Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio

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A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon opening title, from the 1940s.

The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio was the in-house division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) motion picture studio in Hollywood, California, responsible for producing animated short subjects to accompany MGM feature films in Loew's Theaters. Active from 1937 until 1957, the MGM cartoon studio produced some of the most popular cartoon series and characters in the world, including Barney Bear, Droopy, and their best-known work, Tom and Jerry.

Prior to the existence of their in-house cartoon studio, MGM released the work of independent animation producers Ub Iwerks and Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising.

MGM's early involvements with animation

The Ub Iwerks studio

To promote their films and attract larger theater audiences, motion picture chains in the 1930s provided many features to supplement the main feature, including travelogues, serials, short comedy subjects, newsreels and cartoons. During the late 1920s, Walt Disney Productions had achieved huge popular and critical success with their Mickey Mouse cartoons for Pat Powers' Celebrity Pictures. Several other studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer among them, took note of Disney's success and began to look for ways to compete.

MGM's first foray into animation was the Flip the Frog cartoon series, starring an anthropomorphic talking and singing frog. The series was produced independently for Celebrity Pictures by Ub Iwerks, formerly the head animator at the Disney studio. Celebrity Pictures' Pat Powers had hired Iwerks away from Disney with the promise of giving Iwerks his own studio, and was able to secure a distribution deal with MGM for the Flip the Frog cartoons. The first Flip the Frog cartoon, Fiddlesticks, was released in August of 1930 , and over two-dozen other Flip cartoons followed during the next three years. In 1933, the Flip character was dropped in favor of Willie Whopper, a new series featuring a lir-telling little boy. Willie Whopper failed to catch on, and MGM terminated its distribution deal with Iwerks and Powers, who had already began distributing their Comi-Color cartoons on their own

The Harman-Ising studio

MGM next turned to Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, the directors behind Leon Schlesinger's Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for Warner Bros.. Harman and Ising had quit Schlesinger's in 1933 because of budget disputes, and in February 1934 MGM signed the newly founded Harman-Ising studio to work on a new series of high-budget color cartoons. The director team brought with them much of their staff from Schlesinger, including animators and storymen such as Carmen "Max" Maxwell, William Hanna, and brothers Robert and Tom McKimson.. Also following Harman and Ising from Schlesinger was Bosko, a successful character the duo had created for the Warner cartoons.

The first entry in MGM's new Happy Harmonies cartoon series, The Discontented Canary, was completed in June 1934 and released in September. The series continued for three years, moving from two-strip to three-strip Technicolor in 1936. The Happy Harmonies canon included a handful of entries starring Bosko, who by 1935 had been redesigned from an ambiguous "inkspot" character into a discernable little African-American boy. The directors worked separately on their own films, although both strived to create intricate films that would compete with Disney's award-winning Silly Symphonies.

However, budget problems threatend to plague Harman and Ising a second time: Happy Harmonies cartoons regulalrly ran over budget, and Hugh Harman paid no heed to MGM's demands that he reduce the costs of the shorts. MGM retaliated in February 1937 by deciding to open their own cartoon studio, and hired away most of the Harman-Ising staff to do so. The final Happy Harmonies short, The Little Bantamweight, was released in March 1938, and Harman and Ising went on to establish a new studo to do freelance animation work for Walt Disney and Screen Gems.

The MGM cartoon studio during the Golden Age of American animation

Early years and The Captain and the Kids

In March 1937, MGM hired film sales executive Fred Quimby, a man with no previous experience in the animation industry, to set up and run the new MGM cartoon department. Among the holdovers from the Harman-Ising regime, William Hanna and Bob Allen were appointed as directors, and Carmen Maxwell became production manager. Quimby raided every major American animation studio for talent, extracting artists, directors, and writers from studios, such as Friz Freleng from Leon Schlesinger Productions, Emery Hawkins from Screen Gems, and much of the top staff at Terrytoons (Joseph Barbera, Jack Zander, Ray Kelly, Dan Gordon, George Gordon, and others). After spending some time headquartered in a nearby house, the new MGM cartoon studio at Overland Ave. and Montana Ave. opened its doors on August 23, 1937.

