Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio
Encyclopedia
The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio was the in-house division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
(MGM) 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
. Active from 1937 until 1957, the MGM cartoon studio produced some of the most popular cartoon series and characters in the world, including Barney Bear
, Droopy, and their best-known work, Tom and Jerry
. After a slow start, the studio began to take off in 1940 with being awarded with the first Academy Award for a Cartoon Short not produced by Walt Disney, which won during the eight prior years. Also the studio was benefited from a massive exodus of animators from the Schlesinger and Disney studios, whom were facing issues with union workers.
Prior to the existence of their in-house cartoon studio, MGM released the work of independent animation producers Ub Iwerks
and Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising
.
cartoons for Pat Powers' Celebrity Pictures (distributing for Columbia Pictures
). Several other studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer among them, took note of Disney's success and began to look for ways to get Disney or compete.
MGM's first foray into animation was the Flip the Frog
cartoon series, starring an anthropomorphic talking and singing frog. The series was produced independently for Celebrity Pictures by Ub Iwerks
, formerly the head animator at the Disney studio. Celebrity Pictures' Pat Powers had hired Iwerks away from Disney with the promise of giving Iwerks his own studio, and was able to secure a distribution deal with MGM for the Flip the Frog cartoons. The first Flip the Frog cartoon, Fiddlesticks, was released in August 1930, and over two-dozen other Flip cartoons followed during the next three years. In 1933, the Flip character was dropped in favor of Willie Whopper
, a new series featuring a lie-telling little boy. Willie Whopper failed to catch on, and MGM terminated its distribution deal with Iwerks and Powers, who had already began distributing their Comi-Color cartoons on their own.
, the directors behind Leon Schlesinger
's Looney Tunes
and Merrie Melodies
cartoons for Warner Bros.
. Harman and Ising had departed from Schlesinger in 1933 because of budget disputes, and in February 1934 MGM signed the Harman-Ising studio to work on a new series of high-budget color cartoons. The director team brought with them much of their staff from Schlesinger, including animators and storymen such as Carmen "Max" Maxwell, William Hanna
, and brothers Robert
and Tom McKimson. (The McKimsons would later return to Schlesinger.) Also following Harman and Ising from Schlesinger was Bosko
, a successful character the duo had created for the Warner cartoons.
The first entry in MGM's new Happy Harmonies
cartoon series, The Discontented Canary, was completed in June 1934 and released in September. The series continued for three years, moving from two-strip to three-strip Technicolor
in 1935. The Happy Harmonies canon included a handful of entries starring Bosko, who by 1935 had been redesigned from an ambiguous "inkspot" character into a discernible little African-American boy. The directors worked separately on their own films, although both strived to create intricate films that would compete with Disney's award-winning Silly Symphonies
.
However, budget problems threatened to plague Harman and Ising a second time: Happy Harmonies cartoons regularly ran over budget, and Hugh Harman paid no heed to MGM's demands that he reduce the costs of the shorts. MGM retaliated in February 1937 by deciding to open their own cartoon studio, and hired away most of the Harman-Ising staff to do so. The final Happy Harmonies short, The Little Bantamweight, was released in March 1938, and Harman and Ising went on to establish a new studio to do freelance animation work for Walt Disney, only to come back.
, the Disney studio created an animated sequence in Technicolor
called The Hot Choc-Late Soldiers, and is one of a few examples where Disney produced animation for other studios. The movie also contained a sequence with Jimmy Durante
interacting with an animated Mickey Mouse
.
, a man with no previous experience in the animation industry, to set up and run the new MGM cartoon department. Among the holdovers from the Harman-Ising regime, William Hanna and Bob Allen were appointed as directors, and Carmen Maxwell became production manager. Quimby raided every major American animation studio for talent, extracting artists, directors, and writers from studios, such as Friz Freleng
from Leon Schlesinger Productions, Emery Hawkins from Screen Gems
, and much of the top staff at Terrytoons
(Joseph Barbera
, Jack Zander, Ray Kelly, Dan Gordon, George Gordon, and others). After spending some time headquartered in a nearby house, the new MGM cartoon studio at Overland Ave. and Montana Ave. opened its doors on August 23, 1937.
Although it boasted a brand-new facility and good directors, the MGM cartoon studio's first series was a failure. The Captain and the Kids, adapted from Rudolph Dirks
' Katzenjammer Kids
characters, was licensed by MGM without input from its then-forming creative staff. Freleng, Hanna, and Allen, assigned to direct the Captain and the Kids cartoons, were unable to translate the Katzenjammer humor into animation, and the series folded after fifteen episodes. Only two of the Captain and the Kids shorts were produced in Technicolor; the other thirteen were produced in black-and-white and released in sepia-toned prints.
and Harry Hershfield
in an attempt to both bolster the Captain and the Kids product and create original properties for MGM, but both cartoonists' tenures at the studio were short-lived. Gross managed to complete two cartoons, Jitterbug Follies and Wanted: No Master, with his characters Count Screwloose of Tooloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog, while Hershfield completed no cartoons. In October 1938, Quimby, coming full-circle, hired Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising as the new creative heads of the studio, acting as both directors and producers, and in charge of many of the employees who had defected from the Harman-Ising studio a year before.
