December 14, 1957: The Hanna-Barbera Empire Begins

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Joseph Barbera (left) and William Hanna

December 14, 1957: The Ruff and Reddy Show premieres on NBC. It was the 1st animated series made by Hanna-Barbera Productions, beginning a cartoon empire.

The series follows the adventures of Ruff, a smart and steadfast cat; and Reddy, a good-natured, brave, but not overly bright dog. It runs for 3 seasons, and is not nearly as well-remembered as some other Hanna-Barbera creations.

William Denby Hanna (1910-2001) grew up in Los Angeles. Joseph Roland Barbera (1911-2006) grew up in Brooklyn, and moved to Los Angeles as a young man. They met in 1937, while working in the animation department at Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. They worked on the Tom & Jerry cartoons in the 1940s and '50s, and founded their own production company on July 7, 1957, when MGM shut their animation department down. It would eventually show cartoons on all 3 major networks then in operation: NBC, CBS and ABC.

The Ruff and Reddy Show was a blip on the history of animated television. In 1958, Hanna-Barbera premiered The Huckleberry Hound Show. In addition to the titular hillbilly dog, it included segments starring Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks, two mice and a cat; and Yogi Bear. In 1959 game The Quick Draw McGraw Show, which also included Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy.

In 1960, they created The Flintstones, a caveman-era ripoff of The Honeymooners. In 1961, they gave Yogi Bear his own show, which also debuted the lion Snagglepuss; and premiered Top Cat. In 1962, they debuted the space-age series The Jetsons. In 1963 came The Magilla Gorilla Show; in 1964, Jonny Quest and The Peter Potamus Show; in 1965, The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show. In 1966, they debuted their 1st superhero, Space Ghost. In 1968, they introduced The Banana Splits, 4 guys in big animal costumes, who ran skits and introduced previously-produced Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

In 1968, The Wacky Races was launched. Three of the 11 cars in the races saw their occupants appear in spinoffs debuting the next year. The Perils of Penelope Pistop featured the titular Southern belle in a parody of silent-film "damsel-in-distress" serials, aided by another group of Wacky Racers, the Ant Hill Mob, dwarves who were parodies of 1920s gangsters. And Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines featured the Races' chief villain and his not-so-faithful dog, apparently set in World War I, fighting for Germany, trying to stop an American messenger -- a bird known as the Yankee Doodle Pigeon.

The Wacky Races and its spinoffs began a new era for Hanna-Barbera, highlighted in 1969, with Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! The cowardly Great Dane and his 4 crime-fighting teenage cohorts started a trend in cartoons, with talking animals and people working together. In 1970, with The Archies already a cartoon hit, Hanna-Barbera merged that concept with Scooby-Doo, and premiered Josie and the Pussycats: A cartoon teenage rock band, animals, and crime-fighting.

This would be followed by such shows as a series based on the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team (with fanciful stories involving them fighting crime), The Funky Phantom in 1971, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan in 1972 (inspired by the Charlie Chan stories), Speed Buggy in 1973, Hong Kong Phooey in 1974, and Jabberjaw in 1976.

In 1975, they brought back their first project, with The New Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show. Mumbly was a dog in a trenchcoat who solved crimes, and, except for his coloring, was just like Dick Dastardly's dog Muttley. The problem was, while they had gained the legal rights to Tom & Jerry, they had lost the rights to Dastardly and Muttley. So a new character had to be created.

In 1976, they launched The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour. In addition to new adventures for Scooby and the gang, it introduced a new superhero. As he had for Space Ghost, the great Los Angeles disc jockey Gary Owens (best known as the announcer for Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In) voiced the Blue Falcon, a Batman ripoff who built his own Robin, a robot dog named Dynomutt, voiced by Frank Welker, who voiced Fred on Scooby-Doo and lots of cartoon dogs, including Astro Jetson -- but not Scooby, at least until original voice Don Messick died.

These last 2 series inspired their biggest project, in 1977: Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics. There were 3 teams: The Yogi Yahooeys, captained by Yogi Bear, and consisting of Hanna-Barbera characters of the 1960s, including Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw; the Scooby Doobies, captained by Scoopy and consisting of Hanna-Barbera characters of the 1970s, including Blue Falcon and Dynomutt; and the ever-cheating Really Rottens, captained by Mumbly, who as professional wrestling fans would say, "turned heel" for this show.

Most of the Rottens were new characters, some human, some monster. Among the humans was the Dread Baron, an evil pilot obviously based on Dick Dastardly, another character for whom Hanna-Barbera had lost the legal rights.

A few years later, after they regained the rights to Dick and Muttley, a graphic novel was released, with a time-travel plot (enabling the inclusion of both the Flintstones and the Jetsons) that brought all the Hanna-Barbera characters yet used together for one great climactic adventure, preceding DC Comics' Crisis On Infinite Earths by a few years, and Marvel Comics' Infinity Saga by several years. In that graphic novel, it was revealed that Dick Dastardly and the Dread Baron were identical twins, and that Muttley and Mumbley were also litter brothers.

Like most Hanna-Barbera shows were at this point, the Laff-A-Lympics were on ABC, and ABC's show Battle of the Network Stars was more of an inspiration than the actual Olympic Games.

There would be further Hanna-Barbera shows in the 1980s, including cartoons based on ABC sitcoms Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Mork and Mindy; and adapting The Smurfs for American TV. The last show by Hanna-Barbera Productions was The Powerpuff Girls, which ran from 1998 to 2005, and had the animation style and the feel of a 1970s' cartoon.

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December 14, 1957 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. There was 1 game played in the NFL: The Chicago Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 31-27 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

There were 3 games played in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks lost to the St. Louis Hawks, 136-124 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Philadelphia Warriors, 112-94 at the Boston Garden.