Although it boasted a brand-new facility and large production budgets, the MGM cartoon studio's first series was a failure. The Captain and the Kids, adapted from Rudolph Dirks' Katzenjammer Kids characters, was licensed by MGM without input from its then-forming creative staff. Freleng, Hanna, and Allen, assigned to direct the Captain and the Kids cartoons, were unable to translate the Katzenjammer humor into animation, and the series folded after fifteen episodes. Only two of the Captain and the Kids shorts were produced in Technicolor; the other thirteen were produced in black-and-white and released in sepia-toned prints.

The Return of Harman and Ising

MGM brought in established newspaper cartoonists such as Milt Gross and Harry Hershfield in an attempt to both bolster the Captain and the Kids product and create original properties for MGM, but both cartoonists' tenures at the studio were short-lived. Gray managed to complete two cartoons, Jitterbug Follies and Wanted: No Master, with his characters Count Screwloose of Tooloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog, while Hershfield completed no cartoons. In October 1938, Quimby, coming full-circle, hired Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising as the new creative heads of the studio, acting as both directors and producers, and in charge of many of the employees who had defected from the Harman-Ising studio a year before.

Barney Bear, created in 1939 became the cartoon studio's first big star.

Among Ising's first new cartoons for MGM was 1939's The Bear Who Couldn't Sleep, the debut appearance of Barney Bear, a lumbering anthropomorphic bear based upon both Wallace Beery and Ising himself. Barney Bear would become MGM's first original cartoon star, regularly featured in cartoons until 1953, although his popularity never rose to the level of a Mickey Mouse or a Porky Pig. Ising focused on the Barney Bear cartoons, while Harman focused on making intricately animated one-shot cartoons, although Harman was able to establish a short-lived series of Three Bears cartoons.

At this time, Harman created his masterwork, Peace on Earth. Releaced during the holiday season of 1939 (immediately after the outbreak of World War II in Europe), Peace on Earth was a serious work which dealt with the idea of what a post-apocalyptic world would be like. Peace on Earth was nominated for the 1939 Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons), as well as for the Nobel Peace Prize.

William Hanna meets Joseph Barbera, and Tom meets Jerry

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Tom and Jerry was MGM's most successful animated cartoon series, winning the studio seven Oscars.

Friz Freleng, briefly assigned to work under Harman, returned to Schlesinger after his MGM contract expired in April 1939 , and storyman Joseph Barbera was teamed with director William Hanna to co-direct cartoons for Rudolf Ising's unit. The duo's first cartoon together was 1940's Puss Gets the Boot, featuring a mouse's attempts to outwit a housecat. Though released without fanfare, short was financially and critically successful, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) of 1940. On the strength of the Oscar nomination and public demand, Hanna and Barbera were assigned to direct more cat-and-mouse cartoons, eventually christening the characters "Tom" and "Jerry". Puss Gets the Boot did not win the 1940 Academy Award for Best Cartoon, but another MGM cartoon, RudolfIsing's The Milky Way did, making MGM the first studio to wrestle the Cartoon Academy Award away from Walt Disney.

Tom and Jerry quickly became MGM's most valuable animated property. The shorts were successful at the box office, many licensed products (comic books, toys, etc.) were released to the market, and the series would earn twelve more Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons) nominations, with seven of the Tom and Jerry shorts going on to win the Academy Award: The Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943), Mouse Trouble (1944), Quiet Please! (1945), The Cat Concerto (1946), The Little Orphan (1948), The Two Mouseketeers (1951), and Johann Mouse (1952). Tom and Jerry was eventually tied with Disney's Silly Symphonies as the most-awarded theatrical cartoon series. Originally barred from making a second cat-and-mouse short, Hanna and Barbera and their team of animators, who included Jack Zander, Kenneth Muse, Irven Spence, Ed Barge, Ray Patterson and Pete Burness, worked on nothing but Tom and Jerry cartoons from 1941 until 1955.