Among Ising's first new cartoons for MGM was 1939's The Bear Who Couldn't Sleep, the debut appearance of Barney Bear
, a lumbering anthropomorphic bear based upon both Wallace Beery
and Ising himself. Barney Bear would become MGM's first original cartoon star, regularly featured in cartoons until 1953, although his popularity never rose to the level of a Mickey Mouse or a Porky Pig
. Ising focused on the Barney Bear cartoons, while Harman focused on making intricately animated one-shot cartoons, although Harman was able to establish a short-lived series of Three Bears cartoons.
At this time, Harman created his masterwork, Peace on Earth
. Released during the holiday season of 1939 (immediately after the outbreak of World War II
in Europe
), Peace on Earth was a serious work which dealt with the idea of what a post-apocalyptic world would be like. Peace on Earth was nominated for the 1939 Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons)
, as well as for the Nobel Peace Prize
.
, featuring a mouse's attempts to outwit a housecat. Though released without fanfare, the short was financially and critically successful, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) of 1940. On the strength of the Oscar nomination and public demand, Hanna and Barbera were assigned to direct more cat-and-mouse cartoons, soon christening the characters "Tom" and "Jerry". Puss Gets the Boot did not win the 1940 Academy Award for Best Cartoon, but another MGM cartoon, Rudolf Ising's The Milky Way
did, making MGM the first studio to wrestle the Cartoon Academy Award away from Walt Disney.
Tom and Jerry quickly became MGM's most valuable animated property. The shorts were successful at the box office, many licensed products (comic books, toys, etc.) were released to the market, and the series would earn twelve more Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons) nominations, with seven of the Tom and Jerry shorts going on to win the Academy Award: The Yankee Doodle Mouse
(1943), Mouse Trouble
(1944), Quiet Please! (1945), The Cat Concerto
(1946), The Little Orphan
(1948), The Two Mouseketeers
(1951), and Johann Mouse
(1952). Tom and Jerry was eventually tied with Disney's Silly Symphonies as the most-awarded theatrical cartoon series. Originally barred by Quimby from making a second cat-and-mouse short until the overwhelming success of Puss Gets the Boot demanded it, Hanna and Barbera and their team of animators, who included George Gordon, Jack Zander, Kenneth Muse, Irven Spence, Ed Barge, Ray Patterson and Pete Burness, worked on nothing but Tom and Jerry cartoons from 1941 until 1955.
Key to the successes of Tom and Jerry and other MGM cartoons was the work of Scott Bradley
, who scored virtually all of the cartoons for the studio from 1934 to 1957. Bradley's scores made use of both classical and jazz sensibilities. In addition, he often used songs from the scores of MGM's feature films, the most frequent of them being "The Trolley Song" from Meet Me in St. Louis
and "Sing Before Breakfast" from Broadway Melody of 1936
.
, an animation director known for his wild comedic style at the Schlesinger studio. Avery's first short for MGM was the World War II parody Blitz Wolf
, which was nominated for the 1942 Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons). While Avery had revolutionized cartoon humor at Schlesinger's, he went several steps further in his MGM works. Avery exaggerated his characters and situations wildly, and was noted for the precise and hard-edged timing of his gags.
Among Avery's most noted cartoons for MGM were slapstick comedies such as Red Hot Riding Hood
(1943), Northwest Hounded Police (1946), King-Size Canary
(1947), Little Rural Riding Hood (1949), and Bad Luck Blackie
(1949). While Avery preferred to focus on gags instead of characterization, he established several popular MGM cartoon characters, including Screwy Squirrel, the Of Mice and Men
derived pair of George and Junior
, and his best-known character, Droopy. Droopy, voiced by Bill Thompson
(a.k.a. "Wallace Wimple" on NBC
Radio's Fibber McGee and Molly
show) debuted in 1943 with Dumb-Hounded
. He appeared in several more Avery cartoons (including Northwest Hounded Police) before being officially given his own series in 1948 with Senor Droopy.
The influence of Avery's cartoons was felt across the animation industry; even Hanna and Barbera adapted their Tom and Jerry shorts to match the levels of madcap humor and violence in Avery's films. Avery's team included storymen Rich Hogan and Heck Allen, and animators such as Michael Lah
, Ed Love, and Preston Blair
, most famous for animating the sexy female singer in Red Hot Riding Hood and its follow-ups. In 1946, Quimby assigned Blair and Lah to direct a new series of Barney Bear cartoons, reversing the decision after three cartoons.
director Dick Lundy was brought in to head Avery's unit. Lundy completed one Droopy cartoon and ten Barney Bear shorts before Avery returned in October 1951 and reassumed his role as director from Lundy, starting with Little Johhny Jet (released in 1953).
