In 1937, Italian American artist Joseph Barbera signed up with the movie business Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to operate in their animation studio in California. Sat next to fellow animator, William Hanna, the 2 understood they had a lot in typical creatively and began to collaborate in 1939.
The collaboration ended up being called Hanna-Barbera, and over the following 60 years it would be a rewarding collaboration, with their own studio producing a choice of the world’s most renowned animated movies consisting of ‘The Flintstones’, ‘Scooby-Doo’, ‘The Smurfs’ and ‘The Jetsons’.
But that all came later on. In 1939, while still at MGM the duo began deal with their very first movie. It was called ‘Puss Gets the Boot’ and was launched on this day in 1940.
Under 10 minutes in length, the animation informed the story of a cat called Jasper who gets off on playing tricks and terrorising a mouse called Jinx. It’s shortly till the tables are turned however and Jinx plays his own trick on Jasper, making the cat accountable for breaking much of his owner’s ownerships.
The movie was a struck with audiences and was chosen for an Oscar. But MGM weren’t pleased. They instantly informed the set to focus their efforts on other jobs, and Jasper and Jinx would never ever grace the silver screen once again.
That is, up until a fan letter from a Texan businesswoman requiring when the cat and mouse would return got the studio interested once again. A studio competitors relabelled the set, and the next experiences of the cat and mouse was sealed, just this time they’d be called Tom and Jerry.
The initially ‘Tom and Jerry’ animation was produced in 1941 called ‘The Midnight Snack’. Another success, Hanna and Barbera would continue to deal with the series for another 15 years, producing 114 animations, 13 of which were chosen for Oscars, with 7 winning for Best Short Subject.
As these days, there are 166 ‘Tom and Jerry’ shorts, 2 function movies, 15 direct-to-video movies, musical adjustments, print variations and any variety of other spin-offs you can think about. Tom and Jerry are so renowned, it’s difficult to picture a cat and mouse pairing without them popping to mind.
