bank.
Tom and Jerry have long been popular in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. However, the cartoons are overdubbed with rhyming German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
verse that describes what is happening onscreen, sometimes adding or revising information. The different episodes are usually embedded in the episode Jerry's Diary
Jerry's Diary
Jerry's Diary is a 1949 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 45th Tom and Jerry short released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, produced by Fred Quimby, scored by Scott Bradley, and animated by Kenneth Muse and Ed Barge.-Plot:Tom places a bunch of traps in front...
(1949), in which Tom reads about past adventures.
In India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, South East Asia, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
, the Middle East, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
, Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, other Latin American countries, and in eastern European countries (such as Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
), Cartoon Network still airs Tom and Jerry cartoons every day. In Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, local channels also air the show in their daytime programming slot. Tom and Jerry was one of the few cartoons of western origin broadcast in Czechoslovakia (1988) and Romania (until 1989) before the fall of Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
in 1989.
Reception
In January 2009, IGN named Tom and Jerry as the 66th best in the Top 100 Animated TV Shows. In an interview found on the DVD releases, several MADtvMADtv
MADtv is an American sketch comedy television series. It licensed the name and logo of Mad, but otherwise had no connection with the humor magazine outside the animated Spy vs. Spy and Don Martin cartoon shorts and images of Alfred E. Neuman that the show featured during the late 1990s. Its first...
cast members stated that Tom and Jerry is one of their biggest influences for slapstick comedy.
Feature films
saw the first international release of Tom and Jerry: The MovieTom and Jerry: The Movie
Tom and Jerry: The Movie is a 1992 American animated musical film directed by Phil Roman, and produced by Film Roman and Turner Pictures. It is a film adaptation of the Tom and Jerry series of theatrical shorts....
when the film was released overseas to theaters in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
of that year and then domestically by Miramax Films
Miramax Films
Miramax Films is an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films. For its first 14 years the company was privately owned by its founders, Bob and Harvey Weinstein...
in . Barbera served as creative consultant for the picture, which was produced and directed by Phil Roman
Phil Roman
Philip Roman , is an animator. He is the founder of animation studios Film Roman and Phil Roman Entertainment. Roman is of Mexican American descent....
. A musical film with a structure similar to MGM's blockbusters, The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz (1939 film)
The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs...
and Singin' in the Rain
Singin' in the Rain
Singin' in the Rain is a 1952 American comedy musical film starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds and directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, with Kelly also providing the choreography...
, the movie was criticized by reviewers and audiences alike for being predictable and for giving the pair dialogue (and songs) through the entire movie. As a result, it failed at the box office. In 2001, Warner Bros. (which had, by then, merged with Turner and assumed its properties) released the duo's first direct-to-video movie, Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring
Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring
Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring is a 2001 animated direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry. This was the first made-for-video attempt to recapture the style of Hanna and Barbera's original Tom & Jerry theatricals...
, in which Tom covets a ring which grants mystical powers to the wearer, and has become accidentally stuck on Jerry's head. It would mark the last time Hanna and Barbera co-produced a Tom and Jerry cartoon together, as William Hanna died shortly after The Magic Ring was released.
Four years later, Bill Kopp
Bill Kopp
Bill Kopp is an American animator and film director who animated the Whammy on the 1980s game show Press Your Luck, and voiced the title character on Nelvana's Eek! The Cat and Kutter in The Terrible Thunderlizards, which he created with Savage Steve Holland...
scripted and directed two more Tom and Jerry DTV features for the studio, Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars
Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars
Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars is a Tom and Jerry outer-space-themed direct-to-video film produced by Warner Bros. Animation.-Plot:...
and Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry
Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry
Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry is a 2005 animated direct-to-video film starring the oscar-winning cat and mouse pair, Tom and Jerry. The subtitle is a parody of the hit Universal Studios film, The Fast and The Furious. It was released theatrically in select cites of the U.S...
, the latter one based on a story by Barbera. Both were released on DVD in 2005, marking the celebration of Tom and Jerry's 65th anniversary. In 2006, another direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers
Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers
Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers is a 2006 animated made-for-video motion picture starring Tom and Jerry.-Plot:The movie starts above a big ocean, which was having a huge storm with very loud thunder. A group of jolly pirates are sailing on their ship, and all of them are scared of the thunderstorm...
