The duo was dreamt up from a place of desperation. MGM's animation department, where creators Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera worked, had struggled to emulate the success of other studios who had hit characters like Porky Pig and Mickey Mouse. Out of boredom, the animators, both aged under 30, began thinking up their own ideas. Barbera said he loved the simple concept of a cat and mouse cartoon, with conflict and chase, even though it had been done countless times before. Puss gets the Boot was the first they released, in The debut was a hit and won the studio an Oscar nomination for best animated short.
Despite their work, the animators were not credited. Managers initially told them not to put all their eggs in one basket. A change of heart came only when a letter arrived from an influential industry figure in Texas asking when she would see another one of those "wonderful cat and mouse cartoons". Jasper and Jinx, as they were first known, became Tom and Jerry. According to Barbera there was no real discussion about the characters not speaking, but having grown up with silent films starring Charlie Chaplin, the creators knew they could be funny without dialogue.
Music composed by Scott Bradley underscored the action and Tom's trademark human-like scream was voiced by Hanna himself. For the best part of the next two decades, Hanna and Barbera oversaw the production of more than of these shorts.
These Tom and Jerrys are almost universally considered the best, with rich hand-drawn animation and detailed backdrops helping win them seven Academy Awards and cameos in Hollywood feature films. It's evergreen, it doesn't fade," he says. Yes, we know they're from the s or s - it doesn't matter and it still speaks to you today. What we've learned in time is that they really are great art. They're not disposable throwaway entertainment. When producer Fred Quimby retired in the mids, Hanna and Barbera took over MGM's cartoon department just as budget cuts closed in.
Studio bosses, threatened by the growing popularity of television, realised they could make almost as much money by re-issuing the old shorts as they could by making new ones.
When their department was closed down in , Hanna and Barbera set up their own production company. In they outsourced to a studio in Prague to save on costs. Chicago-born animator Gene Deitch was tasked with heading the remake, but struggled with a tight budget and staff with no knowledge of the original. His studio also secretly made episodes of other cartoons, including Popeye.
Czech names were Americanised on the credits to stop viewers associating the shows with Communism. He knew, being the first to follow up the classics, that he would be "in the line of fire" from fans, and his 13 cartoons are regularly labelled the worst.
In interviews Deitch was honest about their bad reputation and revealed he even received a death threat over them. Under him, Tom's eyebrows grew thicker and his face more twisted, and was more like the Dr Seuss character the Grinch that Jones also animated. Mark Kausler, 72, is one of many people who have warm memories of Tom and Jerry growing up. Kelly's character spins a tale about how he met and helped out a lonely mouse king, and the two dance on-screen together, their moves immaculately synchronized through the dual powers of human choreography and intensive animation, then mashed up together in an editing room.
Despite a lack of evidence — and how a few minutes of internet research can easily prove or disprove most anything — urban legends and myths about pop culture persist.
There's even an especially dark one about Tom and Jerry. Reportedly, the final Tom and Jerry cartoon ends with a real and disturbing finality, with both characters killing themselves by way of lying down on train tracks and getting run over. Yep, Tom and Jerry commit suicide.
However, like about 99 percent of urban legends, this isn't true, but some nuggets of truth have been exaggerated. In the short "Blue Cat Blues," Tom gets incredibly despondent when his girlfriend leaves him for another cat, and Jerry tries to pull him out of his funk, only to have his best mouse gal pal dump him, too. The episode ends with them both sitting on tracks while a train approaches. But the cartoon doesn't actually depict their deaths.
Nor do they really die, because plenty more Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced after "Blue Cat Blues," well into the '60s. Still, that's a pretty dark show for kids.
Tom and Jerry are pop culture pioneers, one of the first cartoon duos that operated on an endlessly repeatable formula that somehow never got old , in which they engaged in constant bloodless war.
Tom and Jerry predate and certainly influenced plenty of other cartoon adversaries, such as Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Sylvester and Tweety, and Itchy and Scratchy the extraordinarily violent show-within-a-show-within-a-show about a cat and mouse on The Simpsons. Its gleefully nihilistic tone can also be found in Jackass. In fact, the cat and mouse not only helped co-creator and star Johnny Knoxville recover between movies, but they got him ready for more.
Tom and Jerry is often thought of as frivolous entertainment for children. It's simply something pleasant and familiar that's aired on television, both on kids networks and on local stations, for decades on end. However, this iconic cat and mouse have a bit more prestige than you might expect. Tom and Jerry cartoons started production in , well before the advent of TV, and they were shown in movie theaters. And the cat and mouse absolutely dominated the field.
Tom and Jerry cartoons feel like they're about as innocent as cartoons get. After all, they were made in the s and s, they were shown to kids for decades, and they aren't nearly as violent as the stuff kids are into these days. Half the superhero cast of Avengers: Infinity War dies , after all. But Tom and Jerry cartoons are hardly innocuous.
Over the years, individual installments have been heavily edited or straight-up banned by TV networks around the world. At a speech at Cairo University in , the official claimed that Tom and Jerry cartoons depicted "the violence in a funny manner and [sent] the message that, yes, I can hit him Today, Warner Bros. Cartoon Network aired the shorts from the network's inception in until It returned in before being removed again later in the year along with the Looney Tunes shorts.
