Tom and Jerry

This article is about MGM's Tom and Jerry. For the early cartoons by Van Beuren Studios, see Tom and Jerry (Van Beuren). For other uses, see Tom and Jerry.

Tom and Jerry
File:Tomjerrylogo40s.jpg
Created by	William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
Starring	Tom & Jerry (mute)
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	161
Production
Running time	approx. 5-8 minutes (per short)
Original release
Release	1940 – 1967

Tom and Jerry were an Academy Award-winning animated cat (Tom) and mouse (Jerry) team who formed the basis of a successful series of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) theatrical short subjects created, written and directed by animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera (later of Hanna-Barbera fame). The series was produced by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio in Hollywood from 1940 until 1957, when the animation unit was closed down.

In 1960, MGM outsourced the production of Tom and Jerry to Rembrandt Films (led by Gene Deitch) in Eastern Europe. In 1963, production of Tom and Jerry shorts returned to Hollywood with Chuck Jones' Sib-Tower 12 Productions; this series lasted until 1967. Tom and Jerry later resurfaced in TV cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera (1975 - 1977; 1990 - 1993) and Filmation Studios (1980 - 1982). The original MGM shorts helmed by Hanna and Barbera are notable for having won seven Academy Awards, tying it with Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies as the most-awarded theatrical animated series.

Plot and format

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Tom and Jerry title card used during the late 1940s and early 1950s, attached to many reissues of early and mid 1940s shorts.

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Tom and Jerry title card used in the early 1950s, and some reissues of 1940s shorts.

The plots of each short usually center on Tom's frustrated attempts to catch Jerry, and the mayhem and destruction that ensues. Because they seem to get along in some cartoon shorts (at least in the first minute or so), it is unclear why Tom chases Jerry so much, but some reasons given may include:

• normal feline hunger
• normal feline/mouse enmity
• his duty according to his owner (often it is Tom's job, as a house cat, to catch mice and failure would equal eviction)
• the simple enjoyment of tormenting him
• revenge
• a nuisance to Tom, since Jerry spoils his dark, evil plans (like cooking fish or ducks)
• a misunderstanding (especially in shorts that start with them ambivalent or friendly to each other)
• a conflict when both of them want the same thing (usually food)
• a need to have Jerry out of the way (particularly when seeking a female feline)
• a game enjoyed by both of them
• Tom "needing" Jerry (i.e. as a bait, for fishing or as a golf tee, as a tennis ball, for getting a reward for the "white mouse",...)
• To teach his nephew about feline/rodent relation and how to catch mice

The shorts are famous for using some of the most destructive and violent gags ever devised for theatrical animation: Jerry slicing Tom in half, Tom using everything from axes, pistols, rifles, dynamite, and poison to try to murder Jerry, Jerry stuffing Tom's tail in a waffle iron, and so on. A common joke is that when Tom hits Jerry with something such as a hammer when he is occupied (usually eating) and is initially perplexed as he continues unaffected- and he then feels the effects moments later. Usually, neither Tom nor Jerry speaks in the cartoons, with rare and brief exceptions to these rules. Facial expressions, gestures, and music easily convey the characters' feelings and intentions.

The cartoon is also noteworthy for its conscious attempt to use, or rely on preset visual concepts or stereotypes, in the viewer's mind. The most famous and most criticized such concept would be the blackening of characters following an explosion, or using very heavy and enlarged shadows(i.e., Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse) with little realistic factor when some sinister plot is being carried out, regardless of the otherwise light tone of the cut. Resemblance to everyday objects and occurrences is arguably the main appeal of visual humor in the series. The characters themselves regularly transform into ridiculous but strongly associative shapes, most of the time involuntarily, in masked but gruesome ways.

Music plays a very important part in the shorts, emphasizing the action, filling in for traditional sound-effects, and lending appropriate emotion to the scenes. Musical director Scott Bradley created complex scores that combined elements of jazz, classical, and pop music; Bradley often reprised contemporary pop songs, as well as songs from MGM films such as The Wizard of Oz and Meet Me In St. Louis.

Before 1953, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in the standard Academy ratio and format; from 1953 to 1956, some of the output was dually produced in both Academy format and the widescreen CinemaScope process. From 1956 until the close of the MGM animation studio a year later, all Tom and Jerry cartoons were produced in CinemaScope; some even had their soundtracks recorded in stereo. The 1960s Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones shorts were all produced in Academy format, but with compositions that made them compatible to be matted to Academy widescreen format as well. All of the Hanna and Barbera cartoons were produced in three-strip Technicolor; the 1960s entries were done in Metrocolor.

