Looking back at Tom & Jerry
On the anniversary of the much-loved cat and mouse cartoon comedy duo, we look back at how it all started and what made them so special
It was the cartoon that defined the Saturday mornings of so many children, where bowls of cereal were wolfed down while eyes were glued to the endless scrapping of Jerry, the canny mouse and Tom the cat that should know better. Tom and Jerry undoubtedly became the most legendary cartoon characters of all time but now these icons of the animation world are remarkably celebrating the 80th anniversary of their ongoing feud.
It’s all impressive stuff for a cartoon that almost didn’t make it on to the screen in the first place. Its creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were initially paired together by MGM bosses to come up with a totally new concept for an animation.
Instead what they pitched was the story of a cat and mouse chase that had been done time and time again, not least with Felix the Cat, a cartoon character from the silent film era. The studio was disappointed but nevertheless for some unknown reason gave William and Joseph the green light to produce one short film which they called Puss Gets the Boot. Here the characters we now know as Tom and Jerry were initially called Jasper and Jinx and it showed the cat tasked with getting rid of the resident mouse in the house, only to realise this little rodent was far more cunning than he expected.
The film was released in cinemas on February 10, 1940 and William and Joseph, having been told by management not to produce any more of their cat and mouse animation, started work on other projects.
Things changed, though, when a Texas businesswoman wrote into MGM asking for more of the cat and mouse shorts. Soon the studio changed
their minds and commissioned a whole series of William and Joseph’s animation. They decided, however, to hold a contest among studio employees asking for new names for the characters and
Tom and Jerry, named after a common Christmas time cocktail in America, was the winner.
With new names set, William and Joseph began work on a series that would go on to occupy the next 15 years of their career. Like their contradictory characters, William and Joseph were a bit ‘chalk and cheese’ themselves. William was the practical one who came up with the basic storylines and paid close attention to timing and structure. Joseph, meanwhile, was the artist who gave the characters shape and thought up the crazy scrapes they’d get into, from ripping up the inside of a piano to playing with sticks of dynamite.
Each episode took around six weeks to make and revolved around a similar story where Jerry would almost always come out on top. Their rivalry was never about Tom wanting to eat Jerry but instead about the thrill of the chase they both revelled in.
Their encounters were wacky, surreal and verging on violent at times, as they often tried to kill one another with explosives or whatever
weapon was at hand. This set Tom and Jerry apart from some of the other softer, more sentimental animations. Nevertheless, it seemed to go down well with audiences who perhaps craved more grown-up storylines in what were, for Tom and Jerry’s first few years, times of real world war.
But there’s also the feeling that Tom and Jerry’s relationship was more like sibling rivalry than straight enemies and it was possibly this all-too-relatable dynamic that secured Tom and Jerry’s place in the public’s affections. William and Joseph would go on to create 114 Tom and Jerry shorts until 1958 when the rising number of domestic TVs meant reduced takings at the cinema box office and MGM, facing financial pressure, were forced to end Tom and Jerry. For William and Joseph they would go on to focus their attention on creating The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo and other much-loved masterpieces.
But that wasn’t the end of Tom and Jerry, who were revived for the big and small screen multiple times. And today Warner Bros are now working on a live-action feature adaptation of the animated series, expected in cinemas
late 2020. ‘That’s all folks’... for now!