, tells the story about the pair having to work together to find the treasure. Joe came up with the storyline for the next film, Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale
Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale
Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale is a 2007 holiday themed animated direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry produced by Warner Bros. Animation...
, as well as the initial idea of synchronizing the on-screen actions to music from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. This DTV, directed by Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone, would be Joe Barbera's last Tom and Jerry project due to his passing in December 2006. The holiday-set animated film was released on DVD in late 2007, and dedicated to Barbera. A new direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes
Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes
Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes is a 2010 animated direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry produced by Warner Bros. Animation. It is the first Tom and Jerry direct-to-video film to be produced without any of its original creators, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera...
, was released on August 24, 2010. It is the first made-for-video Tom and Jerry movie produced without any of the characters' original creators. The most recent direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry and the Wizard of Oz
Tom and Jerry and the Wizard of Oz
Tom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz is a 2011 animated direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry, produced by Warner Bros. Animation. It is a crossover film version of MGM's famed 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, with characters from the Tom and Jerry/Droopy universe sharing screen with Dorothy and her...
, was released on August 23, 2011 and was the first made-for-video Tom and Jerry movie made for Blu-ray
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
. It had a preview showing on Cartoon Network.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
has plans for a theatrically released film starring Tom and Jerry. The film will be, according to Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
, "an origin story that reveals how Tom and Jerry first meet and form their rivalry before getting lost in Chicago and reluctantly working together during an arduous journey home". So far Dan Lin
Dan Lin
Dan Lin is an American film producer and CEO of Lin Pictures, a filmed entertainment production company that he formed in January 2008. In September 2008, he was honoured as one of Variety's "10 producers to watch."-Early Life:...
will be producing the film, while screenwriter Eric Gravning is also hired on the project. Warner Bros., in their Variety review, replied they are using Tom and Jerry to create their own "Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Alvin and the Chipmunks is an American animated music group created by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. in 1958. The group consists of three singing animated anthropomorphic chipmunks: Alvin, the mischievous troublemaker, who quickly became the star of the group; Simon, the tall, bespectacled intellectual;...
family franchise".
Controversy
Politically Correct
Politically Correct may refer to:*Political correctness, language, ideas, policies, or behaviour seeking to minimize offence to groups of people-See also:*Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, book by James Finn Garner, published in 1994...
in later years. Many shorts featured racial stereotypes, such as characters shown in blackface
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...
following an explosion. Joseph Barbera, who was responsible for these gags, claimed that years earlier he had an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
friend, and that the racial gags in Tom and Jerry did not reflect his racial opinion they were just common in Hollywood films at the time. However by modern cultural standards Blackface is associated with racial stereotyping and is regarded as racist. Most of the blackface gags have been cut when shown on television today, although The Yankee Doodle Mouse
The Yankee Doodle Mouse
The Yankee Doodle Mouse is a 1943 American one-reel animated cartoon. It is the eleventh Tom and Jerry short produced by Fred Quimby, and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with musical supervision by Scott Bradley and animation by Irven Spence, Pete Burness, Kenneth Muse and George Gordon...
blackface gag as well as another blackface gag at the end of Safety Second
Safety Second
Safety Second is a 1950 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 51st Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby. The working title for this cartoon was F'r Safety Sake before Hanna and Barbera finally settled for Safety Second...
, and a short scene from The Dog House remain intact, depending on the country. The black maid, Mammy Two Shoes, is often considered a racist stereotype because she is depicted as a poor black woman who has a rodent problem. Her voice was redubbed by Turner in the mid-1990s in hopes of making the character sound less stereotypical; the resulting accent sounded more Irish. One cartoon in particular, His Mouse Friday
His Mouse Friday
His Mouse Friday is a 1951 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 59th Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby for Metro Goldwyn Mayer. It was animated by Kenneth Muse, Irven Spence, Ray Patterson and Ed Barge and released in theatres on July 7,...
, is often completely out of television rotation due to the cannibals being seen as racist stereotypes. If shown, the cannibals' dialogue is edited out, although their mouths can be seen moving.