Characters

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Tom and Jerry title card used in 1955 and 1956, when the series switched to the CinemaScope format.

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The final "Tom and Jerry" title card used in 1956 until the final Hanna-Barbera short in 1958.

Tom and Jerry

Tom is a bluish-grey housecat, depending on the short (his fur color is close to that of the Russian Blue breed of cats), who lives a pampered life, while Jerry is a small brown mouse who always lives in close proximity to him. Tom is very quick-tempered and thin-skinned, while Jerry is independent and opportunistic. Though very energetic and determined, Tom is no match for Jerry's brains and wits. By the iris-out of each cartoon, Jerry is usually shown triumphant, while Tom is shown as the loser. At times, Tom triumphs, both characters lose, or Tom and Jerry end the cartoon as friends. Both characters display sadistic tendencies, in that they are equally likely to take pleasure in tormenting each other. However, depending on the cartoon, whenever one character appears to be in mortal danger (in a dangerous situation or by an enemy), the other will develop a conscience and save him.

Although many supporting and minor characters speak, Tom and Jerry rarely do so. Tom, most famously, sings while wooing female cats; for example, he sings a cover of Louis Jordan's "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" in the 1946 short Solid Serenade. Co-director William Hanna provided most of the squeaks, gasps, and other vocal effects for the pair, including the most famous sound effect from the series, Tom's leather-lunged scream (created by recording Hanna's scream and chopping the head and tail off the recording, leaving only the strongest part of the scream on the soundtrack).

Recurring characters

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Mammy Two Shoes, the housemaid who made many appearances in the 1940s and early 1950s.

In his attempts to catch Jerry, Tom often has to deal with the intrusions of Butch, a scruffy black alley cat who also wants to catch and eat Jerry; Spike (sometimes billed as "Killer" or "Butch"), an angry, vicious guard bulldog who tries to attack the cat but is usually friendly towards Jerry, being his bodyguard and protector in a couple of shorts; Toodles Galore, Tom's girlfriend; and Mammy Two Shoes, a stereotyped African-American domestic housemaid (voiced by Lillian Randolph and much later Julie Kavner), whose face is rarely, if ever seen, and usually wallops the cat with a broom when he misbehaves. Mammy would appear in many cartoons until 1952; later cartoons would instead show Tom and Jerry living with a 1950s Yuppie-style couple: a tall, lanky man with glasses, and a doting housewife with black hair.

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Nibbles, the little orphan mouse, later named Tuffy.

In the late 1940s, Jerry adopted a little gray mouse foundling named Nibbles (also later known as Tuffy). Unlike Jerry, Nibbles could speak, but usually in a foreign language in keeping with the theme and setting of the short. During the 1950s, Spike is shown to have a son of his own named Tyke; an addition that led to both a slight softening of Spike's character and a short-lived spin-off theatrical series (Spike and Tyke). Spike spoke occasionally, using a voice and expressions modeled after comedian Jimmy Durante. Another recurring character in the series was Quacker the duckling, who was later adapted into the later Hanna-Barbera character Yakky Doodle (see the Tom and Jerry short Yankee Doodle Mouse).

History and evolution

Hanna-Barbera era (1940 – 1958)

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A screenshot from 1940's Puss Gets The Boot, the first Tom and Jerry cartoon.

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were both part of the Rudolf Ising unit at MGM's animation studio in late 1930s. Barbera, a storyman and character designer, was paired with Hanna, an experienced director, to start directing films for the Ising unit; the first of which was a cat-and-mouse cartoon called Puss Gets the Boot. Completed in late 1939, and released to theatres on February 10, 1940, Puss Gets The Boot centers on Jasper, a grey tabby cat trying to catch an unnamed rodent, but without breaking anything; the African-American housemaid Mammy has threatened to throw Jasper out ("O-U-W-T, out!") if he breaks one more thing in the house. Naturally, the mouse uses this to his advantage, and begins tossing wine glasses, ceramic plates, teapots, and any and everything fragile, so that Jasper will be thrown outside. Puss Gets The Boot was previewed and released without fanfare, and Hanna and Barbera went on to direct other (non-cat-and-mouse related) shorts. "After all," remarked many of the MGM staffers, "haven't there been enough cat-and-mouse cartoons already?"