Avery directed eleven more cartoons for MGM, many of them showing the heavy influence of the style of the newly popular UPA
studio in their designs. In March 1953, MGM closed down the cartoon unit, thinking that the growing trend for 3-D film
s would bring an end to the animated cartoon. Avery himself did not leave the studio until June, working with co-director Michael Lah on two cartoons, Deputy Droopy and Cellbound, which Lah completed with the Hanna and Barbera staff (working during the most part of 1953 for commercials, as a predecessor of H-B Enterprises
) during the closure. Avery went on to join the Walter Lantz staff the following February, while Lah went on to do commercial animation work. Because of the backlog of completed MGM cartoons, the cartoons Avery completed during his second tenure at the studio were not released until after he'd left again; Cellbound was not released until 1955.
Meanwhile after the studio reopened in 1954, budget cuts required Hanna and Barbera to reduce the level of detail in their Tom and Jerry shorts (a precursor of what was to come), and to also begin doing one "cheater" short per year composed mostly of footage from previously released cartoons. That year, Hanna and Barbera directed Pet Peeve, the first MGM cartoon in the new widescreen CinemaScope
process, which had been was devised as a means to keep audiences attending movie theatres in the wake of the popularity of television
. Pet Peeve, released in late 1954, was followed by a sporadic number of CinemaScope Tom and Jerrys, with several other Tom and Jerrys being dual-released in standard format and in CinemaScope. After Pecos Pest
(released in 1955), all MGM cartoons were released in CinemaScope. Six previous MGM cartoons, among them Hugh Harman's Peace on Earth, were remade in CinemaScope. Like the original Peace on Earth in 1939, its 1955 remake, Good Will to Men, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).
, and stayed on to supervise a new series of CinemaScope Droopy cartoons to accompany the new CinemaScope Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Lah's One Droopy Knight was nominated for the 1957 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons). However, for the most part, both the Droopy and Tom and Jerry cartoons had lost their appeal in the eyes of critics, due to weaker stories and lower quality animation. To keep the studio alive, MGM had begun reissuing previously-released cartoons since the 1940s
, but in late 1956 decided that, since the reissued shorts brought in as much revenue as the new shorts, it could save six hundred thousand dollars a year by ending new production.
The studio was shut down in May 1957, and Hanna and Barbera took most of their unit and began producing television cartoons with their company Hanna-Barbera Productions
. Hanna-Barbera first approached MGM to distribute their cartoons for television, but were turned down. Columbia Pictures
' Screen Gems
picked up Hanna-Barbera's product, and the studio soon became the most successful producers of television animation in the world. MGM would later have Gene Deitch
create a series of Tom and Jerry cartoons before contracting Chuck Jones
and Les Goldman's Sib Tower 12
studio to create more Tom and Jerry shorts. Sib Tower 12 was absorbed by MGM in 1964, and was renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts
.
's Turner Broadcasting attempted to acquire MGM/UA but resold the rest of the company after being unable to find enough money for the deal, but he kept the pre-1986 MGM library (which included the MGM Cartoons along with it). Turner Entertainment
was established to oversee the library. In 1996, Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner
. Today, Warner/Turner owns the rights to MGM's animated output. Ironically, Turner had also acquired Hanna-Barbera in 1991, these cartoons were also incorporated into the TW/Turner merger.
As of 2009, nearly all of the Hanna and Barbera-produced Tom and Jerry are available on DVD under the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection
, a series of three DVD box sets that were released from October 2004 to September 2007 (however, three cartoons are missing due to politcially incorrect scenes, and several of the released ones are edited). Warner Home Video would later release the Tom & Jerry shorts as part of the Tom and Jerry Golden Collection
series of DVD and Blu-ray
boxsets, which will start with the first volume being released October 25, 2011, with the shorts being presented uncut, restored, remastered, in chronological order, and for the Blu-ray version, in 1080p
high definition
. Moreover, a two-disc collection of all of Droopy's cartoons was released in May 2007. Rumors have floated around for years of a box set consisting of Tex Avery
's MGM work, but nothing has been released besides the Spotlight and Golden box sets for Tom and Jerry and the Droopy collection in USA.
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...
(MGM) 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
Loews Cineplex Entertainment
Loews Theatres, aka Loews Incorporated , founded in 1904 by Marcus Loew and Brantford Schwartz, was the oldest theater chain operating in North America until it merged with AMC Theatres on January 26, 2006. From 1924 until 1959, it was also the parent company of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. The...
. Active from 1937 until 1957, the MGM cartoon studio produced some of the most popular cartoon series and characters in the world, including 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....
, Droopy, and their best-known work, Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry
Tom and Jerry are the cat and mouse cartoon characters that were evolved starting in 1939.Tom and Jerry also may refer to:Cartoon works featuring the cat and mouse so named:* The Tom and Jerry Show...
