How Tom and Jerry Cartoon Was Born Over the past few decades, the whole world has been enthralled by the sight of a cat and a mouse factory. Tom the cat and Jerry the mischievous mouse have been making everyone laugh for years. No one has time to see what they do to punish each other. This is how this evil cat-mouse pair made our childhood. And like all famous stories, the beginning of Tom and Jerry was not easy. Rather, the initial episode of Tom and Jerry was the neglected project of the movie production company MGM. Gradually it became very popular.
Year 1930 William Hannah and Joseph Barbara were then two executives at Metro Goldwyn Mayer, or MGM for short, in Hollywood. Hannah is a story writer and character designer, while Barbara is an experienced director. They worked for Rudolf Eising. Rudolf Ising was a famous animator. At that time there was a famous comic strip called “Captain and the Kids”. The studio decided to make a series of cartoons based on this comic strip. But this cartoon did not gain much popularity among the audience. Back then cartoons were expensive. Tom and Jerry Cartoon Was Born So the failure of Captain and the Kids caused huge financial loss to MGM Studio.
Then Barbara and Hanna teamed up to find a way out of this situation. Barbara suggested making a cartoon with a cat and mouse as the main characters. He named it “Puss Gets the Boot”. However, Hanna and her colleagues did not like the idea. Because it seemed to them that it was not very realistic. But finally the MGM studio decided to make a cartoon under this name.
“Puss Gets the Boot” cartoon featured a gray tabby cat named Jasper and a mouse named Jinx. Almost every time the cat Jasper caught the rat Jinx and broke various things in the house. Because of this, the housekeeper threatened to throw her out of the house. Jinx uses this opportunity to try to put Jasper at a disadvantage.
The plot of the story is very similar to Tom and Jerry. But this cartoon did not have any opening music like Tom and Jerry. The cartoon was finally released in theaters on February 10, 1940. But MGM Studios was not so enthusiastic about it. They were not very optimistic about the cat-and-mouse war. So, Hanna and Joseph therefore turned their attention to other cartoons and eventually forgot about “Puss Gets the Boot”.
On the other hand, the popularity of the cartoon in the theater gradually increased. The cartoon, however, lost in the finals to another MGM cartoon. The cartoon was “The Milky Way” by Rudolf Eising. But even then, the negative perception that everyone had towards this pair of mice and cats finally changed.
MGM Studios producer Fred Quimbley called Hannah and Barbara into his office one day. He advised them to move away from the one-episode cartoon and work on a series about mice and cats. Both Hanna and Barbara agreed to this proposal. But nobody liked the current name of the cartoon. He also received a 50 dollar prize for this naming.
Barbara began writing the story for the Tom and Jerry cartoon and Hanna took over directing. Barbara’s great story writing skills and Hannah’s excellent direction combined to create the most successful and popular cartoon series in the history of MGM Studios, “Tom and Jerry”.
The two of them produced a total of 114 Tom & Jerry shorts between 1941 and 1958, and maintained their wild popularity. Production of the “Tom and Jerry” cartoons never stopped until MGM Studios closed in 1958. Neither Hanna nor Barbara worked on any other cartoon series during their time at the studio. He never needed it. This one cartoon brought them immortality in the world of animated series. Even after 80 years, Tom and Jerry is still as popular as ever.