In 2006, United Kingdom channel Boomerang
Boomerang (British TV channel)
Boomerang is a television channel broadcast in the United Kingdom and in the Republic of Ireland launched on 27 May 2000. It is broadcast 24 hours on the Sky, Virgin Media, TalkTalk TV, Top Up TV, UPC Ireland. It mostly features classic cartoons such as Scooby Doo and Tom and Jerry, and...
made plans to edit Tom and Jerry cartoons being aired in the UK where the characters were seen to be smoking in a manner that was "condoned, acceptable or glamorized." This followed a complaint from a viewer that the cartoons were not appropriate for younger viewers, and a subsequent investigation by UK media watchdog OFCOM
Ofcom
Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...
. It has also taken the U.S. approach by editing out blackface gags, though this seems to be random as not all scenes of this type are cut.
Other formats
Tom and Jerry began appearing in comic bookComic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s in 1942, as one of the features in Our Gang Comics. In 1949, with MGM's live-action Our Gang
Our Gang
Our Gang, also known as The Little Rascals or Hal Roach's Rascals, was a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and the adventures they had together. Created by comedy producer Hal Roach, the series is noted for showing children behaving in a relatively...
shorts having ceased production five years earlier, the series was renamed Tom and Jerry Comics. The pair continued to appear in various books for the rest of the 20th century.
The pair have also appeared in a number of video games as well, spanning titles for systems from the Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...
and Super NES
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
and Nintendo 64
Nintendo 64
The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...
to more recent entries for PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
, Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
, and Nintendo GameCube
Nintendo GameCube
The , officially abbreviated to NGC in Japan and GCN in other regions, is a sixth generation video game console released by Nintendo on September 15, 2001 in Japan, November 18, 2001 in North America, May 3, 2002 in Europe, and May 17, 2002 in Australia...
.
Cultural influences
Throughout the years, the term and title Tom and Jerry became practically synonymous with never-ending rivalry, as much as the related "cat and mouse fight" metaphor has. Yet in Tom and Jerry it wasn't the more powerful (Tom) that usually came out on top.Author Steven Millhauser
Steven Millhauser
Steven Millhauser is an American novelist and short story writer. He won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Martin Dressler. The prize brought many of his older books back into print.-Life and career:...
wrote a short story called Cat 'n' Mouse
Cat 'n' Mouse
Cat 'n' Mouse is an album by guitarist John Abercrombie with violinist Mark Feldman, bassist Marc Johnson, and drummer Joey Baron recorded in 2000 and released on the ECM label-Reception:The Allmusic review awarded the album 3 stars.-Track listing:...
which pits the duo against one another as antagonist and protagonist in literary form. Millhauser allows his reader access to the thoughts and emotions of the two characters in a way that wasn't done in the cartoon.
In popular culture
The SimpsonsThe Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
characters, Itchy & Scratchy, the featured cartoon on the Krusty the Clown Show, are spoofs of Tom and Jerry – a "cartoon within a cartoon." The cartoon violence of Tom and Jerry is parodied and intensified, as Itchy (the mouse) dispatches Scratchy in a variety of gratuitous, gory methods.
In another episode, "Krusty Gets Kancelled
Krusty Gets Kancelled
"Krusty Gets Kancelled" is the twenty-second and final episode of The Simpsons fourth season. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 13, 1993. In the episode, a new show featuring a puppet named Gabbo premieres in Springfield and competes with Krusty the Clown's show...
", the short cartoon "Worker and Parasite", is a reference to the Eastern European
History of Russian animation
The History of Russian animation is very rich, but is so far a nearly unexplored field for Western film theory and history. As most of Russia's production of animation for film|cinema and television was created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to as the History of Soviet...
Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Gene Deitch. To produce the animation, director David Silverman
David Silverman
David Silverman is an animator best known for directing numerous episodes of the animated TV series The Simpsons, as well as The Simpsons Movie...
photocopied several drawings and made the animation very jerky.
Anchors Aweigh (film)
Anchors Aweigh is a 1945 American musical comedy film directed by George Sidney in which two sailors go on a four-day shore leave in Hollywood, accompanied by music and song, meet an aspiring young singer and try to help her get an audition at MGM...
, in which, through the use of special effects, he performs a dance routine with Gene Kelly
Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer...
. In this sequence, Gene Kelly is telling a class of school kids a fictional tale of how he earned his Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It is bestowed by the President, in the name of Congress, upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her...