The pessimistic attitude towards the cat and mouse duo changed when the cartoon became a favorite with theatre owners and with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which nominated the film for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons of 1941. It lost to another MGM cartoon, Rudolph Ising's The Milky Way.

However, producer Fred Quimby, who ran the MGM animation studio, quickly pulled Hanna and Barbera off the other one-shot cartoons they were working on, and commissioned a series featuring the cat and mouse. Hanna and Barbera held an intra-studio contest to give the pair a new name; animator John Carr won with his suggestion of "Tom and Jerry". The Tom and Jerry series went into production with The Midnight Snack in 1941, and Hanna and Barbera rarely directed anything but the cat-and-mouse cartoons for the rest of their tenure at MGM.

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Tom & Jerry in the 1946 Academy Award winning cartoon The Cat Concerto.

Tom's physical appearance evolved significantly over the years. During the early 1940s, Tom had an excess of detail--shaggy fur, numerous facial wrinkles, and multiple eyebrow markings--all of which were streamlined into a more workable form by the end of the 1940s; in addition from his quadrupedal beginnings Tom became increasingly, and eventually almost exclusively, bipedal. Jerry stayed essentially the same for the duration of the series. By the mid-1940s, the series had developed a quicker, more energetic (and violent) tone, because of inspiration from the work of MGM Animation colleague Tex Avery, who joined the studio in 1942.

Even though the basic theme of each short is virtually the same, Hanna and Barbera found endless variations on that theme. Barbera's storyboards and rough layouts and designs, combined with Hanna's timing, resulted in MGM's most popular and successful cartoon series. Thirteen entries in the Tom and Jerry series (including Puss Gets The Boot) were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons; seven of them went on to win the Academy Award, breaking the Disney studio's winning streak in that category. Tom and Jerry won more Academy Awards than any other character-based theatrical animated series.

Tom and Jerry remained popular throughout their original theatrical run, even when the budgets began to tighten somewhat in the 1950s and the pace of the shorts slowed slightly. However, after television became popular in the 1950s, box office revenues decreased for theatrical films, and short subjects. At first, MGM combated this by going to all-CinemaScope production on the series. After the MGM accountants realized that their re-releases of the older shorts brought in just as much revenue as the new films, the studio executives decided, much to the surprise of the staff, to close the animation studio. The MGM animation department was shut down in 1957, and the final of the 114 Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry shorts, Tot Watchers, was released on August 1, 1958. Hanna and Barbera established their own television animation studio, Hanna-Barbera Productions, in 1957, which went on to produce such popular shows as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Scooby-Doo.

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High Steaks, a 1961 Tom & Jerry short directed by Gene Deitch.

Gene Deitch era (1960 – 1962)

In 1960, MGM decided that they wanted to produce new Tom and Jerry shorts again, and had producer William L. Snyder make an arrangement with Czech based animation director Gene Deitch and Deitch's studio, Rembrandt Films, to make the films overseas in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Deitch/Snyder team turned out 13 shorts, many of which have a surrealistic quality to them.

Since the Deitch/Snyder team only saw a handful of the original Tom and Jerry shorts, the films that resulted from the arrangement were considered unusual and, in many ways, bizarre. The characters' gestures were often performed at high speed, often resulting in heavy motion blur. The soundtracks featured sparse music, spacey sound effects, dialogue that was mumbled rather than spoken, and heavy uses of reverb. Needless to say, Gene Deitch cartoons received much criticism from Tom and Jerry fans and never managed to repeat the success of the earlier Hanna-Barbera era.

Also notable is the fact that these shorts are the only Tom and Jerry cartoons not to carry the phrase "Made In Hollywood, U.S.A." at the end. Due to Deitch's studio being behind the Iron Curtain, the production studio's location is omitted entirely.

Chuck Jones era (1963 – 1967)

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Cannery Rodent, from 1967, one of the final Tom & Jerry shorts directed by Chuck Jones.

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MGM's Tom & Jerry ident from the Chuck Jones era, a play on the more famous Leo the Lion ident.

After the last of the Deitch cartoons were released, MGM turned to American director Chuck Jones, famous for his work on Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and the Road Runner and Coyote, among others. Jones had just ended his thirty-plus year tenure at Warner Bros. Cartoons and started his own animation studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions, with partner Les Goldman. Beginning in 1963, Jones and Goldman went on to produce 34 more Tom and Jerry shorts, all of which carried Jones' distinctive style (and a slight psychedelic influence), but with varying degrees of critical success.

