Jones had trouble adapting his style to Tom and Jerry's brand of humor, and a number of the cartoons favored full animation, personality and style over storyline. The characters underwent a slight change of appearance: Tom was given thicker eyebrows (resembling Jones' Grinch or Count Blood Count), a less complex look (including the color of his fur becoming gray), sharper ears, and furrier cheeks, while Jerry was given larger eyes and ears, a lighter brown color, and a sweeter, Porky Pig-like expression.
Some of Jones' Tom and Jerry cartoons are reminiscent of his work with Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, included the uses of blackout gags and gags involving characters falling from high places. 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, and Jim Pabian directed a short with Maurice Noble. Various vocal characteristics were made by Mel Blanc and June Foray. Jones' efforts are considered superior to the previous Deitch efforts (and most cartoons made during that time, albeit visually), and contain the memorable opening theme, in which Tom is trapped inside the "O" of his name.
Though Jones managed to recapture some of the magic from the original Hanna-Barbera efforts, MGM ended production on Tom and Jerry in 1967, by which time Sib Tower 12 had become MGM Animation/Visual Arts. Jones had moved on television specials and the feature film, The Phantom Tollbooth.
Tom and Jerry hit television-
Beginning in 1965, the Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoons began to appear on television in heavily edited form. The Jones team was required to take the cartoons featuring Mammy Two-Shoes and remove her by pasting over the scenes featuring her with new scenes. Most of the time, she was replaced with a similarly fat White Irish woman; occasionally, as in Saturday Evening Puss, a thin white teenager took her place instead, with both characters voiced by June Foray. However, recent telecasts on Cartoon Network and Boomerang retain Mammy with new voiceover work performed byThea Vidale to remove the stereotypical black jargin featured on the original cartoon soundtracks.
Debuting 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.
The intros of each episode shown on TV and DVD today are re-issues from the 1950s–1960s, with the exception of Puss Gets the Boot and The Night Before Christmas, which still retain their original opening and closing credits from the early 1940s.
Second Hanna-Barbera era (1975–1977)-
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 The Great Grape Ape and Mumbly cartoons, to create The Tom and Jerry/ Grape Ape Show,The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show, and The Tom and Jerry/Mumbly Show, all of which initially ran on ABC Saturday Morning between September 6, 1975 and 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 Hanna-Barbera had to meet the stringent rules against violence for children's TV. The Tom and Jerry Show is still airing on the Canadian channel, Teletoon, and its classical counterpart, Teletoon Retro.
Filmation era (1980–1982)-
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 featured new cartoons starring Droopy, Spike (another bulldog created by Tex Avery), andBarney Bear, not seen since the original MGM shorts. The Filmation Tom and Jerry cartoons were noticeably different from 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. Its animation style bore a strong resemblance to that of The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle.
Tom and Jerry's new owners-
In 1986, MGM was purchased by WTBS founder 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, The WB, Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies.
Tom and Jerry Kids (1990–1994)-
One of the biggest trends for Saturday morning television in the 1980s and 1990s was the "babyfication" of older, classic cartoon stars, and on March 2, 1990, Tom and Jerry Kids, co-produced by Turner Entertainment and Hanna-Barbera Productions (which would be sold to Turner in 1991) debuted on Fox Kids and for a couple of years, aired on British children's show, CBBC. It featured a youthful version of the famous cat-and-mouse duo chasing each other. As with the 1975 H-B series, Jerry wears his red bowtie, while Tom now wears a red cap. Spike and his son Tyke (who now had talking dialogue) and Droopy and his son Dripple, appeared in back-up segments for the show, which ran until November 18, 1994.
Individual episodes (2001 and 2005)-
In 2001, a new television special entitled Tom and Jerry: The Mansion Cat premiered on Boomerang. It featured Joe Barbera (who was also a creative consultant) 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".
In 2005, a new Tom and Jerry theatrical short, entitled The Karate Guard, which had been written and directed by Barbera and Spike Brandt,storyboarded by Joseph Barbera and Iwao Takamoto and produced by Joseph Barbera, Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone premiered in Los Angeles cinemas on December 16, 2005. As part of the celebration of Tom and Jerry's sixty-fifth anniversary, this marked Barbera's first return as a writer, director and storyboard artist on the series since his and Hanna's original MGM cartoon shorts. Director/animator, Spike Brandt was nominated for an Annie award for best character animation. The short debuted on Cartoon Network on January 27, 2006.
Warner Bros. era (2006–2008)-
During the first half of 2006, a new series called Tom and Jerry Tales was produced at Warner Bros. Animation. Thirteen half-hour episodes (each consisting of three shorts, some of them—like The Karate Guard—were produced and completed in 2003 as part of a 30-plus theatrical cartoon schedule aborted after the financial disaster of Looney Tunes Back in Action) were produced, with only markets outside of the United States and United Kingdom UK in February 2006 on Boomerang, and it went to the U.S.