: Jerry is the king of a magical world populated with cartoon animals, which he has forbidden to dance as he himself does not know how. Gene Kelly's character then comes along and guides Jerry through an elaborate dance routine, resulting in Jerry awarding him with a medal. Jerry speaks and sings in this short film; his voice is performed by Sara Berner. Tom has a cameo in the sequence as one of Jerry's servants. This sequence was later lifted and reanimated frame-for-frame in an episode of Family Guy, where Jerry was replaced with Stewie.
Esther Williams
Esther Jane Williams is a retired American competitive swimmer and MGM movie star.Williams set multiple national and regional swimming records in her late teens as part of the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team...
in a dream sequence in another big-screen musical, Dangerous When Wet
Dangerous When Wet
Dangerous When Wet is an Technicolor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical starring Esther Williams, Fernando Lamas, and Jack Carson, directed by Charles Walters, and featuring an animated swimming sequence starring Williams with the famous cat-and-mouse duo, Tom and Jerry.-Plot summary:Katie Higgins is...
. In the film, Tom and Jerry are chasing each other underwater, when they run into Esther Williams, with whom they perform an extended synchronized swimming routine. Tom and Jerry have to save Williams from a lecherous octopus, who tries to lure and woo her into his (many) arms.
In 1988, the duo were lined up to appear in the Oscar-winning Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
/Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment
Amblin Entertainment is an American film and television production company founded by director and producer Steven Spielberg and film producers Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall in 1981. Amblin is only a production company, and has never distributed its own movies, nor has it fully financed its...
film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
, a homage to classic American animation. However when the executive producer Steven Speilberg went to ask for the rights in 1986, M.G.M's pre-1986 library (which Tom and Jerry were a part of) was being purchased by Turner Entertainment
Turner Entertainment
Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. is an American media company founded by Ted Turner. Now owned by Time Warner, the company is largely responsible for overseeing its library for worldwide distribution Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. (commonly known as Turner Entertainment Co.) is an American...
who were not willing to lend their most popular cartoon characters at this time (however they did give the rights to Droopy). Also, William Hanna
William Hanna
William Denby Hanna was an American animator, director, producer, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of people for much of the 20th century. When he was a young child, Hanna's family moved frequently, but they settled in Compton, California, by...
and Joseph Barbera
Joseph Barbera
Joseph Roland Barbera was an influential American animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and cartoon artist, whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of fans worldwide for much of the twentieth century....
claimed since they created Tom and Jerry, Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
owned them. Due to these legal difficulties Speilberg was unable to acquire the rights and Tom and Jerry's inclusion in the film was scrapped.
Johnny Knoxville
Johnny Knoxville
Philip John Clapp , better known by his stage name Johnny Knoxville, is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, stunt performer, best known for being the co-creator and principal star of the MTV reality series Jackass, with the catchphrase "I'm Johnny Knoxville, and welcome to Jackass."-Early...
from Jackass
Jackass (TV series)
jackass is an American reality series, originally shown on MTV from 2000 to 2002, featuring people performing various dangerous, crude, ridiculous, self-injuring stunts and pranks...
has stated that watching Tom and Jerry inspired many of the stunts in the movies.
Home media
There have been several Tom and Jerry DVDs released in RegionDVD region code
DVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
1 (the United States and Canada), including a series of two-disc sets known as the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection
Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection
The Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection is a series of two-disc DVD sets, released by Warner Home Video. Originally planned as an uncut, chronological set, the issued Spotlight Collection sets wound up including selected Tom and Jerry shorts on each volume...
. There have been negative responses to Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, due to some of the cartoons included on each having cuts and redubbed Mammy Two-Shoes dialogue. A replacement program offering uncut versions of the shorts on DVD was later announced. There are also negative responses to Vol. 3, due to Mouse Cleaning
Mouse Cleaning
Mouse Cleaning is a 1948 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 38th Tom and Jerry short. The title is a play on "house cleaning". It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on December 11, 1948 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
and Casanova Cat
Casanova Cat
Casanova Cat is a 1951 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 55th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby. This cartoon marks the final appearance of Toodles Galore during the Golden Age of Hollywood animation.- Plot :A newspaper headline...
being excluded from these sets and His Mouse Friday having an extreme zooming-in towards the end.