Jones had trouble adapting his style to Tom and Jerry's brand of humor, and a number of the cartoons favored poses, personality, and style over storyline. The characters underwent a slight change of appearance: Tom was given thicker, Boris Karloff-like eyebrows, given a less complex look, and furrier cheeks, while Jerry was given larger eyes and ears, and a sweeter, Porky Pig like expression. Jones co-directed the majority of the shorts with layout artist Maurice Noble; the remaining shorts were directed by Abe Levitow and Ben Washam, with Tom Ray directing two shorts built around footage from earlier Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Hanna and Barbera. MGM ceased production of animated shorts in 1967, by which time Sib Tower 12 had become MGM Animation/Visual Arts, and Jones had already begun to move on to television specials and the feature film The Phantom Tollbooth.

Tom and Jerry hit television

Beginning in 1965, the Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry films began to appear on television in heavily edited form: the Jones team was required to take the shorts that featured Mammy, rotoscope her out, and replace her with a thin white woman. Lillian Randolph's original voice tracks were replaced with June Foray performing in an Irish accent. Much of the extreme violence in the cartoons were also edited out. Starting out on CBS' Saturday Morning schedule on September 25 1965, Tom and Jerry moved to CBS Sundays two years later and remained there until September 17 1972.

Tom & Jerry's new owners

In 1986, MGM was purchased by Ted Turner. Turner sold the company a short while later, but retained MGM's pre-1986 film library, thus Tom and Jerry became the property of Turner Entertainment (where the rights stand today via Warner Bros.), and have in subsequent years appeared on Turner-run stations, such as TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies.

Tom and Jerry outside the United States

When shown on terrestrial television in the United Kingdom (from 1967 to 2000, usually on the BBC) Tom and Jerry cartoons were not cut for violence and Mammy was retained. As well as having regular slots, Tom and Jerry served the BBC in another way. When faced with disruption to the schedules (such as those occurring when live broadcasts overrun), the BBC would invariably turn to Tom and Jerry to fill any gaps, confident that it would retain much of an audience that might otherwise channel hop. This proved particularly helpful in 1993, when Noel's House Party had to be cancelled due to an IRA bomb scare at BBC Television Centre - Tom and Jerry was shown instead, bridging the gap until the next programme.

Due to its lack of dialog, Tom and Jerry was easily translated into various foreign languages. Tom and Jerry began broadcast in Japan in 1964. A 2005 nationwide survey taken in Japan by TV Asashi, sampling age groups from teenagers to adults in their sixties, in 2005 ranked Tom and Jerry #85 in a list of the top 100 anime of all time, while their web poll taken after the airing of the list ranked it at #58. [1] Tom and Jerry is also well-known in India, Thailand, Indonesia, Iran, China and South Korea.

Tom and Jerry have long been popular in Germany. However, the cartoons are overdubbed with rhyming German-language verse that describes what is happening onscreen. The different episodes are usually embedded in the episode Jerry's Diary (1949), in which Tom reads about past adventures.

In Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, India and Pakistan, Cartoon Network still airs Tom and Jerry cartoons nearly everyday. In Russia, local channels also airs the show in its daytime program. Tom and Jerry was one of the few cartoons of western origin broadcast in Czechoslovakia (1988) before the fall of Communism in 1989.

Censorship

Like a number of other animated cartoons in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Tom and Jerry was not considered politically correct in later years. Some cartoons featured either Tom or Jerry in blackface following an explosion, which are subsequently cut when shown on television today, although the The Yankee Doodle Mouse blackface gag is still shown in other countries. Other ethnic stereotypes are also omitted, particularly the black maid, Mammy Two-Shoes, whose voice was redubbed by Turner in the mid-1990s in hopes of making the character sound less stereotypical. One cartoon in particular, His Mouse Friday, is often banned from television due to the cannibals being seen as racist stereotypes. If shown, the cannibals' dialogue is edited out, although their mouths can be seen moving.

In 2006, UK channel Boomerang made plans to edit Tom and Jerry cartoons being aired in the UK where the characters were seen to be smoking in a manner that was "condoned, acceptable or glamorised." This followed a complaint from a viewer that the cartoons were not appropriate for younger viewers, and a subsequent investigation by UK media watchdog Ofcom.[2] It has also taken the US approach by editing out blackface gags, though this seems to be random as not all scenes of this type are cut.