. After a slow start, the studio began to take off in 1940 with being awarded with the first Academy Award for a Cartoon Short not produced by Walt Disney, which won during the eight prior years. Also the studio was benefited from a massive exodus of animators from the Schlesinger and Disney studios, whom were facing issues with union workers.
Prior to the existence of their in-house cartoon studio, MGM released the work of independent animation producers Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks, A.S.C. was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, creator of Mickey Mouse, and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney....
and Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising
Harman and Ising
Hugh Harman and Rudolf "Rudy" Ising were an American animation team best known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios...
.
The Ub Iwerks studio
To promote their films and attract larger theater audiences, motion picture chains in the 1930s provided many features to supplement the main feature, including travelogues, serials, short comedy subjects, newsreels and cartoons. During the late 1920s, Walt Disney Productions had achieved huge popular and critical success with their Mickey MouseMickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
cartoons for Pat Powers' Celebrity Pictures (distributing for Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
). Several other studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer among them, took note of Disney's success and began to look for ways to get Disney or compete.
MGM's first foray into animation was the Flip the Frog
Flip the Frog
Flip the Frog is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Ub Iwerks. He starred in a series of cartoons produced by Celebrity Pictures and distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1930 to 1933...
cartoon series, starring an anthropomorphic talking and singing frog. The series was produced independently for Celebrity Pictures by Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks, A.S.C. was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, creator of Mickey Mouse, and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney....
, formerly the head animator at the Disney studio. Celebrity Pictures' Pat Powers had hired Iwerks away from Disney with the promise of giving Iwerks his own studio, and was able to secure a distribution deal with MGM for the Flip the Frog cartoons. The first Flip the Frog cartoon, Fiddlesticks, was released in August 1930, and over two-dozen other Flip cartoons followed during the next three years. In 1933, the Flip character was dropped in favor of Willie Whopper
Willie Whopper
Willie Whopper is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Ub Iwerks. The Whopper series was the second from the Iwerks studio to be produced by Pat Powers and distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It lasted only two years; from 1933 to 1934.-History:Willie is a young lad who...
, a new series featuring a lie-telling little boy. Willie Whopper failed to catch on, and MGM terminated its distribution deal with Iwerks and Powers, who had already began distributing their Comi-Color cartoons on their own.
The Harman-Ising studio
MGM next turned to Hugh Harman and Rudolf IsingHarman and Ising
Hugh Harman and Rudolf "Rudy" Ising were an American animation team best known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios...
, the directors behind Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger was an American film producer, most noted for founding Leon Schlesinger Productions, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the golden age of Hollywood animation.-Early life and career:...
's 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...
and Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
cartoons for 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,...
. Harman and Ising had departed from Schlesinger in 1933 because of budget disputes, and in February 1934 MGM signed the Harman-Ising studio to work on a new series of high-budget color cartoons. The director team brought with them much of their staff from Schlesinger, including animators and storymen such as Carmen "Max" Maxwell, 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 brothers Robert
Robert McKimson
Robert "Bob" Porter McKimson, Sr. was an American animator, illustrator, and director best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros., and later DePatie-Freleng Enterprises...
and Tom McKimson. (The McKimsons would later return to Schlesinger.) Also following Harman and Ising from Schlesinger was Bosko
Bosko
Bosko is an animated cartoon character created by animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Bosko is the first recurring character in Leon Schlesinger's cartoon series, and is the star of over three dozen Looney Tunes shorts released by Warner Bros...
, a successful character the duo had created for the Warner cartoons.
The first entry in MGM's new Happy Harmonies
Happy Harmonies
Happy Harmonies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising between 1934 and 1938....
cartoon series, The Discontented Canary, was completed in June 1934 and released in September. The series continued for three years, moving from two-strip to 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...
in 1935. The Happy Harmonies canon included a handful of entries starring Bosko, who by 1935 had been redesigned from an ambiguous "inkspot" character into a discernible little African-American boy. The directors worked separately on their own films, although both strived to create intricate films that would compete with Disney's award-winning 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...
.
However, budget problems threatened to plague Harman and Ising a second time: Happy Harmonies cartoons regularly ran over budget, and Hugh Harman paid no heed to MGM's demands that he reduce the costs of the shorts. MGM retaliated in February 1937 by deciding to open their own cartoon studio, and hired away most of the Harman-Ising staff to do so. The final Happy Harmonies short, The Little Bantamweight, was released in March 1938, and Harman and Ising went on to establish a new studio to do freelance animation work for Walt Disney, only to come back.
The Disney studio
For the 1934 MGM movie Hollywood PartyHollywood Party
Hollywood Party may refer to:*Hollywood Party , a 1934 musical film starring Jimmy Durante*Hollywood Party , a 1937 Charley Chase Technicolor short unseen for nearly 60 years until the soundtrack disc was rediscovered in 2000...
, the Disney studio created an animated sequence in 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...
called The Hot Choc-Late Soldiers, and is one of a few examples where Disney produced animation for other studios. The movie also contained a sequence with 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...
interacting with an animated Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
.
