(Newswire.net — February 13, 2020) — The hilarious recording of an alleged non English speaking tourist in a hotel, who calls a receptionist to comply about “Jerry” in his room and then asks for the “Tom” vent viral. World famous cartoon characters, synonyms for cat and mouse, turned 80 years old, but it was a struggle to reach worldwide fame at the beginning.
Tom and Jerry are thought of in a moment of despair, BBC News reports. MGM’s animation department, where creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera worked, struggled to replicate the success of other studios that had popular characters such Disney’s Mickey Mouse or Warner Bros’ Bugs Bunny.
Out of boredom, animators, both under the age of 30, threw out various ideas. Barbera stated that he liked the simple concept of a cartoon with a cat and a mouse, with the whole clash and chasing, though it had been done countless times before.
“Puss Gets the Boot” was the first to be released, in 1940. The debut episode was a hit and brought the animated short movie an Academy Award nomination. Although they worked on the film, the animators were not signed.
At first, their superiors told them not to invest everything they had on only one idea but Hanna and Barbera changed their minds after a letter arrived from an influential Texas industry figure asking when they would watch one of those “wonderful cat and mouse cartoons” again.
Jasper and Jinx, as they were first called, became Tom and Jerry.
There was no specific conversation between the animated characters, but growing up with Charlie Chaplin’s silent films, the creators knew they could be funny without any dialogue. The music composed by Scott Bradley emphasized the action. The composition is on the music sheets of many great symphonic orchestras today, next to Beethoven, Strauss, Mozart, Tchaikovsky…
For most of the next two decades, Hanna and Barbera oversaw the production of more than 100 of these short films. It took weeks to animate each one, and it took upwards of $ 50,000 to make, which was extremely expensive at the time, so only a handful could be made each year.
Lavish hand-drawn animation and detailed backgrounds that were featured in Tom and Jerry cartoons brought critical and public acclaim to their creators, winning them seven Oscars and making episodic appearances in Hollywood feature films.
Bill Hannah died in 2001 and Joe Barbera passed away in 2006. A year before his death, Barbera was signed on to do one last feature, a short film with Tom and Jerry – the first one without his partner.