Tom and Jerry (Hanna Barbera era)

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Tom and Jerry (Hanna Barbera era)
Behold! Hanna-Barbera's greatest cat and mouse duo
Genre: Comedy Slapstick Running Time: 6-10 Minutes Country: United States Release Date: Original Series: February 10, 1940 - November 11, 1955 Revival Series: April 8, 2001 – November 15, 2014 Created by: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Starring: Harry E. Lang Clarence Nash William Hanna Red Coffey Lillian Randolph Billy Bletcher Daws Butler Mel Blanc Allen Swift June Foray Episodes: 164 shorts Next show: CinemaScope era 1955-1958

Tom and Jerry is an American classic series of cartoon short films first made in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera (Hanna-Barbera).

During its original run, Hanna-Barbera and Fred Quimby produced 114 shorts for MGM from 1940 to 1958. Seven of these cartoons won an Academy Award for Animated Short Film. In 1961 to 1962, Gene Deitch (known for his works on Terrytoons) directed 13 additional shorts, followed by Chuck Jones (of Looney Tunes fame) and Abe Levitow in 1963 to 1967, who directed 34 more shorts for MGM. Three more shorts were produced in 2001 (The Mansion Cat), 2005 (The Karate Guard), and 2014 (A Fundraising Adventure).

Why It Deserves a Custard Pie

1. Phenomenal animation, which is MGM's animation in its purest form.
2. One of the original slapstick duos of the animated world.
3. Memorable, funny, and likable characters such as the titular Tom and Jerry, and a few other characters such as Spike, Tyke, Mammy Two-Shoes, Joan, George, Quacker, Butch, Lightning, Meathead, Topsy, Nibbles/Tuffy, Toodles Galore, etc.
4. Despite them almost never talking, it's very easy to understand both Tom and Jerry's personalities through their detailed facial expressions and body language.
5. Tom and Jerry's friendship/rivalry is one of the most iconic relationships in cartoon history.
6. It practically invented cartoon violence at its finest.
7. The Japanese shorts had their own intro!
8. Clever use of 'squash and stretch' to make the pain more credible and impactful, and was brilliantly done without making it look too flexible or to the point of over-exaggerating the animation.
9. Great humor with excellent timing.
10. Spawned several TV spin-offs including The Tom and Jerry Show (1975), The The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show, Tom and Jerry Kids, Tom and Jerry Tales, and The Tom and Jerry Show (2014) and later series.
11. Funny and creative gags throughout many of the shorts.
12. Tom and Jerry Kids, Tom and Jerry Tales, The Tom and Jerry Show (2014), and Tom and Jerry Special Shorts are great adaptations that stay true to the original cartoon shorts.
13. In several episodes, Tom and Jerry put their differences aside to achieve a certain goal (such as rescuing someone and defeat evil villains who antagonize both of them), but only to go back being frenemies again.
14. Many hilarious chases involving not only Tom and Jerry, but with Spike and other characters as well.
15. The formula of slapstick and a cat and a mouse chasing and beating each other is handled very well.
16. It's iconic theme tune is catchy and memorable for kids and adults alike.
17. The Chuck Jones era (1963-1967) is a unique era for Tom and Jerry, as it has a Looney Tunes-style. It also uses some of the Looney Tunes gags.
18. Tom's design is very nice and Jerry's design is very cute both in the Chuck Jones-era.
19. Several great and memorable shorts, such as:
    • Puss Gets the Boot (the cat-and-mouse duo's debut)
    • The Night Before Christmas
    • The Bowling-Alley Cat
    • The Lonesome Mouse
    • The Yankee Doodle Mouse
    • The Zoot Cat
    • The Million Dollar Cat
    • The Bodyguard
    • Mouse Trouble
    • The Cat Concerto
    • Designs On Jerry
    • Love That Pup (Tyke's debut)
    • Trap Happy
    • The Little Orphan
    • Solid Serenade
    • Fit To Be Tied
    • Kitty Foiled
    • Jerry and Jumbo
    • Cue Ball Cat
    • The Flying Cat
    • Cat Napping
    • Quiet, Please!
    • The Milky Waif (Nibbles/Tuffy's debut)
    • The Dog House
    • Saturday Evening Puss
    • Texas Tom
    • Pecos Pest (Which ended this era on a high note)
    • Tee for Two
    • The Truce Hurts (despite the blackface scene)
    • Old Rockin' Chair Tom
20. It's very dynamic, as it usually relies on its otherwise phenomenal animation and soundtrack to tell the stories for you, which makes it stand out in its idea of not every cartoon having to require dialogue to make it feel entertaining.