Early years and The Captain and the Kids (The pre Tom and Jerry years)
In March 1937, MGM hired film sales executive Fred QuimbyFred 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...
, a man with no previous experience in the animation industry, to set up and run the new MGM cartoon department. Among the holdovers from the Harman-Ising regime, William Hanna and Bob Allen were appointed as directors, and Carmen Maxwell became production manager. Quimby raided every major American animation studio for talent, extracting artists, directors, and writers from studios, such as Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
from Leon Schlesinger Productions, Emery Hawkins from Screen Gems
Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....
, and much of the top staff 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...
(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....
, Jack Zander, Ray Kelly, Dan Gordon, George Gordon, and others). After spending some time headquartered in a nearby house, the new MGM cartoon studio at Overland Ave. and Montana Ave. opened its doors on August 23, 1937.
Although it boasted a brand-new facility and good directors, the MGM cartoon studio's first series was a failure. The Captain and the Kids, adapted from Rudolph Dirks
Rudolph Dirks
Rudolph Dirks was one of the earliest and most noted comic strip artists....
' Katzenjammer Kids
Katzenjammer Kids
The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by the German immigrant Rudolph Dirks and drawn by Harold H. Knerr for 37 years...
characters, was licensed by MGM without input from its then-forming creative staff. Freleng, Hanna, and Allen, assigned to direct the Captain and the Kids cartoons, were unable to translate the Katzenjammer humor into animation, and the series folded after fifteen episodes. Only two of the Captain and the Kids shorts were produced in Technicolor; the other thirteen were produced in black-and-white and released in sepia-toned prints.
The return of Harman and Ising
MGM brought in established newspaper cartoonists such as Milt GrossMilt Gross
Milt Gross , was an American comic strip and comic book writer, illustrator and animator. He wrote his comics in a Yiddish-inflected English. He originated the non-sequitur "Banana Oil!" as a phrase deflating pomposity and posing. His character Count Screwloose's admonition, "Iggy, keep an eye on...
and Harry Hershfield
Harry Hershfield
Harry Hershfield was an American comic artist, humor writer and radio personality. A columnist once labeled him "the Jewish Will Rogers".Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Hershfield was the son of Jewish immigrants...
in an attempt to both bolster the Captain and the Kids product and create original properties for MGM, but both cartoonists' tenures at the studio were short-lived. Gross managed to complete two cartoons, Jitterbug Follies and Wanted: No Master, with his characters Count Screwloose of Tooloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog, while Hershfield completed no cartoons. In October 1938, Quimby, coming full-circle, hired Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising as the new creative heads of the studio, acting as both directors and producers, and in charge of many of the employees who had defected from the Harman-Ising studio a year before.
Among Ising's first new cartoons for MGM was 1939's The Bear Who Couldn't Sleep, the debut appearance of 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....
, a lumbering anthropomorphic bear based upon both Wallace Beery
Wallace Beery
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, as Long John Silver in Treasure Island, as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa!, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor...
and Ising himself. Barney Bear would become MGM's first original cartoon star, regularly featured in cartoons until 1953, although his popularity never rose to the level of a Mickey Mouse or a 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...
. Ising focused on the Barney Bear cartoons, while Harman focused on making intricately animated one-shot cartoons, although Harman was able to establish a short-lived series of Three Bears cartoons.
At this time, Harman created his masterwork, Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth (1939 film)
Peace on Earth is a one-reel 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon short directed by Hugh Harman, about a post-apocalyptic world populated only by animals....
. Released during the holiday season of 1939 (immediately after the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
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...
), Peace on Earth was a serious work which dealt with the idea of what a post-apocalyptic world would be like. Peace on Earth was nominated for the 1939 Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons)
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....
, as well as for the Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
.
William Hanna meets Joseph Barbera, and Tom meets Jerry (The Tom and Jerry Years)
Friz Freleng, briefly assigned to work under Harman, returned to Schlesinger after his MGM contract expired in April 1939, and storyman Joseph Barbera was united with director William Hanna to co-direct cartoons for Rudolf Ising's unit. The partnership between Hanna and Barbera would last for more than six decades, until Hanna's death in 2001. The duo's first cartoon together was 1940's 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...
, featuring a mouse's attempts to outwit a housecat. Though released without fanfare, the short was financially and critically successful, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) of 1940. On the strength of the Oscar nomination and public demand, Hanna and Barbera were assigned to direct more cat-and-mouse cartoons, soon christening the characters "Tom" and "Jerry". Puss Gets the Boot did not win the 1940 Academy Award for Best Cartoon, but another MGM cartoon, Rudolf 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...
did, making MGM the first studio to wrestle the Cartoon Academy Award away from Walt Disney.
Tom and Jerry quickly became MGM's most valuable animated property. The shorts were successful at the box office, many licensed products (comic books, toys, etc.) were released to the market, and the series would earn twelve more Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons) nominations, with seven of the Tom and Jerry shorts going on to win the Academy Award: 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...
(1943), 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...
