Tom and Jerry are thought out in a moment of despair. MGM's animation department, which included creators Bill Han and Joe Barber, struggled to replicate the success of other studios that had hit characters such as Gica Prasic and Mickey Mouse.Out of boredom, the animators, both under the age of 30, started throwing out various ideas. Barbera said he liked the simple concept of drawing with a cat and a mouse, with all the conflict and chasing, even though it had been done countless times before."The Cat Gets a Boot" was the first to be released, in 1940. The debut episode was a hit and brought the studio an Oscar nomination in the animated short film category. Although they worked on the film, the animators were not signed.
Her superiors initially told her not to invest everything they have on just one card. They only changed their minds when a letter arrived from an influential Texas industry figure asking when they would watch one of those "beautiful cat and mouse cartoons" again.
Jasper and Jinks, as they were first called, became Tom and Jerry.According to Barbera, there was no concrete conversation about the characters not speaking, but growing up with silent films by Charlie Chaplin, the creators knew that they could be funny even without dialogue. The music composed by Scott Bradley emphasized the action, and the voice for Tom's recognizable human-like howl was given by Hannah personally.
For most of the next two decades, Hannah and Barbera oversaw the production of more than 100 of these short films. It took weeks to create each, and it took up to $ 50,000 to make, so only a handful could be made each year.
Those episodes of Tom and Jerry are almost unanimously considered the best, with gorgeous hand-drawn animation and detailed backgrounds that helped them win seven Oscars and make episodic appearances in Hollywood feature films.
"I bet when you watched them as a child, and even when you look at them now, you can't easily determine when they were made," says Jerry Beck, a cartoon historian who has done various jobs in the profession.
"There is something in that animation. She's evergreen, she doesn't fade, "he says." A drawing is a drawing, it's like going to see a masterpiece of painting. Yes, we know they're from the 1800s or 1700s - but it doesn't matter at all, we still are addressing today. "
"It's the same with these cartoonists. Over time, we have learned that they are a great art. They are not consumer entertainment that is just thrown away after use.
The duo also appeared alongside swimmer and actress Esther Williams in Dangerous When She Wet in 1953.
When producer Fred Quimby retired in the mid-1950s, Hannah and Barbera took over MGM’s cartoon department at a time when budget cuts were being introduced. The heads of the studios, threatened by the growing popularity of television, realized that they could make almost as much money by re-releasing old short films as they could by making new ones.
When their department closed in 1957, Hannah and Barbera founded their own production company.
But just a few years later, MGM decided to revive Tom and Jerry without their original creators. So in 1961 they commissioned a job from a studio in Prague to save on costs. Chicago-born animator Gene Deitch was given the task of doing a remake, but he had problems with a modest budget and staff who did not know the original.
His studio has secretly made episodes of other cartoons, including Popeye. Czech names at the top were Americanized so that cartoonists would not associate viewers with communism.Mark Kausler (72) is one of many who have fond memories of Tom and Jerry from the time they grew up. He distracted his father from watching the rolls of these short films, over and over again, at a local movie theater in St. Louis. He started making his own cartoons, partly inspired by these characters, and had a long animation career.
Tom and Jerry, with their blind violence and dark comedy, remain extremely popular around the world even today. They can be found on children's televisions around the world, from Japan to Pakistan, and the new mobile phone game has more than 100 million users in China.
The series was also, surprisingly, in the news. In 2016, a senior Egyptian official tried to blame this cartoon for the increase in violence in the Middle East, and the Supreme Leader of Iran compared their relations with America to Tom and Jerry at least twice.Bill Hannah died in 2001, and Joe Barbera died in 2006. A year before his death, Barbera was last signed on a short film with Tom and Jerry - the first without his partner.
"We understood each other perfectly, and we had a lot of respect for each other's work," he said, talking about their professional relationship.
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