Tom & 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 (mainly after the evening BBC News with around 2 episodes shown every evening and occasionally shown on children's network CBBC in the morning), 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, whenNoel'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. In 2010, a mother complained to OFCOM of the smoking scenes shown in the cartoons, since Tom often attempts to impress love interests with the habit, resulting in reports that the smoking scenes in Tom and Jerry films may be subject to censorship.
Due to its lack of dialogue, 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 Asahi, sampling age groups from teenagers to adults in their sixties, 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 - the only non-Japanese animation on the list, and beating anime classics like Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, A Little Princess Sara, and the ultra-classics Macross and Ghost in the Shell (it should be noted that in Japan, the word "anime" refers to all animation regardless of origin, not just Japanese animation). Tom and Jerry are long-time licensed mascots for Nagoya-based Juuroku Bank.
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, sometimes adding or revising information. The different episodes are usually embedded in the episodeJerry's Diary (1949), in which Tom reads about past adventures.
In India, South East Asia, Armenia, the Middle East, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil,Venezuela, other Latin American countries, and in eastern European countries (such as Romania), Cartoon Network still airs Tom and Jerrycartoons every day. In Russia, local channels also air the show in their daytime programming slot. Tom and Jerry was one of the few cartoons of western origin broadcast in Czechoslovakia (1988) and Romania
Reception-
In January 2009, IGN named Tom and Jerry as the 66th best in the Top 100 Animated TV Shows. In an interview found on the DVD releases, several MADtv cast members stated that Tom and Jerry is one of their biggest influences for slapstick comedy.
Feature films-
October 1, 1992 saw the first international release of Tom and Jerry: The Movie when the film was released overseas to theaters in Europe of that year and then domestically by Miramax Films in July 30, 1993. Barbera served as creative consultant for the picture, which was produced and directed by Phil Roman. A musical film with a structure similar to MGM's blockbusters, The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain, the movie was criticized by reviewers and audiences alike for being predictable and for giving the pair dialogue (and songs) through the entire movie. As a result, it failed at the box office. In 2001, Warner Bros. (which had, by then, merged with Turner and assumed its properties) released the duo's first 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. It would mark the last time Hanna and Barbera co-produced aTom and Jerry cartoon together, as William Hanna died shortly after The Magic Ring was released.
Four years later, Bill Kopp scripted and directed two more Tom and Jerry DTV features for the studio, Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars and Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry, the latter one based on a story by Barbera. Both were released on DVD in 2005, marking the celebration of Tom and Jerry's 65th anniversary. In 2006, another direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers, tells the story about the pair having to work together to find the treasure. Joe came up with the storyline for the next film, Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale, as well as the initial idea of synchronizing the on-screen actions to music from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. This DTV, directed by Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone, would be Joe Barbera's last Tom and Jerry project due to his passing in December 2006. The holiday-set animated film was released on DVD in late 2007, and dedicated to Barbera. A new direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes, was released on August 24, 2010. It is the first made-for-video Tom and Jerry movie produced without any of the characters' original creators. An upcoming direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry and the Wizard of Oz, will be released on August 23, 2011 and will be the first made-for-video Tom and Jerry movie made for Blu-ray.
Warner Bros. has plans for a theatrically released film starring Tom and Jerry, slated for an 2011 release. The film will be, according toVariety, "an origin story that reveals how Tom and Jerry first meet and form their rivalry before getting lost in Chicago
Controversy-
Like a number of other animated cartoons in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Tom and Jerry was not considered politically correct in later years. Many shorts featured racial stereotypes, such as characters shown in blackface following an explosion, which are subsequently cut when shown on television today, although The Yankee Doodle Mouse blackface gag as well as another blackface gag at the end of Safety Second, and a short scene from The Dog House remain intact, depending on the country. The black maid, Mammy Two Shoes, is often considered a racist stereotype because she is depicted as a poor black woman who has a rodent problem. Her voice was redubbed by Turner in the mid-1990s in hopes of making the character sound less stereotypical; the resulting accent sounded more Irish. One cartoon in particular, His Mouse Friday, is often completely out of television rotation 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, United Kingdom channel Boomerang made plans to edit Tom and Jerry cartoons being aired in the UK UK U.S.
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 having ceased production five years earlier, 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 have also appeared in a number of video games as well, spanning titles for systems from the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super NES and Nintendo 64 to more recent entries for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube.