Key to the successes of Tom and Jerry and other MGM cartoons was the work of Scott Bradley, who scored virtually all of the cartoons for the studio from 1934 to 1957. Bradley's scores made use of both classical and jazz sensibilities. In addition, he often used songs from the scores of MGM's feature films, the most frequent of them being "The Trolley Song" from Meet Me in St. Louis and "Sing Before Breakfast" from The Broadway Melody of 1936.

Enter Tex Avery

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Droopy, created in 1943, remains one of Tex Avery's most memorable creations.

Hugh Harman left the MGM studio in April 1941, and Rudolph Ising departed eighteen months later. George Gordon took over Ising's department, continuing work on the Barney Bear cartoons, but only completed three cartoons before he left the studio in 1943. In Harman's place, Quimby hired Tex Avery, an animation director known for his wild comedy at the Schlesinger studio. Avery's first short for MGM was the World War II parody The Blitz Wolf, which was nominated for the 1942 Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons). While Avery had revolutionized cartoon humor at Schlesinger's, he went several steps further in his MGM works. Avery exaggerated his characters and situations wildly, and was noted for the precise and hard-edged timing of his gags. Among Avery's most noted cartoons for MGM were slapstick comedies such as Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), Northwest Hounded Police (1946), King-Size Canary (1947), Little Rural Riding Hood (1949), and Bad-Luck Blackie (1959). While Avery preferred to focus on gags instead of characterization, he established several popular MGM cartoon characters, including Screwball Squirrel, the Of Mice and Men derived pair of George and Junior, and his best-known character, Droopy. Droopy debuted in 1943 with Dumb-hounded, and appeared in several more Avery cartoons (including Northwest Hounded Police) before being given his own series in 1948 with Senor Droopy.

The influence of Avery's cartoons was felt across the animation industry; even Hanna and Barbera adapted their Tom and Jerry shorts to match the the levels of madcap humor and violence in Avery's films. Avery's team included storymen Rich Hogan and Heck Allen, and animators such as Michael Lah, Ed Love, and Preston Blair, most famous for animating the sexy female singer in Red Hot Riding Hood and its follow-ups. In 1946, Quimby assigned Blair and Lah to direct a new series of Barney Bear cartoons, reversing the decision after three cartoons.

Into the 1950s: The departure(s) of Avery and the arrival of CinemaScope

Tex Avery was a perfectionist: he worked extensively on his films' stories and gags, revised his animators' drawings, and was even known to cut frames out of the final Technicolor answer print if he felt a gag had been animated too softly. The strain of overwork caused Avery to quit MGM in May 1950, after completing Rock-a-Bye Bear (not released until 1952 because of MGM's cartoon backlog). Former Walter Lantz director Dick Lundy was brought in to head Avery's unit. Lundy completed one Droopy cartoon and ten Barney Bear shorts before Avery returned in October 1951 and reassumed his role as director from Lundy, starting with Little Johhny Jet (released in 1953).

Avery directed eleven more cartoons for MGM, many of them showing the heavy influence of the style of the newly popular UPA studio in their designs. In March 1953, MGM closed down the Avery unit, thinking that the growing trend for 3-D films would bring an end to the animated cartoon. Avery himself did not leave the studio until June, working with co-director Michael Lah on two cartoons, Deputy Droopy and Cellbound, which Lah completed with the Hanna and Barbera unit after Avery's departure. Avery went on to join the Walter Lantz staff the following February, while Lah went on to do commercial animation work. Because of the backlog of completed MGM cartoons, the cartoons Avery completed during his second tenure at the studio were not released until after he'd left again; Cellbound was not released until 1955.

