Cat-and-mouse games begin

Tom and Jerry make their debut on the cinema circuit in “Puss Gets the Boot” on February 10 1940. Animators Joseph Barbera and William Hanna, working for MGM, come up with the “two equal characters who are always in conflict with each other”. Upon release the cat is named Jasper and the mouse is called Jinx only in pre-production. Barbera and Hanna are told by management not to produce any more. But when Texas businesswoman Bessa Short asks if there’ll be more cat and mouse shorts, MGM commissions a series. A studio naming contest settles on “Tom” and “Jerry” as their names. MGM takes them into movie land in the 1945 “Anchors Aweigh”. Gene Kelly becomes the first actor to interact with a cartoon character, most memorably in a quirky dance duet with King Jerry Mouse (pictured). “Puss Gets the Boot” earns an Oscar nomination for best short subject: cartoons. Barbera and Hanna produce 114 cartoons, earning seven Oscars from 13 nominations. (Others produced more episodes, the last in 2014, for a total of 164). The rise in TV in the ’50s causes problems for the MGM animation studio, which is closed in 1957. Hanna and Barbera are fired. Their subsequent TV hits include “The Flintstones”, “Yogi Bear”, “The Jetsons” and “Scooby-Doo”