Main article: Tom and Jerry video games
Cultural Influences-
Throughout the years, the term and title Tom and Jerry became practically synonymous with never-ending rivalry, as much as the related "cat and mouse fight" metaphor has. Yet in Tom and Jerry it wasn't the more powerful (Tom) that usually came out on top. Palestinian PresidentYassar Arafat noted this fact and loved the cartoon show because "the little guy--the mouse and not the cat--always won"
Author Steven Millhauser wrote a short story called Cat 'n' Mouse which pits the duo against one another as antagonist and protagonist in literary form. Millhauser allows his reader access to the thoughts and emotions of the two characters in a way that wasn't done in the cartoon.
In popular culture-
The Simpsons characters, Itchy & Scratchy, the featured cartoon on the Krusty the Clown Show, are spoofs of Tom and Jerry – a "cartoon within a cartoon. The cartoon violence of Tom and Jerry is parodied and intensified, as Itchy (the mouse) dispatches Scratchy in a variety of gratuitous, gory methods.
In another episode, "Krusty Gets Kancelled", the short cartoon "Worker and Parasite", is a reference to the Eastern European Tom and Jerrycartoons directed by Gene Deitch. To produce the animation, director David Silverman photocopied several drawings and made the animation very jerky.
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 short film; his voice is performed by Sara Berner. Tom has a cameo in the sequence as one of Jerry's servants. This sequence was later lifted and reanimated frame-for-frame in an episode of Family Guy, where Jerry was replaced with Stewie.
Both Tom and Jerry appear with Esther Williams in a dream sequence in another big-screen musical, Dangerous When Wet. In the film, Tom and Jerry are chasing each other underwater, when they run into Esther Williams, with whom they perform an extended synchronized swimming routine. Tom and Jerry have to save Williams from a lecherous octopus, who tries to lure and woo her into his (many) arms.
In 1988, the duo were lined up to appear in the Oscar-winning Touchstone/Amblin Entertainment film,Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a homage to classic American animation. However when the executive producer Steven Speilberg went to ask for the rights in 1986, M.G.M was being purchased by Turner Entertainment and Ted Turner was not willing to lend his most popular cartoon characters at this time (however he did give the rights to Droopy). Also, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera claimed since they created Tom and Jerry, Hanna-Barbera owned them. Due to these legal difficuties Speilberg was unable to acquire the rights and Tom and Jerry's inclusion in the film was scrapped.
Johnny Knoxville from Jackass has stated that watching Tom and Jerry inspired many of the stunts in the movies.
Home media-
There have been several Tom and Jerry DVDs released in Region 1 (the United States and Canada), including a series of two-disc sets known as the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection. There have been negative responses to Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, due to some of the cartoons included on each having cuts and redubbed Mammy Two-Shoes dialogue. A replacement program offering uncut versions of the shorts on DVD was later announced. There are also negative responses to Vol. 3, due to Mouse Cleaning and Casanova Cat being excluded from these sets and His Mouse Friday having an extreme zooming-in towards the end.
There have been two Tom and Jerry DVD sets in Region 2. In Western Europe, most of the Tom and Jerry shorts have been released (only two, The Million Dollar Cat and Busy Buddies, were not included) under the name Tom and Jerry - The Classic Collection. Almost all of the shorts contain re-dubbed Mammy Two-Shoes tracks. Despite these cuts, His Mouse Friday, the only Tom and Jerry cartoon to be completely taken off the airwaves in some countries due to claims of racism, is included, unedited with the exception of extreme zooming-in towards the end to avoid showing a particularly race based caricature. These are regular TV prints sent from the U.S.
Tom and Jerry -
The Classic Collection is available in 6 double-sided DVDs (issued in the
The Chuck Jones-era Tom and Jerry shorts were released in a two-disc set entitled Tom and Jerry, The Chuck Jones Collection on June 23, 2009. The MGM/UA laserdisc box sets issued in the 1990s, "The Art of Tom & Jerry" volumes 1 and 2, contain all the MGM shorts up to (but not including) the Deitch Era, including letter-box versions of the shorts filmed in CinemaScope, shown in their original aspect ratio. These are in fact the best source of uncut cartoons, as they are all intact save for His Mouse Friday (dialogue has been wiped) and Saturday Evening Puss which is the re-drawn version with June Foray's voice added. "The Art of Tom & Jerry" volumes 3 contains all the Chuck Jones-era Tom and Jerry shorts.
On December 1, 2010, animation expert Jerry Beck announced on the Shokus Internet Radio call-in talk program, Stu's Show that there are "far-in-the-future" plans for a Tom and Jerry Golden Collection, done at the highest level, with material not yet seen before, aimed at the collector in a way that the previous "Spotlight" DVD releases never were.
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