* And the Syracuse Nationals beat the Cincinnati Royals, 104-100 -- at the Rochester Community War Memorial in Rochester, New York, which had been the Royals' home in the 1955-56 and 1956-57 seasons, before moving to Cincinnati. (It is now named the Blue Cross Arena.)

And the NHL's entire "Original Six" were in action:

* The New York Rangers and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 4-4 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* The Boston Bruins and the Montreal Canadiens played to a tie, 1-1 at the Montreal Forum.

* And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-1 at Maple Leaf Garden in Toronto.

February 10, 1940: Tom & Jerry Are Introduced

February 10, 1940: Puss Gets the Boot premieres. It is a cartoon written and directed by the team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who would do much more over their careers. But this 9-minute Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer opus launched them, and the cartoon's stars: A cat named Tom, and a mouse named Jerry.

There's little about the cartoon to make it stand out from the many that would follow it, as it's typical slapstick, including the trope of Jerry drawing a hole on the wall near the floor, fooling Tom into thinking it's Jerry's mouse-hole, and he crashes into it, stunning him. (Something that Wile E. Coyote would later try on rocks to stop the Road Runner, only to see it backfire.)

Unfortunately for Tom -- or Jasper, as she names him -- the house's maid walks in on the mess that the two of them have made. Even more unfortunately, the maid is a caricature that was already offensive: A fat, middle-aged black woman. Her name is listed in the script, and makes it even worse: Mammy Two Shoes. (We never see her face, only her lower body and her "grandma arms," but, mostly, her shoes.) She warns "Jasper" that if he makes another mess, she'll throw him out of the house.

(This warning, and the fact that she has her own room in a 1951 cartoon, makes it suggest that she may actually be the homeowner, not the maid. The character was retired in 1952, when Lillian Randolph, the black actress who provided her voice, left to appear in the ill-fated TV version of Amos & Andy.)

Jerry (whose name is not mentioned, in either the title or the script) overhears this, and does what he can to sabotage Jasper. Finally, he succeeds, and Mammy chases Jasper out of the house. You may now be expecting a twist ending: That Jerry ends up missing Jasper, and somehow convinces Mammy to let Jasper back in. But, no: Hanna and Barbera, on this occasion, were not that clever. The cartoon ends with Jerry sticking his tongue out at Jasper, and hanging a "HOME SWEET HOME" sign in front of his hole.

The short was successful, earning a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. Texas businesswoman Bessa Short sent a letter to MGM asking whether more cat and mouse shorts would be produced, which helped convince management to commission a series. A studio contest held to rename both characters was won by animator John Carr, who suggested Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse, after "Tom and Jerry," a cocktail that was then especially popular at Christmastime. It is a variant of eggnog with brandy and rum added, and served hot, usually in a mug or a bowl.

That cocktail's name is derived from the names of two characters in an 1821 stage play by William Moncrieff. This play also coined the phrase "the sweet science" to describe boxing. The play was an adaptation of Pierce Egan's book from the same year, titled Life In London, where the names originated. It was based on the careers of Egan and a pair of brothers who were illustrators. George and Isaac Cruikshank.

After MGM gave the green-light for Hanna and Barbera to continue, the studio entered production on The Midnight Snack, released on July 19, 1941, and giving the characters their familiar names. Hanna and Barbera produced 114 cartoons for MGM, 13 of which were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject, and 7 went on to win, breaking the winning streak held by Walt Disney's studio in the category. Tom and Jerry won more Academy Awards than any other character-based theatrical animated series.

Barbera estimated the typical budget of $50,000 for each Tom and Jerry cartoon, which made the duo take "time to get it right." A typical cartoon took around six weeks to make. Hanna and Barbara worked on Tom and Jerry cartoons for the next 15 years, before forming their own production company, and making cartoons for the TV networks.

In 1945, MGM made the war-themed musical Anchors Aweigh. They asked Disney himself to lend the character of Mickey Mouse to dance alongside Gene Kelly. Disney refused. So they asked Hanna and Barbara, and a full-sized Jerry, rather than a mouse-sized one, danced alongside Kelly, raising the character's profile tremendously.

In 1961, MGM revived the Tom and Jerry franchise with 13 shorts, directed by Gene Deitch, who also wrote most of them. At first, he wasn't a fan of the previous cartoons, calling them "needlessly violent." But, after working on them himself, he quickly realized that "nobody took it seriously." He even saw "biblical roots" in Tom and Jerry's conflict, similar to David and Goliath: "That's where we feel a connection to these cartoons: The little guy can win (or at least survive) to fight another day."

In 1965, the cartoons began to be put together in TV packages, although with other MGM cartoons of the era, including the father & son bulldogs Spike & Tyke (who had been introduced in Tom and Jerry cartoons), Barney Bear, and one-offs such as the brilliant 1951 Symphony in Slang.

This would be how I would be exposed to them: In the late 1970s, I would run home from school, usually not making it it time for the show to begin at 3:00, but, from whenever I did get home until 4:00, I would watch Tom and Jerry on New York's WPIX-Channel 11. My mother didn't want me to watch it: She hated violence of all kinds, including cartoon violence. Well, she needn't have worried: To this day, I have never purposely injured a cat, real or animated.

This version would sometimes include shorts from a CBS Saturday morning version that ran from 1975 to 1977, in which Tom and Jerry were... friends, who worked together on things. I was a little kid, but I was not a dumb kid: It never looked right to me.

There would be Tom and Jerry movies in 1993 and 2021, but neither did well at the box office. Maybe the characters are finally played out.

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February 10, 1940 was a Saturday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. English soccer's Football Association had suspended Football League play for the duration of World War II.

There was 1 score, in the NHL: The New York Rangers and the Toronto Maple Leafs played to a tie, 4-4 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.