Cat and Mouse Games: The History of Tom and Jerry (Part 1)

After Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising left Warner Brothers (Where they played a huge part in making the first Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons), because of the small budgets they had to work on there, they moved very briefly to the Van Bueran Studio, only to leave after two cartoons(over a contract dispute), and then they settled at MGM. Here they taken over almost all the animated shorts from MGM. Like the MGM live-action features these shorts took an extremely elegant, and expensive looking visual atmosphere. This is just what they had always wanted to do at Warner Brothers. Harmon and Ising (have been former Disney employees) spent much of their career trying to compete with Disney. Therefore their Shorts had a very Disney like feel to them something the MGM shorts of later years would break heavily away from.

These shorts were perhaps too expensive looking, and too big of attempts to compete with Disney, because they often went way over budget. Due to this producer Fred Quimby decided to look for more directing units. This was filled by Friz Freling, who beirfly left Warner Brothers in 1937 only to come back later the same year. Freling was made to direct cartoons that were below his talent so he left soon. The next directing unit though stuck much better.

The position was filled by the team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Part of this may have been due to William Hanna having basically co- directed the Hugh Harmon cartoon "To Spring" (1936). Him and Joseph Barbera made a perfect team. Hanna was in charge of timing, and more technical aspects, while Barbera work on the creative part. Both were excellent at their respective parts.

The first cartoon they directed together was "Puss Gets the Boot" (1940). This cartoon stared Cat and Mouse team Jasper and Jinx. Jinx name was never used in the cartoon, but Hanna and Barbera would later reuse that name in a later series of cat and mouse cartoons (Pixie, Dixie and Mr. Jinx from "The Huckleberry Hound Show"). Unfortunately neither Hanna nor Barbera would receive any credit for the cartoon. The credit would all go to Rudolf Ising. Even though this cartoon was nominated for an Oscar, Hanna and Barbera were not encouraged to make more cat and mouse cartoons. Fred Quimby gave the reason for this as being that MGM should have a diverse profile and not count on this miracle happening again.

Lucky for us and animation history, Hanna and Barbera decided to make more cat and mouse cartoons. They would change the names of this cat and mouse to Tom and Jerry, and through 114 classic Tom and Jerry cartoons they would make animation history.

To Be Continued...

-Michael J Ruhland