There have been two Tom and Jerry DVD sets in Region
DVD region code
DVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
2. In Western Europe, most of the Tom and Jerry shorts have been released (only two, The Million Dollar Cat
The Million Dollar Cat
The Million Dollar Cat is a 1944 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 14th Tom and Jerry short. It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on May 6, 1944 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
and Busy Buddies
Busy Buddies
Busy Buddies is the 100th one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1956, directed and produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with music by Scott Bradley. The cartoon was animated by Irven Spence, Lewis Marshall, Kenneth Muse and Ed Barge, with backgrounds by Robert Gentle and layouts...
, were not included) under the name Tom and Jerry — The Classic Collection. Almost all of the shorts contain re-dubbed Mammy Two-Shoes tracks. Despite these cuts, His Mouse Friday, the only Tom and Jerry cartoon to be completely taken off the airwaves in some countries due to claims of racism, is included, unedited with the exception of extreme zooming-in towards the end to avoid showing a particularly race based caricature. These are regular TV prints sent from the U.S. in the 1990s. Shorts produced in CinemaScope are presented in pan and scan
Pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects...
. Fortunately Mouse Cleaning
Mouse Cleaning
Mouse Cleaning is a 1948 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 38th Tom and Jerry short. The title is a play on "house cleaning". It was produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on December 11, 1948 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
and Casanova Cat
Casanova Cat
Casanova Cat is a 1951 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 55th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby. This cartoon marks the final appearance of Toodles Galore during the Golden Age of Hollywood animation.- Plot :A newspaper headline...
are presented uncut on as part of these sets.
Tom and Jerry — The Classic Collection is available in 6 double-sided DVDs (issued in the United Kingdom) and 12 single-layer DVDs (issued throughout Western Europe, including the United Kingdom). Another Tom and Jerry Region
DVD region code
DVD region codes are a digital-rights management technique designed to allow film distributors to control aspects of a release, including content, release date, and price, according to the region...
2 DVD set is available in Japan. As with Tom and Jerry — The Classic Collection in Western Europe, almost all of the shorts (including His Mouse Friday) contain cuts. Slicked-up Pup
Slicked-up Pup
Slicked-up Pup is a 1951 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 60th Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby. The cartoon was scored by Scott Bradley and animated by Ed Barge, Kenneth Muse, Irven Spence and Ray Patterson...
, Tom's Photo Finish
Tom's Photo Finish
Tom's Photo Finish is the 109th one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1956, directed and produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with music by Scott Bradley. The cartoon was animated by Kenneth Muse, Bill Schipek, Lewis Marshall, Jack Carr, Herman Cohen and Ken Southworth, with...
, Busy Buddies
Busy Buddies
Busy Buddies is the 100th one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1956, directed and produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with music by Scott Bradley. The cartoon was animated by Irven Spence, Lewis Marshall, Kenneth Muse and Ed Barge, with backgrounds by Robert Gentle and layouts...
, The Egg and Jerry
The Egg and Jerry
The Egg and Jerry is the 99th one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1956, directed and produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with music by Scott Bradley. It is a CinemaScope remake of 1949's Hatch Up Your Troubles, and the first of the Cinemascope remakes of a few cartoons...
, Tops with Pops
Tops with Pops
Tops with Pops is the 105th one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1956, directed and produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with music by Scott Bradley. It is a shot-for-shot CinemaScope remake of 1949's Love That Pup...
and Feedin' the Kiddie
Feedin' the Kiddie
Feedin' the Kiddie is the 107th one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1956, directed and produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with music by Scott Bradley. It is a CinemaScope remake of 1948's Academy Award winning cartoon, The Little Orphan...
are excluded from these sets. However, these episodes are included in the UK version. Shorts produced in CinemaScope are presented in pan and scan
Pan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects...
for showing on the 4:3 aspect ratio
Aspect ratio
The aspect ratio of a shape is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. It may be applied to two characteristic dimensions of a three-dimensional shape, such as the ratio of the longest and shortest axis, or for symmetrical objects that are described by just two measurements,...
television screen.