(1944), Quiet Please! (1945), The Cat Concerto
The Cat Concerto
The 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...
(1946), 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...
(1948), 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...
(1951), and Johann Mouse
Johann Mouse
Johann 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...
(1952). Tom and Jerry was eventually tied with Disney's Silly Symphonies as the most-awarded theatrical cartoon series. Originally barred by Quimby from making a second cat-and-mouse short until the overwhelming success of Puss Gets the Boot demanded it, Hanna and Barbera and their team of animators, who included George Gordon, Jack Zander, Kenneth Muse, Irven Spence, Ed Barge, Ray Patterson and Pete Burness, worked on nothing but Tom and Jerry cartoons from 1941 until 1955.
Key to the successes of Tom and Jerry and other MGM cartoons was the work of 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...
, who scored virtually all of the cartoons for the studio from 1934 to 1957. Bradley's scores made use of both classical and jazz sensibilities. In addition, he often used songs from the scores of MGM's feature films, the most frequent of them being "The Trolley Song" from 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...
and "Sing Before Breakfast" from Broadway Melody of 1936
Broadway Melody of 1936
Broadway Melody of 1936 is a musical released by MGM in 1935. It was a follow up of sorts to the successful The Broadway Melody, which had been released in 1929, although, beyond the title and some music, there is no story connection with the earlier film.The film was written by Harry W. Conn, Moss...
.
Enter Tex Avery
Hugh Harman left the MGM studio in April 1941, and Rudolph Ising departed eighteen months later. George Gordon took over Ising's department, continuing work on the Barney Bear cartoons, but only completed three cartoons before he left the studio in 1943. In Harman's place, Quimby hired Tex AveryTex 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...
, an animation director known for his wild comedic style at the Schlesinger studio. Avery's first short for MGM was the World War II parody Blitz Wolf
Blitz Wolf
Blitz Wolf is an early anti-German World War II Hitler-parodying cartoon produced in 1942 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was directed by Tex Avery and produced by Fred Quimby. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons.-Plot:...
, which was nominated for the 1942 Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons). While Avery had revolutionized cartoon humor at Schlesinger's, he went several steps further in his MGM works. Avery exaggerated his characters and situations wildly, and was noted for the precise and hard-edged timing of his gags.
Among Avery's most noted cartoons for MGM were slapstick comedies such as Red Hot Riding Hood
Red Hot Riding Hood
Red Hot Riding Hood is an animated cartoon short subject, directed by Tex Avery and released on May 8, 1943 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1994 it was voted #7 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field...
(1943), Northwest Hounded Police (1946), King-Size Canary
King-Size Canary
King-Size Canary is an animated cartoon short that debuted in movie theaters in 1947. It was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and directed by Tex Avery.-Plot:An unnamed alley cat searches for food in some garbage cans late at night...
(1947), Little Rural Riding Hood (1949), and Bad Luck Blackie
Bad Luck Blackie
Bad Luck Blackie is a 1949 animated cartoon produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The Tex Avery-directed short was voted the fifteenth-best cartoon of all-time in a 1994 poll of one-thousand animation industry professionals, as referenced in the book The 50 Greatest Cartoons...
(1949). While Avery preferred to focus on gags instead of characterization, he established several popular MGM cartoon characters, including Screwy Squirrel, the Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men is a novella written by Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the tragic story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers during the Great Depression in California, USA....
derived pair of George and Junior
George and Junior
George and Junior was a short-lived animation cartoon series by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. All of the original, 1940s shorts were directed by Tex Avery, who based them on George and Lennie from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men...
, and his best-known character, Droopy. Droopy, voiced by Bill Thompson
Bill Thompson (voice actor)
Bill Thompson was an American radio actor and voice actor whose career stretched from the 1930s until his death.-Early career:...
(a.k.a. "Wallace Wimple" on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
Radio's Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series which maintained its popularity over decades. It premiered on NBC in 1935 and continued until its demise in 1959, long after radio had ceased to be the dominant form of entertainment in American popular culture.-Husband and wife in real...
show) debuted in 1943 with Dumb-Hounded
Dumb-Hounded
Dumb-Hounded is an American animation short from 1943. It's notable for being the first cartoon to star Droopy.-Plot:The wolf escapes from prison. Several police dogs are freed to search him, but one one them, Droopy, remains behind and informs the audience that he is the hero of the story. He...
. He appeared in several more Avery cartoons (including Northwest Hounded Police) before being officially given his own series in 1948 with Senor Droopy.
The influence of Avery's cartoons was felt across the animation industry; even Hanna and Barbera adapted their Tom and Jerry shorts to match the levels of madcap humor and violence in Avery's films. Avery's team included storymen Rich Hogan and Heck Allen, and animators such as Michael Lah
Michael Lah
Michael Richard Lah was an American animator. He is best known for his work at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, primarily as a member of Tex Avery's animation unit....
, Ed Love, and Preston Blair
Preston Blair
Preston Blair was an American character animator, most noted for his work at Walt Disney Productions and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation department...