Meanwhile, budget cuts required Hanna and Barbera to reduce the level of detail in their Tom and Jerry shorts, and to also begin doing one "cheater" short comprised mostly of footage from previously released cartoons. . In 1953, Hanna and Barbera directed Pet Peeve, the first MGM cartoon in the new widescreen CinemaScope process. The process was devised as a means to keep audiences attending movie theatres in the wake of the popularity of television. Pet Peeve, released in late 1954, was followed by a sporadic number of CinemaScope Tom and Jerrys, with several other Tom and Jerrys being dual-released in standard format and in CinemaScope. After Pecos Pest (released in 1955), all MGM cartoons were released in CinemaScope. Six previous cartoons, Hanna and Barbera's The Little Orphan, Hatch Up Your Troubles, and Love That Pup, Hugh Harman's Peace on Earth, and Tex Avery's Wags to Riches and Ventriloquist Cat, were remade in CinemaScope as Feedin' the Kiddie, The Egg and Jerry, Tops With Pops, Good Will to Men, Millionare Droopy, and Cat's Meow, respectively. As the original version had in 1939, Good Will to Men was nominated for the 1955 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).

Later years

Fred Quimby retired in 1955, and Hanna and Barbera became the new heads of the studio. Michael Lah returned to the studio in 1955 to direct an animated sequence for the MGM feature Invitation to the Dance, and stayed on to supervise a new series of CinemaScope Droopy cartoons to accompany the new CinemaScope Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Lah's One Droopy Knight was nominated for the 1957 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons). However, for the most part, both the Droopy and Tom and Jerry cartoons had lost their appeal in the eyes of critics, due to weaker stories and lower quality animation. MGM had been reissuing previously-released cartoons since the 1940s, but in March 1957 decided that, since the reissued shorts brought in as much revenue as the new shorts, it could save six hundred thousand dollars a year by ending new production.

By May, the studio had been shut down, and Hanna and Barbera took most of their unit and began producing television cartoons with their company Hanna-Barbera Productions. Hanna-Barbera first approached MGM to distribute their cartoons for television, but were turned down. Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems picked up Hanna-Barbera's product, and the studio soon became the most successful producers of television animation in the world. MGM would later have Gene Deitch create a series of Tom and Jerry cartoons before contracting Chuck Jones and Les Goldman's Sib Tower 12 studio to create more Tom and Jerrys. Sib Tower 12 was absorbed by MGM in 1964, and was renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts.

Notable crew members

• Fred Quimby, producer (1937 - 1954)
• Hugh Harman, director/producer (1939 - 1941)
• Rudolph Ising, director/producer (1939 - 1942)
• William Hanna, director/producer/storyman (1937 - 1957)
• Joseph Barbera, director/producer/creative work (1939 - 1957)
• Tex Avery, director (1942 - 1953)
• Preston Blair, animator/director (1942 - 1948)
• Michael Lah, animator/director (1942 - 1957)

Notable productions

Theatrical cartoon shorts

• The Captain and the Kids (1938 - 1939)
• Barney Bear (1939 - 1944, 1947 - 1949, 1952 - 1954)
• Tom and Jerry (1940 - 1958, 1960 - 1962, 1963-1967)
• Droopy Dog (1943 - 1958)
• Screwball Squirrel (1944 - 1946)
• Spike and Tyke (1956)

Opening logos of the MGM cartoon department

This is a list of the various opening logos used at the beginning of every cartoon from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio.

First Logo

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The early MGM cartoon logo - this was the main MGM studio logo, arguably the most recognizable during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

• The first MGM cartoon logo was introduced in 1937. A live-action lion named Jackie (Tanner beginning in 1938) is in a circle of a multi-colored ribbon-like filmstrip which has four filmstrips flowing out on the bottom sides in twos. Underneath the circle is a red drama mask. The circle has the phrase "ARS GRATIA ARTIS" (Latin for "Art for the Art's Sake") inscribed on the top, and at the bottom is a marquee that reads "Metro Goldwyn Mayer." On either side of the lion are the words "TRADE" and "MARK."

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The first MGM cartoon logo.

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The second MGM cartoon logo.

