Tom and Jerry

Plot

The series features comic fights between an iconic set of adversaries, a house cat (Tom) and a house mouse (Jerry). The plots of many shorts are often set in the backdrop of a house, centering on Tom (who is often enlisted by a human) trying to capture Jerry, and the mayhem and destruction that follows. Tom rarely succeeds in catching Jerry, mainly because of Jerry's cleverness, cunning abilities, and luck. However, on several occasions, they have displayed genuine friendship and concern for each other's well-being. At other times, the pair set aside their rivalry in order to pursue a common goal, such as when a baby escapes the watch of a negligent babysitter, causing Tom and Jerry to pursue the baby and keep it away from danger, in the shorts Busy Buddies and Tot Watchers respectively. Despite their endless attacks on one another, they have saved each other's lives every time they were truly in danger, with the exception of The Two Mouseketeers and Blue Cat Blues.

The cartoons are known for their violent gags. While Tom and Jerry has often been criticized as excessively violent, there is no blood or gore in any scene. Tom uses axes, hammers, firearms, firecrackers, explosives, traps and poison to kill Jerry, and Jerry's methods of retaliation are far more violent, with frequent success, including slicing Tom in half, decapitating him, shutting his head or fingers in a window or a door, stuffing Tom's tail in a waffle iron or a mangle, kicking him into a refrigerator, getting him electrocuted, pounding him with a mace, club or mallet, letting a tree or electric pole drive him into the ground, sticking matches into his feet and lighting them, etc.

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

The two lead characters speak English on rare occasions. Most of the vocal effects used for Tom and Jerry are their high-pitched laughs and gasping screams. Even though Tom and Jerry almost never speak, the shorts often show other characters speaking. For example, the character Mammy Two Shoes has lines in nearly every cartoon in which she appears.

Characters

Tom and Jerry

Tom, named "Jasper" in his debut appearance, is a gray and white domestic shorthair cat. "Tom" is a generic name for a male cat. He is usually but not always portrayed as living a comfortable, or even pampered life, while Jerry, whose name is not explicitly mentioned in his debut appearance, is a small, brown house mouse who always lives in close proximity to Tom. Despite being very energetic, determined and much larger, Tom is no match for Jerry's wits. Jerry possesses surprising strength for his size, approximately the equivalent of Tom's, lifting items such as anvils with relative ease and withstanding considerable impacts.

Although cats typically chase mice to eat them, it is quite rare for Tom to actually try to eat Jerry. He tries to hurt or compete with him just to taunt Jerry, even as revenge, or to obtain a reward from a human, including his owner(s)/master(s), for catching Jerry, or for generally doing his job well as a house cat. By the final "fade-out" of each cartoon, Jerry usually gets the best of Tom.

Other results may be reached. On rare occasions, Tom triumphs, usually when Jerry becomes the aggressor or he pushes Tom a little too far. In The Million Dollar Cat, Jerry learns that Tom will lose his newly acquired wealth if he harms any animal, especially mice. He then torments Tom a little too much until he retaliates. In Timid Tabby, Tom's look-alike cousin pushes Jerry over the edge. Occasionally and usually ironically, they both lose, usually because Jerry's last trap or attack on Tom backfires on him or he overlooks something. In Chuck Jones' Filet Meow, Jerry orders a shark from the pet store to scare Tom away from eating a goldfish. Afterward, the shark scares Jerry away as well. They occasionally end up being friends, although there is often a last-minute event that ruins the truce. One cartoon that has a friendly ending is Snowbody Loves Me.

Both characters display sadistic tendencies, in that they are equally likely to take pleasure in tormenting each other, although it is often in response to a triggering event. However, when one character appears to truly be in mortal danger from an unplanned situation or due to actions by a third party, the other will develop a conscience and save him. Occasionally, they bond over a mutual sentiment towards an unpleasant experience and their attacking each other is more play than serious attacks. Multiple shorts show the two getting along with minimal difficulty, and they are more than capable of working together when the situation calls for it, usually against a third party who manages to torture and humiliate them both.

Spike and Tyke

In his attempts to catch Jerry, Tom often has to deal with Spike, known as "Killer" and "Butch" in some shorts, an angry, vicious but gullible bulldog who tries to attack Tom for bothering him or his son Tyke while trying to get Jerry. Originally, Spike was unnamed and mute, aside from howls and biting noises as well as attacking indiscriminately, not caring whether it was Tom or Jerry though usually attacking Tom. In later cartoons, Spike spoke often, using a voice and expressions, performed by Billy Bletcher and later Patrick McGeehan, Jerry Mann, Bob Shamrock, John Brown, Stan Freberg and Daws Butler, modeled after comedian Jimmy Durante. Spike's coat has altered throughout the years between gray and creamy tan. The addition of Spike's son Tyke in the late 1940s led to both a slight softening of Spike's character and a short-lived spin-off theatrical series called Spike and Tyke.