It was notably one of the only classic cartoons the other notable one being Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! It has also aired on Boomerang since the channel's launch. The plots of each short usually center on Tom's the cat numerous attempts to capture Jerry the mouse 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 it is unclear why Tom chases Jerry so much.
Tom rarely succeeds in catching Jerry, mainly because of Jerry's cleverness, cunning abilities, and luck and sometimes due to Tom's own stupidity. 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 "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 he has shot Jerry and subsequently comes running with the first aid kit. The shorts are famous for some of the most violent gags ever devised in theatrical animation: Jerry slicing Tom in half, shutting his head in a window or a door, Tom using everything from axes, pistols, explosives, traps and poison to try to murder Jerry, Jerry stuffing Tom's tail in a waffle iron, kicking him into a refrigerator, plugging his tail into an electric socket, pounding him with a mace, club or mallet, causing a tree to drive him into the ground, and so on.
Despite all its popularity, Tom and Jerry has often been criticised as excessively violent. Despite the frequent violence, there is no blood or gore in any scenes. 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 stereotypes, such as the blackening of characters following explosions and the use of heavy and enlarged shadows e. Jekyll and Mr. Resemblance to everyday objects and occurrences is arguably the main appeal of visual humour 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, emphasising the action, filling in for traditional sound effects, and lending emotion to the scenes. Generally, there is little dialogue as Tom and Jerry almost never speak, however minor characters are not similarly limited.
For example, the character Mammy Two Shoes has lines in every episode in which she appears except for the exception of The Little Orphan.
Most of the dialogue from Tom and Jerry are the high-pitched laughs and gasping screams, which may be provided by a horn or other musical instrument. Before , all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in the standard Academy ratio and format; from late to , some of the output was dually produced in both Academy format and the widescreen CinemaScope process.
From 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 Stereo. The s 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 s entries were done in Metrocolor.
Tom is a Russian Blue cat, who lives a pampered life, while Jerry is a small brown house mouse who always lives in close proximity to him. Tom was originally called "Jasper" in the very first short, Puss Gets the Boot , while Jerry was unnamed, though the animators gave him the nickname "Jinx". Tom is very quick-tempered and thin-skinned, while Jerry is independent and opportunistic. Jerry also possesses surprising strength for his size, lifting items such as anvils with relative ease and withstanding considerable impacts with them.
Despite being very energetic and determined, Tom is no match for Jerry's brains and wits. By the "iris-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.
Sometimes, usually ironically, they both lose or 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.
For instance, in one short, Tom develops a guilty conscience after tossing Jerry out into the cold one winter night and goes outside to save the little mouse, bringing him inside 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.
In one short, Tom shows genuine concern for Jerry when he believes that he has accidentally shot him and immediately rushes to get a first-aid kit. Despite several shorts depicting Tom's apparent "death" at the end of the short, he never actually dies throughout the series, and even reads about a flashback of his own apparent death in Jerry's Diary. Although many supporting and minor characters speak, Tom and Jerry rarely do so themselves.
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. 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! In one episode, 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.
Tom and Jerry: The Movie is the first and so far only installment of the series where the famous cat-and-mouse duo regularly speak to both humans and other anthropomorphic animals; it is possible that Tom and Jerry do have full speech capabilities, but choose not to use them aside from a few short phrases, preferring to leave the talking to other characters.
In his attempts to catch Jerry, Tom often has to deal with the intrusions of Butch, a scruffy black alley cat who wants to catch and eat Jerry, and Spike sometimes billed as "Killer" or "Butch" , an angry, vicious guard bulldog who tries to attack Tom for bothering his son Tyke while trying to get Jerry. Spike spoke often, using a voice and expressions performed by Daws Butler modeled after comedian Jimmy Durante. Spike's coat has altered throughout the years between grey and creamy pink.
The addition of Spike's son Tyke in the late s led to both a slight softening of Spike's character and a short-lived spin-off theatrical series Spike and Tyke.
Tom changes his love interest many times. The second and most frequent love interest of Tom's is Toodles Galore, who never has any dialogue in Tom and Jerry cartoons. In the earliest shorts, Mammy is depicted as the maid taking care of the often opulent home in which Tom and Jerry reside. Later Tom and Jerry shorts are set in what appears to be Mammy's own house. Her face is never seen with the exception of 's Saturday Evening Puss , in which her face is very briefly seen as she runs towards the camera , and she usually wallops the cat with a broom when he misbehaves.
When Mammy was not present, other humans would sometimes be seen, usually from the neck down as well. Mammy would appear in many cartoons until 's Push-Button Kitty. Later cartoons would instead show Tom and Jerry living with a s Yuppie-style couple. Soon after, virtually all humans in the series had visible faces.
Jerry adopted a little gray mouse foundling named Nibbles also later known as Tuffy , coming from a certain "Mrs. Bide-a-Wee Mouse Home. Another recurring character in the series was Quacker the duckling, who was later adapted into the Hanna-Barbera character Yakky Doodle. The last recurring character is a small unnamed green devil that looks like Jerry. He only appears in three episodes , Springtime for Thomas , and Smitten Kitten.
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