Second Logo

• The second MGM cartoon logo was first seen circa 1942 with Blitz Wolf. The standard ribbon, which is colored blue instead of white, is placed on a red/yellow sunburst background. Underneath the circle is a gold drama mask. The circle has the phrase "ARS GRATIA ARTIS" (Latin for "Art for the Art's Sake") inscribed on the top, and below the lion ribboning is "A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer" in its signature font, and then "CARTOON" in a big blue bold font. "IN TECHNICOLOR" appears underneath. "TRADE MARK" has been removed.

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MGM logo, first seen in 1948.

Third Logo

• The third MGM logo was first seen in 1948, though many early reissued cartoons have been shown using this logo. It features the standard lion logo as before, but the ribboning has been simplified and is now red, the "ARS GRATIA ARTIS" phrase is missing, along with the drama mask. Below the logo, we see "A METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER" in a bold font, with a HUGE "CARTOON" below it. "COLOR BY Technicolor" follows, and the whole thing is on a red background. "Technicolor" is written in an italicized font.

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MGM logo, first seen in 1952.

Fourth Logo

• The fifth MGM cartoons logo was used for the first time 1952, though, again it was used on reissued cartoons in the 1940s. The background is a brighter shade of red, and the ribboning surrounding the lion has changed to a pastel-blue colour, while the lettering is bolder, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is written in script.

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MGM logo, first seen in 1953.

Fifth Logo

• The fifth logo was first used in 1953, though it now also appears on reissued cartoons from as far back as the early 1940s. It is similar in layout to the previous logos, but now shows blue ribboning adorned on a blue background, as opposed to a red background. The words "A METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER" have been moved to the bottom ribbon, with "CARTOON" and "COLOR BY TECHNICOLOR" placed underneath it.

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MGM logo, first seen in 1954 and used on all CinemaScope shorts.

Sixth Logo

• The sixth logo is conceptually and stylistically similar to the previous logo, except minor changes have been made for the CinemaScope process. It was first used in 1954 when MGM cartoons were first shown in CinemaScope. The circle containing the lion appears to be smaller than the aforementioned logo, and a bit more confining.

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MGM cartoons logo, used as the opening to many of the Gene Deitch-directed cartoons, and some reissues of earlier Hanna-Barbera shorts.

Seventh Logo

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1962's Tall in the Trap opening

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1962's Sorry Safari opening

The seventh logo appears to have returned to the origins of the first logo, with a black background, white ribboning, and the drama mask. The word "CARTOON" rests below the lion, in a simple red font. However, Tanner, the lion used on the previous MGM logos was replaced with another, less maned lion, which is now the same lion used on MGM's 1957, 1982, 1987 and 2001 logos. This logo was used as the opening to many of the Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Gene Deitch between 1961-1962 (though 1960's Smitten Kitten and 1961's Down and Outing do not have the word "CARTOON" featured, while Sorry Safari uses an animated lion that appears within the cartoon itself, and Tall in the Trap has a 'cold opening', later using a still lion emblazened on a 'Wanted' poster).

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The MGM logo parody from new Tom and Jerry shorts (1963-67)

Eighth Logo

The eighth logo was used on the opening of all thirty-four Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Chuck Jones between 1963 and 1967. Like the previous logo, it uses a black background, white ribboning and "CARTOON" in a red font. However, the lion has reverted to the one used in all but the previous logo, presumably out of preference. The lion fades out mid-roar, only to be replaced by a mewing and hissing Tom. The circular ribboning later fades out to reveal the "O" in the word "TOM." The word "and" fades in as "Jerry" pops up letter by letter, with Jerry going down from the top of the screen and on top of the Y. As Tom notices this, he hisses.

See also

• The Golden Age of American animation
• MGM Animation/Visual Arts
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Animation
• Leo the Lion, featuring differing versions of the MGM studio logo

References

• Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 019-516729-5.
• Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1987) Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, New York: Plume Books. ISBN 0452259932
• Adams, T.R. (1991), Tom and Jerry: Fifty Years of Cat and Mouse, ISBN 0-517-05688-7