Most cartoons with Spike in them conform to a theme: usually, Spike is trying to accomplish something, such as building a dog house or sleeping, when Tom and Jerry's antics stop him doing it. Spike then presumably due to prejudice, singles out Tom as the culprit, and threatens him that if it ever happens again, he will do "something horrible" to him, effectively forcing Tom to take the blame, while Jerry overhears. Afterward, Jerry usually does anything he can to interrupt whatever Spike is doing, while Tom barely manages to stop him, usually getting injured in the process. Usually, Jerry eventually wrecks whatever Spike is doing in spectacular fashion, and leaves Tom to take the blame, forcing him to flee from Spike and inevitably lose.

Off-screen, Spike does something to Tom, and Tom is generally shown injured or in a bad situation while Jerry smugly cuddles up to Spike unscathed. Tom sometimes gets irritated with Spike. An example is in That's My Pup!, when Spike forces Tom to run up a tree every time his son barkes, causing Tom to hang Tyke on a flag pole. At least once, Tom does something that benefits Spike, who promises not to interfere ever again, causing Jerry to frantically leave the house and run into the distance, in Hic-cup Pup. Spike is well known for his famous "Listen pussycat!" catchphrase when he threatens Tom, his other famous catchphrase is "That's my boy!" normally said when he supports or congratulates his son.

Tyke is described as a cute, sweet-looking, happy and lovable puppy. He is Spike's son. Unlike Spike, Tyke does not speak and only communicates, mostly towards his father, by barking, yapping, wagging his tail, whimpering and growling. Spike would always go out of his way to care and comfort his son and make sure that he is safe from Tom. Tyke loves his father and Spike loves his son and they get along like friends, although most of the time they would be taking a nap or Spike would teach Tyke the main facts of life of being a dog. Like Spike, Tyke's appearance has altered throughout the years, from gray, with white paws, to creamy tan. When Tom & Jerry Kids first aired, this was the first time that viewers heard Tyke speak.

Butch and Toodles Galore

Butch is a black, cigar-smoking alley cat who also wants to eat Jerry. He is Tom's most frequent adversary. For most of the shorts he appears in, he is usually seen rivaling Tom over Toodles. Butch was Tom's chum as in some cartoons, where Butch is leader of Tom's alley cat buddies, who are mostly Lightning, Topsy, and Meathead. Butch talks more often than Tom or Jerry in most shorts.

Butch and Toodles were originally introduced in Hugh Harman's 1941 short The Alley Cat, but were integrated into Tom and Jerry rather than continuing in their own series.

Nibbles

Nibbles is a small gray mouse who often appears in shorts as an orphan mouse. He is a carefree individual who very rarely understands the danger of the situation, simply following instructions the best he can both to Jerry's command and his own innocent understanding of the situation. This can lead to such results as "getting the cheese" by simply asking Tom to pick it up for him, rather than following Jerry's example of outmaneuvering and sneaking around Tom. Many times Nibbles is an ally of Jerry in fights against Tom, including being the second Mouseketeer. He is given speaking roles in all his appearances as a Mouseketeer, often with a high-pitched French tone, provided by Francoise Brun-Cottan. However, during a short in which he rescued Robin Hood, his voice was instead a more masculine, gruff Cockney accent, provided by Lucille Bliss.

The Housekeeper

The housekeeper, usually seen from the torso down, is a heavy-set, middle-aged black woman who often has to deal with the mayhem generated by the lead characters. Voiced by character actress Lillian Randolph, she is often seen as the owner of Tom, and perhaps the homeowner as well. Her face was only shown once, very briefly, in Saturday Evening Puss. Her appearances have often been edited out, dubbed, or re-animated as a slim white woman in later television showings, since her character is a mammy archetype that had been protested as racist by the NAACP and other civil rights groups since the 1940s. In a 1975 article in Film Comment she was referred to as "Mammy Two Shoes", a moniker that has been inaccurately attributed to the character ever since, The name "Mammy Two-Shoes" was on the Disney model sheets for a character in a Silly Symphony cartoon, though the name was never spoken in the cartoon. A similar housekeeper then appeared in MGM Bosko cartoons by Harman and Ising, also without a name. At no time, ever, was the name used in any Tom and Jerry cartoon, The author of the 1975 article later apologized, but too much time had established the incorrect information, including on the DVD releases of the cartoons, in which the script read by Whoopi Goldberg on the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection: Vol. 2 DVD set, while explaining the importance of African-American representation in the cartoon series, however stereotyped, mentions the incorrect name numerous times.

