Tom and Jerry’s 80th Anniversary: The Creatives Who Made and Remade the Comedy Duo 04 March 2020 // Featured Martyn Warren Writer







Tom and Jerry have continued to outsmart and make audiences laugh for eighty years, making them one of the most recognisable comedic duos in animation history. Though the premise has remained mostly the same with Tom the cat trying to unsuccessfully catch Jerry the mouse, they still remain popular from their move as theatrical shorts to television episodes and succeeded in the transition more than some animated characters would have.

And none of this would have been possible without the animators and creatives who helped to present them to a whole new generation of fans. From the acclaimed powerhouse duo William Hanna and Joseph Barbara to the recent carnation led by ex-Disney animator Darrell Van Citters, I wanted to explore the eighty year history of Tom and Jerry through the animators and directors who all made it possible to keep these iconic characters as relevant today as they were back in 1940.

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera – 1940 to 1994

Unlike Tom and Jerry’s dislike for one another, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera became great friends when they first worked together within the animation department at MGM in 1937 when Barbera joined the division. By the end of the thirties, MGM were looking to create a new and recognisable set of characters as they weren’t as successful compared to other big name studios after they opened up the animation sector in the early thirties. In an interview with Casper Star-Tribune in 1993, Barbera said:

Bill (Hanna) and I put our heads together and decided it would be different to have two equal characters who were always in conflict with each other. We originally thought of a fox and a dog, before deciding on the cat and mouse. When we presented the idea to Fred Quimby, the head of the shorts department, he hated the idea, but he let us go ahead and try it.

With the green light from Quimby, Hanna and Barbera went to work on a short animated film featuring the cat and mouse and be the unanticipated start to the characters’ stardom. Puss Gets the Boot was the name and, released in theatres in 1940, it was successful enough to get an Academy Award nomination in the animated short film category. This would prove to be the first of a vast collection of short films that MGM would produce with Hanna and Barbera at the helm and would last until 1958, a year after the two animators formed their studio, Hanna-Barbera.

Nearly two decades later, they collaborated with Turner Entertainment to create another television series. As shows starring younger versions of iconic animated characters were popular throughout the eighties and nineties, they created Tom & Jerry Kids that ran for four years between 1990 to 1993. While William Hanna passed away in 2001, Joseph Barbera would return on the 2005 Tom and Jerry short The Karate Guard to work on his last production before he passed the following year.

Gene Deitch – 1961 to 1962

In 1960, MGM were interested to revive Tom and Jerry in the absence of the original creators for a new series of thirteen animated shorts. They were looking to outsource the production instead of making it themselves and they looked to Rembrandt Films in Prague, Czech Republic. The person who would be in the director’s chair this time would be Gene Deitch and he definitely had some tough challenges when making all thirteen episodes, both historically and from fans.

Deitch originally came to Prague for only ten days to make a short film with an American film producer named Bill Snyder titled Munro, but he fell in love with a woman who would become his wife and would move to Prague permanently to work at Rembrant Films, the studio who were animating the short film. Because of the Iron Curtain at that time, and the strict restriction of Western media, the team had to be careful when MGM approached them to make the new Tom and Jerry cartoons. Since most of the crew were Czech nationals, their names had to be changed to English and sound more like American animators despite the rest of the world not knowing who they actually were. And as the original Tom and Jerry cartoons were banned from the Czech Republic due to the effects of the Iron Curtain, the animators were not used to the wacky, slapstick form of Western comedy.

Deitch tried to make some new changes to the duo. From new art styles, to exploring more locations, to replacing the once racially stereotypical owner of Tom to an easily angered Caucasian man; the changes that he and the team experimented with were at best mixed from audiences and MGM themselves. He mentioned the criticism in an interview with Radio Prague last year before his ninety-fifth birthday and said:

So I tried to think of new things that Tom and Jerry could do. The MGM [Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio] people were happy with the cartoons we were making. But the fans! The real fans and purists thought our films were terrible, because they weren’t pure Tom and Jerry.

Chuck Jones – 1963 to 1967

While Hanna, Barbera and Deitch were working on their Tom and Jerry productions, Chuck Jones was working as a director at Warner Brothers on Looney Tunes for nearly three decades before he founded his own company called Sib-Tower 12 Productions. After Rembrandt Films completed the thirteen productions, MGM approached Jones and his company to continue making the next batch of Tom and Jerry cartoons in America. With his previous experience working with slapstick and exaggerated humour on Looney Tunes, the cat and mouse appeared to be in good hands.

The design of the characters were changed slightly with Jerry appearing more cute and innocent looking and Tom given bigger eyes and eyebrows to express more range of emotions. These redesigns and the animation having more emotional and physical expressions made it possible for Jones to work with MGM for five years, producing a total of thirty four shorts.

It was also during this time that Jones would work on other properties and expand his portfolio that led to him to create some of his best work to date. This included the short film The Bear That Wasn’t based on Frank Tashlin’s children’s book and the television Christmas special How the Grinch Stole Christmas based on Dr. Seuss’ picture book. Despite his success with some iconic children’s characters being reimagined in his unique style, he would no longer work with the Tom and Jerry property after 1967. He would move on to his feature film debut as a director for The Phantom Tollbooth (which also celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year).

Darrell Van Citters – 2014 to Present

Turner Entertainment are the current owner of the Tom and Jerry property and they were eager to produce a new television series after rerunning Tom and Jerry Tales, a series that originally aired between 2006 to 2008. They turned their gaze to Renegade Animation, an animation production company that Darrell Van Citters and Ashley Postlewaite founded back in 1992, who have previously reinvented the Mr.Men and Little Miss characters for a new audience in the form of The Mr. Men Show.

Citters graduated from Cal Arts, one of the most renowned animation schools in America, and was the first person to graduate from their character animation program. This led him to work as an animator at Walt Disney Studios in 1976 on The Fox and the Hound and for the next ten years, he would work on countless Disney projects. After leaving Disney in 1986, he worked at Warner Brothers until 1992, where he worked on a number of productions starring the Looney Tunes characters.

With Van Citters in the director’s chair after years of working for the biggest animation companies in Hollywood, the latest carnation of the franchise, The Tom and Jerry Show, has enjoyed nearly seven years of broadcast and shows no sign of slowing down.

These were only just a handful out of the hundreds of people who would help to create and bring back Tom and Jerry for fans all over the world. The animated duo have been through many redesigns and tackled many different ideas and concepts to keep it fresh and engaging for audiences at the theatres and at home, and it would not have been possible without the talented directors and the animation teams they led to be given those opportunities.

From the animators to the producers, everyone who has worked on the animation revolving around the rivalry between this cat and mouse, should be proud to be part of the legacy that turned eighty years old this year!