, most famous for animating the sexy female singer in Red Hot Riding Hood and its follow-ups. In 1946, Quimby assigned Blair and Lah to direct a new series of Barney Bear cartoons, reversing the decision after three cartoons.
Into the 1950s: The departure(s) of Avery and the arrival of CinemaScope
Tex Avery was a perfectionist: he worked extensively on his films' stories and gags, revised his animators' drawings, and was even known to cut frames out of the final Technicolor answer print if he felt a gag had been animated too softly. The strain of overwork caused Avery to quit MGM in May 1950, after completing Rock-a-Bye Bear (not released until 1952 because of MGM's cartoon backlog). Former Walter LantzWalter Lantz
Walter Benjamin Lantz was an American cartoonist, animator, film producer, and director, best known for founding Walter Lantz Productions and creating Woody Woodpecker.-Early years and start in animation:...
director Dick Lundy was brought in to head Avery's unit. Lundy completed one Droopy cartoon and ten Barney Bear shorts before Avery returned in October 1951 and reassumed his role as director from Lundy, starting with Little Johhny Jet (released in 1953).
Avery directed eleven more cartoons for MGM, many of them showing the heavy influence of the style of the newly popular 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...
studio in their designs. In March 1953, MGM closed down the cartoon unit, thinking that the growing trend for 3-D film
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...
s would bring an end to the animated cartoon. Avery himself did not leave the studio until June, working with co-director Michael Lah on two cartoons, Deputy Droopy and Cellbound, which Lah completed with the Hanna and Barbera staff (working during the most part of 1953 for commercials, as a predecessor of H-B Enterprises
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...
) during the closure. Avery went on to join the Walter Lantz staff the following February, while Lah went on to do commercial animation work. Because of the backlog of completed MGM cartoons, the cartoons Avery completed during his second tenure at the studio were not released until after he'd left again; Cellbound was not released until 1955.
Meanwhile after the studio reopened in 1954, budget cuts required Hanna and Barbera to reduce the level of detail in their Tom and Jerry shorts (a precursor of what was to come), and to also begin doing one "cheater" short per year composed mostly of footage from previously released cartoons. That year, Hanna and Barbera directed Pet Peeve, the first MGM cartoon in the new widescreen 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, which had been was devised as a means to keep audiences attending movie theatres in the wake of the popularity of television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
. Pet Peeve, released in late 1954, was followed by a sporadic number of CinemaScope Tom and Jerrys, with several other Tom and Jerrys being dual-released in standard format and in CinemaScope. After Pecos Pest
Pecos Pest
Pecos Pest is the 96th one-reel animated Tom and Jerry short, created in 1953 directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera scored by Scott Bradley and released in theaters on November 11, 1955 by Metro Goldwyn Mayer....
(released in 1955), all MGM cartoons were released in CinemaScope. Six previous MGM cartoons, among them Hugh Harman's Peace on Earth, were remade in CinemaScope. Like the original Peace on Earth in 1939, its 1955 remake, Good Will to Men, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).
Later years and decline
Fred Quimby retired in 1955, and Hanna and Barbera became the new heads of the studio. Michael Lah returned to the studio in 1955 to direct an animated sequence for the MGM feature Invitation to the DanceInvitation to the Dance (film)
Invitation to the Dance is a 1956 anthology film consisting of three distinct stories, all starring and directed by Gene Kelly.The film is unusual in that it has no spoken dialogue, with the characters performing their roles entirely through dance and mime...
, and stayed on to supervise a new series of CinemaScope Droopy cartoons to accompany the new CinemaScope Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Lah's One Droopy Knight was nominated for the 1957 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons). However, for the most part, both the Droopy and Tom and Jerry cartoons had lost their appeal in the eyes of critics, due to weaker stories and lower quality animation. To keep the studio alive, MGM had begun reissuing previously-released cartoons since the 1940s
1940s
File:1940s decade montage.png|Above title bar: events which happened during World War II : From left to right: Troops in an LCVP landing craft approaching "Omaha" Beach on "D-Day"; Adolf Hitler visits Paris, soon after the Battle of France; The Holocaust occurred during the war as Nazi Germany...
, but in late 1956 decided that, since the reissued shorts brought in as much revenue as the new shorts, it could save six hundred thousand dollars a year by ending new production.
The studio was shut down in May 1957, and Hanna and Barbera took most of their unit and began producing television cartoons with their company Hanna-Barbera Productions
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...
. Hanna-Barbera first approached MGM to distribute their cartoons for television, but were turned down. Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
' Screen Gems
Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....
picked up Hanna-Barbera's product, and the studio soon became the most successful producers of television animation in the world. MGM would later have 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...
create a series of Tom and Jerry cartoons before contracting 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...
and Les Goldman's Sib Tower 12
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...
studio to create more Tom and Jerry shorts. Sib Tower 12 was absorbed by MGM in 1964, and was renamed 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...