Later television and theatrical cartoons

The title card for Hanna-Barbera's 1975 Tom and Jerry Show

In 1975, Tom and Jerry were reunited with Hanna and Barbera, who produced new Tom and Jerry cartoons for Saturday mornings. These 48 seven-minute short cartoons were paired with Grape Ape and Mumbly cartoons, to create The New Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape Show, The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show, and The Tom and Jerry/Mumbly Show, all of which ran on ABC Saturday Morning from September 6, 1975 to September 3, 1977. In these cartoons, Tom and Jerry (now with a red bow tie), who had been enemies during their formative years, became nonviolent pals who went on adventures together, as H-B had to meet the stringent rules against violence for children's TV.

Filmation Studios (in association with MGM Television) also tried their hands at producing a Tom and Jerry TV series. Their version, The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show, debuted in 1980, and also featuring new cartoons starring Droopy Dog, Spike, and Barney Bear, not seen since the original MGM shorts. The thirty Filmation Tom and Jerry cartoons were noticeably different than Hanna-Barbera's efforts, as they returned Tom and Jerry to the original chase formula, with a somewhat more "slapstick" humor format. This incarnation, much like the 1975 version, was not as well received by audiences as the originals, and lasted on CBS Saturday Morning from September 6, 1980 to September 4, 1982.

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The title card for Hanna-Barbera's 1990s Tom and Jerry Kids Show

One of the biggest trends for Saturday morning television in the 1980s and 1990s was the "babyfication" of older, classic cartoon stars, and on September 8, 1990, Tom and Jerry Kids Show, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions in association with Turner Entertainment, debuted on FOX. It featured a youthful version of the famous cat-and-mouse duo chasing each other. As with the 1970s H-B series, Jerry wears his red bowtie, while Tom now wears a red cap. Spike and his son Tyke, and Droopy and his son Dripple, appeared in back-up segments for the show, which ran until October 2, 1993.

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A promotional still for the 2005 Tom and Jerry cartoon The Karateguard.

In 2000, a new Tom & Jerry cartoon entitled The Mansion Cat premiered on Cartoon Network. It featured Joseph Barbera as producer and as the voice of Tom's owner, whose face is never seen. In this cartoon, Jerry, housed in a habitrail, is as much of a house pet as Tom is, and their owner has to remind Tom to not "blame everything on the mouse".

A new Tom & Jerry short, entitled The Karateguard, which had been written by Joseph Barbera, directed by Barbera and Spike Brandt, storyboarded by Barbera and Iwao Takamoto and produced by Joseph Barbera, Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone premiered in Los Angeles cinemas on September 27, 2005. As part of the celebration of Tom & Jerry's sixty-fifth anniversary, this marked Joe Barbera's first return as a writer, director and story board artist on the series since his and Hanna's original cartoon shorts from 1940-58. Director/animator Spike Brandt was nominated for an Annie award for best character animation. On Friday, January 27, 2006, the short debuted on Cartoon Network.

During the first half of 2005, a new series called Tom and Jerry Tales was produced at Warner Bros. Thirteen half-hour episodes (each consisting of three shorts) were produced, with only markets outside of the United States and United Kingdom signed up. The show then came to the UK in February 2006 on Boomerang, and is currently airing on Kids' WB! on The CW in the US. [3]. Tales is the first Tom and Jerry TV series that utilizes the original style of the classic shorts, along with the violence.

Feature films

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Jerry and Gene Kelly in the 1945 MGM musical film Anchors Aweigh.

In 1945, Jerry made an appearance in the live-action MGM musical feature film Anchors Aweigh, in which, through the use of special effects, he performs a dance routine with Gene Kelly. In this sequence, Gene Kelly is telling a class of school kids a fictional tale of how he earned his medal of honor. Jerry is the king of a magical world populated with cartoon animals, whom he has forbidden to dance as he himself does not know how. Gene Kelly's character then comes along and guides Jerry through an elaborate dance routine, resulting in Jerry awarding him with a medal. Jerry speaks and sings in this film; his voice is performed by Sara Berner. Tom has a cameo in the sequence as one of Jerry's servants.

Both Tom and Jerry appear with Esther Williams in a dream sequence in another MGM musical, Dangerous When Wet (1953). In the film, Tom and Jerry are chasing each other underwater, when they run into Esther Williams, with whom they do an extended synchronized swimming routine. Tom and Jerry have to save Esther from a lecherous octopus, who tries to lure and woo Esther into his (many) arms.