The Chuck Jones-era Tom and Jerry shorts were released in a two-disc set entitled Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection on June 23, 2009. The MGM/UA laserdisc box sets issued in the 1990s, "The Art of Tom & Jerry" volumes 1 and 2, contain all the MGM shorts up to (but not including) the Deitch Era, including letter-box versions of the shorts filmed in CinemaScope, shown in their original aspect ratio. These are in fact the best source of uncut cartoons, as they are all intact save for His Mouse Friday
His Mouse Friday
His Mouse Friday is a 1951 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 59th Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby for Metro Goldwyn Mayer. It was animated by Kenneth Muse, Irven Spence, Ray Patterson and Ed Barge and released in theatres on July 7,...
(dialogue has been wiped) and Saturday Evening Puss
Saturday Evening Puss
Saturday Evening Puss is a 1950 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 48th Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera who created the cat and mouse duo ten years earlier...
which is the re-drawn version with June Foray's voice added. A "The Art of Tom & Jerry" volume 3 contain all the Chuck Jones-era Tom and Jerry shorts.
On December 1, 2010, animation expert Jerry Beck
Jerry Beck
Jerry Beck is a well-known animation historian, with ten books and numerous articles to his credit. He is also an animation producer, an industry consultant to Warner Bros., and has been an executive with Nickelodeon and Disney....
announced on the Shokus Internet Radio call-in talk program, Stu's Show that there are "far-in-the-future" plans for a Tom and Jerry Golden Collection
Tom and Jerry Golden Collection
The Tom and Jerry Golden Collection is a series of two-disc DVD and Blu-ray sets, currently in production by Warner Home Video. The releases are expected to be uncut and in chronological order...
, done at the highest level, with material not yet seen before, aimed at the collector in a way that the previous "Spotlight
Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection
The Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection is a series of two-disc DVD sets, released by Warner Home Video. Originally planned as an uncut, chronological set, the issued Spotlight Collection sets wound up including selected Tom and Jerry shorts on each volume...
" DVD releases never were. The first volume of the "Golden Collection" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 25, 2011.
Theatrical shorts
The following cartoons won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: CartoonsAcademy Award for Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....
:
- 1943: The Yankee Doodle MouseThe Yankee Doodle MouseThe Yankee Doodle Mouse is a 1943 American one-reel animated cartoon. It is the eleventh Tom and Jerry short produced by Fred Quimby, and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with musical supervision by Scott Bradley and animation by Irven Spence, Pete Burness, Kenneth Muse and George Gordon...
- 1944: Mouse TroubleMouse TroubleMouse Trouble is a 1944 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 17th Tom and Jerry short produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with music by Scott Bradley . The cartoon was animated by Ray Patterson, Irven Spence, Ken Muse and Pete Burness...
- 1945: Quiet Please!
- 1946: The Cat ConcertoThe Cat ConcertoThe Cat Concerto is a 1946 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 29th Tom and Jerry short, produced in Technicolor in 1946 and released to theatres on April 26, 1947 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. It was produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with musical...
- 1948: The Little OrphanThe Little OrphanThe Little Orphan is a 1949 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 40th Tom and Jerry short, released in theatres on April 30, 1949 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. It was produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with music by Scott Bradley...
- 1951: The Two MouseketeersThe Two MouseketeersThe Two Mouseketeers is a 1952 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 65th Tom and Jerry short, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on March 15, 1952 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. It was produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with musical supervision...
- 1952: Johann MouseJohann MouseJohann Mouse is the 75th one-reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1953 directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby with music by Scott Bradley and Jakob Gimpel and narration by Hans Conried...
These cartoons were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons, but did not win:
- 1940: Puss Gets the BootPuss Gets the BootPuss Gets the Boot is a one-reel animated cartoon and the first Tom and Jerry short, although not billed as such in the cartoon. It was released on June 24, 1940 by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer...
- 1941: The Night Before Christmas
- 1947: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. MouseDr. Jekyll and Mr. MouseDr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse is a 1947 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 30th Tom and Jerry short. The cartoon was released on 14 June 1947, and was directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, produced by Fred Quimby and animated by Ed Barge, Michael Lah, Kenneth Muse and Al Grandmain. The episode...
- 1949: Hatch Up Your TroublesHatch Up Your TroublesHatch Up Your Troubles is a 1949 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 41st Tom and Jerry short produced by Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, with musical supervision by Scott Bradley and animation by Ed Barge, Ray Patterson, Irven Spence and Kenneth Muse...