.
The MGM cartoon library today
In 1986, 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...
's Turner Broadcasting attempted to acquire MGM/UA but resold the rest of the company after being unable to find enough money for the deal, but he kept the pre-1986 MGM library (which included the MGM Cartoons along with it). 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...
was established to oversee the library. In 1996, Turner Broadcasting merged with 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...
. Today, Warner/Turner owns the rights to MGM's animated output. Ironically, Turner had also acquired Hanna-Barbera in 1991, these cartoons were also incorporated into the TW/Turner merger.
As of 2009, nearly all of the Hanna and Barbera-produced Tom and Jerry are available on DVD under 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...
, a series of three DVD box sets that were released from October 2004 to September 2007 (however, three cartoons are missing due to politcially incorrect scenes, and several of the released ones are edited). Warner Home Video would later release the Tom & Jerry shorts as part of the 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...
series of DVD and 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...
boxsets, which will start with the first volume being released October 25, 2011, with the shorts being presented uncut, restored, remastered, in chronological order, and for the Blu-ray version, in 1080p
1080p
1080p is the shorthand identification for a set of HDTV high-definition video modes that are characterized by 1080 horizontal lines of resolution and progressive scan, meaning the image is not interlaced as is the case with the 1080i display standard....
high definition
High-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
. Moreover, a two-disc collection of all of Droopy's cartoons was released in May 2007. Rumors have floated around for years of a box set consisting of 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...
's MGM work, but nothing has been released besides the Spotlight and Golden box sets for Tom and Jerry and the Droopy collection in USA.
Notable crew members
- Fred QuimbyFred QuimbyFrederick 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...
, producer (1937–1954) - Hugh HarmanHarman and IsingHugh Harman and Rudolf "Rudy" Ising were an American animation team best known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios...
, director/producer (1939–1941) - Rudolph IsingHarman and IsingHugh Harman and Rudolf "Rudy" Ising were an American animation team best known for founding the Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studios...
, director/producer (1939–1942) - William HannaWilliam HannaWilliam 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...
, director/producer/storyman (1937–1957) - Joseph BarberaJoseph BarberaJoseph 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....
, director/producer/creative work (1939–1957) - Tex AveryTex AveryFrederick 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...
, director (1942–1953) - Preston BlairPreston BlairPreston Blair was an American character animator, most noted for his work at Walt Disney Productions and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation department...
, animator/director (1942–1948) - Michael LahMichael LahMichael Richard Lah was an American animator. He is best known for his work at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, primarily as a member of Tex Avery's animation unit....
, animator/director (1942–1957) - Scott BradleyScott BradleyScott 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...
, music composer (1938–1957)
Theatrical cartoon shorts series
- Happy HarmoniesHappy HarmoniesHappy Harmonies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and produced by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising between 1934 and 1938....
(1934–1938) - The Captain and the KidsThe Captain and the Kids (MGM animated series)In 1938, The Katzenjammer Kids were adapted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, becoming the studio's first self-produced series of theatrical cartoon short subjects, directed by William Hanna, Bob Allen and Friz Freleng. The series was unsuccessful, ending after one year and a total of 15 cartoons...
(1938–1939) - Count ScrewlooseCount Screwloose (MGM animated series)Was a short lived cartoon series by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer of two cartoons. Both released in 1939.-History:MGM brought in established newspaper cartoonist Milt Gross in an attempt to both bolster the Captain and the Kids product and create original properties for MGM, but his tenure at the studio was...
(1939) - Barney BearBarney BearBarney 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....
(1939–1944, 1947–1949, 1952–1954) - Tom and JerryTom and JerryTom and Jerry are the cat and mouse cartoon characters that were evolved starting in 1939.Tom and Jerry also may refer to:Cartoon works featuring the cat and mouse so named:* The Tom and Jerry Show...
(1940–1958) - Droopy (1943–1958)
- Screwy Squirrel (1944–1946)
- George and JuniorGeorge and JuniorGeorge and Junior was a short-lived animation cartoon series by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. All of the original, 1940s shorts were directed by Tex Avery, who based them on George and Lennie from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men...
(1946–1948) - SpikeSpike (MGM cartoon series)Spike was a short-lived animation cartoon series by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. All of the original, 1940s-50s shorts were directed by Tex Avery, it was a spin-off from the Droopy series as opposed to the Spike from the Tom and Jerry cartoons.-Cartoons:...
(1949–1957) - Spike and TykeSpike and TykeSpike & 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...
(1957)
See also
- The Golden Age of American animationThe Golden Age of American animationThe Golden Age of U.S. animation is a period in the United States animation history that began with the advent of sound cartoons in 1928 and continued into the early 1960s when theatrical animated shorts slowly began losing to the new medium of television animation.Many memorable characters emerged...
- 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...
- Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer AnimationMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer AnimationMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer Animation, or MGM Animation for short, was the animation division of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion picture studio in Hollywood, California, USA that specializes in animated productions for theatrical features and television...