1992 saw the overseas release of Tom and Jerry: The Movie, produced by Phil Roman. The film was released to United States theatres in 1993. A musical in the typical Disney-esque vein, Tom and Jerry: The Movie was criticized by reviewers and audiences alike for being predictable and for giving Tom and Jerry dialogue (and songs) through the entire film. The movie did poor business in America. In 2001, Warner Bros., which had by then merged with Turner and assumed its properties, released the direct-to-video movie Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring, in which Tom covets a ring which grants mystical powers to the wearer, and has become accidentally stuck on Jerry's head. Four years later, Bill Kopp scripted and directed two more feature films for Warner Bros.: Tom & Jerry Blast Off to Mars and Tom and Jerry: The Fast and The Furry, the latter one based on a story by Joseph Barbera. Both were released on DVD in 2005, starting the celebration of Tom and Jerry's sixty-fifth anniversary. Tom and Jerry: The Fast and The Furry was released theatrically on June 3, 2006 part of Kidtoon Films. In 2006, another direct-to-video film Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers tells a story about Tom and Jerry having to work together to get treasure.

Other formats

Tom and Jerry began appearing in comic books in 1942, as one of the features in Our Gang Comics. In 1949, with MGM's live-action Our Gang shorts long out of production, the series was renamed Tom and Jerry Comics. The pair continued to appear in various books for the rest of the 20th century.

The pair has also appeared in a number of video games as well, including:

• Tom and Jerry for Nintendo Entertainment System
• Tom and Jerry: The Movie for the Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear
• Tom and Jerry for Super Nintendo & Sega Genesis
• Tom and Jerry: Mouse Attacks for Game Boy Color
• Tom and Jerry: Infurnal Escape for the Game Boy Advance
• Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring for the Game Boy Advance
• Tom and Jerry: War of the Whiskers for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube
• Tom and Jerry: House Trap for the PlayStation
• Tom and Jerry: Fists of Furry for Nintendo 64 and PC
• Tom and Jerry Tales for Nintendo DS

Cultural influences

Throughout the years, the term and title Tom & Jerry became practically synonymous with pointless, baseless and neverending rivalry, probably moreso than the 'cat and mouse fight' metaphor did

The Simpsons characters Itchy & Scratchy, of the self-named cartoon on the Krusty the Clown Show, are spoofs of Tom and Jerry. The extreme cartoon violence of the Tom and Jerry is parodied and intensified, as Itchy (the mouse) dispatches Scratchy in many gratuitous, gory fashions. In one episode, Itchy & Scratchy is replaced by a cartoon called Worker and Parasite, a parody of the Gene Deitch Tom & Jerry cartoons.

Tom and Jerry were also parodied in the original Sally the Witch anime (1966), and The Fairly Oddparents film Channel Chasers (2004).

Notable cartoons

The following cartoons won the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Short Subject: Cartoons:

• 1943: The Yankee Doodle Mouse
• 1944: Mouse Trouble
• 1945: Quiet Please!
• 1946: The Cat Concerto
• 1948: The Little Orphan
• 1951: The Two Mouseketeers
• 1952: Johann Mouse

These cartoons were nominated for the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Short Subject: Cartoons, but did not win:

• 1940: Puss Gets the Boot
• 1941: The Night Before Christmas
• 1947: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse
• 1949: Hatch Up Your Troubles
• 1950: Jerry's Cousin
• 1954: Touche, Pussy Cat!

These cartoons was nominated for the Annie Award in the Individual Achievements Category: Character Animation, but did not win:

• 1946: Springtime for Thomas
• 1955: That's My Mommy
• 1956: Muscle Beach Tom

See also

• List of Tom and Jerry cartoons
• Tom and Jerry Kids Show
• Tom and Jerry Tales
• Droopy Dog
• The Golden Age of American animation
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio
• Herman and Katnip
• Itchy & Scratchy (from The Simpsons)
• Pixie & Dixie and Mr. Jinks
• Happy Tree Friends

References

• Adams, T.R. (1991). Tom and Jerry: Fifty Years of Cat and Mouse. Crescent Books. ISBN 0-517-05688-7.
• Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503759-6.
• Maltin, Leonard (1980, updated 1987). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-452-25993-2.

External links

• Cartoon Network: Tom & Jerry
• Tom and Jerry: The Movie official website
• Tom & Jerry in Internet Movie Database
• Tom and Jerry in TV.com
• Tom & Jerry Online
• Randy's Tom & Jerry Cartoon Information Site
• Aaron's New Tom & Jerry Information Site - dedicated to the 1975 TV version
• Gene Deitch on his experiences working on "Tom and Jerry"
• IndexTube List of all Tom and Jerry movies