- 1950: Jerry's CousinJerry's CousinJerry's Cousin is a 1951 one-reel animated cartoon and is the 57th Tom and Jerry short. Made in 1950, but released in 1951 on April 7 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it was nominated for the 1950 Academy Award for Best Short Cartoon, but lost to Gerald McBoing-Boing, a UPA production...
- 1954: Touché, Pussy Cat!Touché, Pussy Cat!Touché, Pussy Cat! is the 89th one-reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1954 directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby with music by Scott Bradley...
These cartoons were nominated for the Annie Award
Annie Award
The Annie Awards have been presented by the Los Angeles, California branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood since 1972...
in the Individual Achievements Category: Character Animation, but did not win:
- 1946: Springtime for ThomasSpringtime for ThomasSpringtime for Thomas is a 1946 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the 23rd Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and produced by Fred Quimby.- Plot :...
- 1955: That's My MommyThat's My MommyThat's My Mommy is the 97th one reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1955, directed and produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera with music by Scott Bradley....
- 1956: Muscle Beach TomMuscle Beach TomMuscle Beach Tom is the 101st one-reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1956, directed and produced by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. The cartoon was animated by Lewis Marshall, Kenneth Muse, Ed Barge, and Irven Spence , with backgrounds by Robert Gentle and layouts by Richard Bickenbach...
- 2005: The Karate Guard
Television shows
- The Tom and Jerry Show (ABC, 1975)
- The Tom and Jerry Comedy ShowThe Tom and Jerry Comedy ShowThe Tom and Jerry Comedy Show is an animated television program produced by Filmation for MGM Television in 1980, on CBS for Saturday mornings. The show lasted two seasons and the individual episodes were eventually added to syndicated Tom and Jerry packages, and also occasionally appeared on...
(CBS, 1980–1982) - Tom & Jerry Kids (FOX, 1990–1995)
- Tom and Jerry TalesTom and Jerry TalesTom and Jerry Tales is an animated television series which began production in 2005, and premiered in the United States on September 23, 2006 and cancelled on March 22, 2008 on Kids' WB!. It is the fourth television show in the franchise that continues the chase and violence of the cat and mouse...
(The CW, 2006–2008)
Packaged shows and programming blocks
- Tom and Jerry (1960s packaged show) (CBS, 1965-1972)
- Tom and Jerry on BBC One (BBC, 1967–2000)
- Tom and Jerry's Funhouse on TBSTom and Jerry's Funhouse on TBSTom and Jerry's Funhouse on TBS was a weekday morning/afternoon programming block on TBS that aired from 1986 to 1995. TBS Log It contained classic animated cartoons and live-action shorts including: Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes and The Three Stooges.-External links:* *...
(TBS, 1986–1989) - Cartoon Network's Tom and Jerry Show (Cartoon Network, 1992–present)
Television specials
- Hanna-Barbera's 50th: A Yabba Dabba Doo Celebration (TNT, 1989)
- Tom and Jerry: The Mansion Cat (Boomerang, 2001)
Theatrical films
- Tom and Jerry: The MovieTom and Jerry: The MovieTom and Jerry: The Movie is a 1992 American animated musical film directed by Phil Roman, and produced by Film Roman and Turner Pictures. It is a film adaptation of the Tom and Jerry series of theatrical shorts....
(Turner Pictures/Film RomanFilm RomanFilm Roman is an animation studio founded by Phil Roman, best known for producing the animation for The Simpsons, King of the Hill for 20th Century Fox, as well as the Garfield and Peanuts animated TV specials....
/WMG, 1993) - Tom and Jerry (Warner Bros.Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, TBA)
Direct-to-video films
- Tom and Jerry: The Magic RingTom and Jerry: The Magic RingTom and Jerry: The Magic Ring is a 2001 animated direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry. This was the first made-for-video attempt to recapture the style of Hanna and Barbera's original Tom & Jerry theatricals...
(Warner Home Video, 2001) - Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to MarsTom and Jerry: Blast Off to MarsTom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars is a Tom and Jerry outer-space-themed direct-to-video film produced by Warner Bros. Animation.-Plot:...