Qualities that Gets Beaten Up By Spike

1. The quality has fluctuated over the years.
   • The classic era declined in quality from late 1955 to 1958, mostly due to budget cuts. As a result, the animation started looking cheaper and the overall quality of the shorts became increasingly stale.
   • The quality then took a complete nosedive in the Gene Deitch era.
   • The quality had improved tremendously once again during the Chuck Jones era, except the only problem with this era is that the slapstick can often times play it safe.
   • The first two television adaptations, The Tom and Jerry Show (1975) and The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show, took the quality to new levels of low due to said shows not staying that true to the original source material and being produced on low budget animation.
   • Thankfully, the following four television adaptations, Tom and Jerry Kids, Tom and Jerry Tales, The Tom and Jerry Show (2014), and Tom and Jerry in New York have ended the decline in quality as they stay faithful to the original source material.
2. Like many other American cartoons from the '40s-'50s, some shorts have racist stereotypes (with His Mouse Friday being the worst offender), the most notable being the African-American maid Mammy Two-Shoes. These are often removed when they are shown on TV after segregation against black people in America had come to an end in 1965 with the help of Martin Luther King Jr. in the time.
   • The opposite effect also happens... by whitewashing Mammy Two-Shoes. Combating racism with racism is not really a thing kids television does post-MLK's death.
   • There's usually some racist moments where the characters get seen in blackface in some shorts.
     • One example in "Mouse in Manhattan", there's a scene where Jerry gets his head polished after being used to polish a shoe, which results in him being turned into a blackface.
   • Some shorts with Mammy Two-Shoes were redubbed by a different voice actor when these shorts are run on syndication and many countries go as far to ban certain shorts with these stereotypes.
3. Some other bad shorts, even before the decline of the CinemaScope era: Baby Puss and His Mouse Friday (the most hated cartoon before Tot Watchers and the Gene Deitch era).
4. Some episodes like Heavenly Puss had a dark concept where Tom gets banished to Hell, leading to the episode getting banned from Brasil, just like The Three Mouseketeers as mentioned above.
   • In fact, some of the shorts actually had Tom die. Thankfully, there was no gore. (The Two Mouseketeers is an example since at the end, Tom is executed by a guillotine offscreen due to being held responsible for the disaster that happened at the dinner he was supposed to guard thanks to Jerry and Nibbles tried to take some of the food, which resulted to him unintentionally messing up everything. This episode was banned from Brazil due to that reason.)
5. Some of the characters are not too likable. Aside from Tom's notorious owner from the Gene Deitch era, there were other bad characters like Jeannie the Babysitter and Nancy.
   • During the Gene Deitch era, Jerry suffered severe flanderization into an extremely unlikable sadistic jerk who takes pleasure in maliciously torturing Tom for his own amusement; luckily he returned to being a troublesome, loveable, and funny mouse during the Chuck Jones era.
6. The animation started to go downhill around 1955 of the classic era and then took an absolute nosedive during the Gene Deitch era (although to be fair, MGM was going through a financial crisis, before eventually filing for bankruptcy). Thankfully, it had improved massively once again during the Chuck Jones era.
7. Some of Spike's beatings towards Tom, while funny, can come off as harshly obnoxnious at times, with Solid Sernade being the worst offender.
8. Tom's accident-prone nature with being the continual victim of the slapstick abuse can get carried away, reaching a downright atrocious Butt-Monkey level of this in both the Gene Deitch era and The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show where he was so much of a punching bag that it was easy to feel bad for him.
9. It had a very so-bad-it's-good Film in 1992, which was infamous, The 2021 film, despite the negative reviews. Was better-received by fans however.

Trivia

• The Karate Guard is currently the last short to be shown theatrically. The Mansion Cat and A Fundraising Adventure are both television shorts, with the former being the last Tom and Jerry short released in William Hanna's lifetime and the latter being based off the 2014 television series.
• Despite the success of the very first Tom and Jerry cartoon, Puss Gets the Boot, the executive producer of MGM animation, Fred Quimby, did not like the cat and mouse duo. He told William Hanna and Joseph Barbera not to create any more cartoons involving both half-pint roughhousing and rampaging wild animals. But the following year, Quimby received a letter from the film distributor in Texas saying that new cartoons should be created with the cat-and-mouse duo. Fred Quimby quickly changed his mind about the cat and mouse cartoons.
• The cartoon shared the same name to a cartoon created by Van Beuren and was produced in 1931 and ended in 1933 (which was years before this cartoon was released), which focused on two human men named Tom and Jerry. It was then renamed "Dick and Larry" to avoid confusion with the cat-and-mouse duo, but is currently referred to as "Van Beuren's Tom and Jerry" since it wouldn't entirely erase what it was called before.
• When Tom and Jerry first premiered with the episode Puss Gets The Boot, it showed that Tom was formerly named "Jasper" (though the cartoon's first redubbed version from the 1960s with June Foray's voice-over correctly referred Tom by his actual name instead of Jasper), while Jerry was unnamed (although he was referred to the animators as Jinx).
• Chuck Jones admitted that he didn't care much for the shorts that he directed, but felt that they were good practice for his take on How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
• Cartoon Network's Dexter's Laboratory and Johnny Test have a parody of this show called "Mom and Jerry" from season 2, and Tom and Johnny from season 4 which revolves Dexter accidentally swapping his brain with a mouse's, so he must avoid getting attacked by his mother and Johnny turning into a mouse but gets caught by Mr. Mittens.
• Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent of Warner Bros., currently owns the rights to this franchise since 1996, after Turner had merged with Time Warner. Even before the merger, Turner Broadcasting System (via Turner Entertainment Co.) had bought the rights to this franchise from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1986 until 1996.

Reception

Tom and Jerry is one of the most popular cartoon franchise in existence and is still widely popular even today.

The classic series won 7 Academy Awards/Oscars, tying at first place with Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies as the series that won the most Academy Awards/Oscars.

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