(Warner Home Video, 2005) - Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the FurryTom and Jerry: The Fast and the FurryTom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry is a 2005 animated direct-to-video film starring the oscar-winning cat and mouse pair, Tom and Jerry. The subtitle is a parody of the hit Universal Studios film, The Fast and The Furious. It was released theatrically in select cites of the U.S...
(Warner Home Video, 2005) - Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me WhiskersTom and Jerry: Shiver Me WhiskersTom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers is a 2006 animated made-for-video motion picture starring Tom and Jerry.-Plot:The movie starts above a big ocean, which was having a huge storm with very loud thunder. A group of jolly pirates are sailing on their ship, and all of them are scared of the thunderstorm...
(Warner Home Video, 2006) - Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker TaleTom and Jerry: A Nutcracker TaleTom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale is a 2007 holiday themed animated direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry produced by Warner Bros. Animation...
(Warner Home Video, 2007) - Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock HolmesTom and Jerry Meet Sherlock HolmesTom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes is a 2010 animated direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry produced by Warner Bros. Animation. It is the first Tom and Jerry direct-to-video film to be produced without any of its original creators, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera...
(Warner Home Video, 2010) - Tom and Jerry and the Wizard of OzTom and Jerry and the Wizard of OzTom and Jerry & The Wizard of Oz is a 2011 animated direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry, produced by Warner Bros. Animation. It is a crossover film version of MGM's famed 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, with characters from the Tom and Jerry/Droopy universe sharing screen with Dorothy and her...
(Warner Home Video, 2011)
See also
- List of Tom and Jerry cartoons
- List of Tom and Jerry Tales episodes
- Golden Age of American animation
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studioMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studioThe Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio was the in-house division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion picture studio in Hollywood, California during the Golden Age of American animation, responsible for producing animated short subjects to accompany MGM feature films in Loew's Theaters...
and MGM Animation/Visual ArtsMGM Animation/Visual ArtsMGM Animation/Visual Arts was an animation studio established in 1962 by animation director/producer Chuck Jones and producer Les Goldman as Sib Tower 12 Productions... - List of works produced by Hanna-Barbera
- List of Hanna-Barbera characters
- Herman and KatnipHerman and KatnipHerman and Katnip are a duo of cartoon characters . From 1944 to September 1950, Herman appeared without Katnip, who made his first appearance in November 1950 with Mice Meeting You. The two characters continued to star in animated cartoons by Famous Studios until 1959...
- Sid and AlSid & Al's Incredible ToonsSid & Al's Incredible Toons is a puzzle video game developed by Dynamix and released by Sierra On-Line in 1993.-Summary:This video game is designed with the same style as that of The Incredible Machine, except that the game took place on a cartoon stage instead of a laboratory. The game focuses on...
(from The Incredible Toon MachineThe Incredible Toon MachineThe Incredible Toon Machine is a game from Sierra On-Line, and is the sequel to Sid & Al's Incredible Toons, also from Sierra. It is actually an extension of Sid & Al's Incredible Toons, with same levels and features.-Gameplay:...
) - Itchy & Scratchy (from The SimpsonsThe SimpsonsThe Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
) - Pixie and Dixie and Mr. JinksPixie and Dixie and Mr. JinksPixie & Dixie and Mr. Jinks is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon that featured as a regular segment of the television series The Huckleberry Hound Show from 1958 to 1962.-History:...
- Pierce EganPierce EganPierce Egan was an early British journalist, sportswriter, and writer on popular culture.Egan was born in the London suburbs, where he spent his life. By 1812 he had established himself as the country's leading 'reporter of sporting events', which at the time meant mainly prize-fights and...
- SylvesterSylvester (Looney Tunes)Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr., Sylvester the Cat or simply Sylvester, is a fictional character, a three-time Academy Award-winning anthropomorphic Tuxedo cat in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies repertory, often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper...
and TweetyTweetyTweety Bird is a fictional Yellow Canary in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated cartoons. The name "Tweety" is a play on words, as it originally meant "sweetie", along with "tweet" being a typical English onomatopoeia for the sounds of birds... - Walt DisneyWalt DisneyWalter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
External links
- More Tom and Jerry Games
- The Cartoon Scrapbook – Profile on Tom and Jerry