History

"Tom and Jerry" was a commonplace phrase for young men given to drinking, gambling, and riotous living in 19th-century London, England. The term comes from Life in London; or, The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his elegant friend, Corinthian Tom (1821) by Pierce Egan, the British sports journalist who authored similar accounts compiled as Boxiana. However Brewer notes no more than an "unconscious" echo of the Regency era, and thus Georgian era, origins in the naming of the cartoon.

Hanna-Barbera era (1940–1958)

In August 1937, animator and storyman Joseph Barbera began to work at MGM, then the largest studio in Hollywood. He learned that co-owner Louis B. Mayer wished to boost the animation department by encouraging the artists to develop some new cartoon characters, following the lack of success with its earlier cartoon series based on the Captain and the Kids comic strip. Barbera then teamed with fellow Harman-Ising unit animator and director William Hanna, who joined Harman-Ising Productions in 1930, and pitched new ideas, among them was the concept of two "equal characters who were always in conflict with each other". An early thought involved a fox and a dog before they settled on a cat and mouse. The pair discussed their ideas with producer Fred Quimby, then the head of the short film department who, despite a lack of interest in it, gave them the green-light to produce one cartoon short.

The first short, Puss Gets the Boot, features a cat named Jasper and an unnamed mouse, named Jinx in pre-production, and an African American housemaid named Mammy Two Shoes. Leonard Maltin described it as "very new and special [...] that was to change the course of MGM cartoon production" and established the successful Tom and Jerry formula of comical cat and mouse chases with slapstick gags. It was released onto the theatre circuit on February 10, 1940. The pair, having been advised by management not to produce any more, focused on other cartoons including Gallopin' Gals (1940) and Officer Pooch (1941). Matters changed when 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. Carr was awarded a first-place prize of $50, equivalent to $1,149 in 2025. It has been suggested, but not proven, that the names were derived from a 1932 story by Damon Runyon, who took them from the name of a popular Christmastime cocktail, itself derived from the names of two characters in an 1821 stage play by William Moncrieff, an adaptation of 1821 Egan's book titled Life in London where the names originated, which was based on George Cruikshank's, Isaac Robert Cruikshank's, and Egan's own careers. Puss Gets the Boot was a critical success, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject: Cartoons in 1941 despite the credits listing Ising and omitting Hanna and Barbera.

After MGM gave the green-light for Hanna and Barbera to continue, the studio entered production on the second Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Midnight Snack (1941). The pair continued to work on the series for the next fifteen years of their career. The composer of the series, Scott Bradley, made it difficult for the musicians to perform his score which often involved the twelve-tone technique developed by Arnold Schoenberg. The series developed a quicker, more energetic and violent tone which was inspired by the work of MGM colleague Tex Avery. Hanna and Barbera made minor adjustments to Tom and Jerry's appearance so they would "age gracefully". Jerry lost weight and his long eyelashes, while Tom lost his jagged fur for a smoother appearance, had larger eyebrows, and received a white and gray face with a white mouth. He adopted a quadrupedal stance at first, like a real cat, to become increasingly and almost exclusively bipedal.

Gene Deitch era (1961–1962)

In 1961, MGM revived the Tom and Jerry franchise, and contracted European animation studio Rembrandt Films to produce 13 Tom and Jerry shorts in Prague, Czechoslovakia. All were directed by Gene Deitch and produced by William L. Snyder. Deitch wrote most of the cartoons, with occasional assistance from Larz Bourne and Eli Bauer. Štěpán Koníček provided the musical score for the Deitch shorts. Sound effects were produced by electronic music composer Tod Dockstader and Deitch. The majority of vocal effects and voices in Deitch's films were provided by Allen Swift and Deitch.

Deitch states that, being a "UPA man", he was not a fan of the Tom and Jerry cartoons, thinking they were "needlessly violent". However, after being assigned to work on the series, he quickly realized that "nobody took [the violence] seriously", and it was merely "a parody of exaggerated human emotions". He also came to see what he perceived as the "biblical roots" in Tom and Jerry's conflict, similar to David and Goliath, stating "That's where we feel a connection to these cartoons: the little guy can win (or at least survive) to fight another day."

Since the Deitch/Snyder team had seen only a handful of the original Tom and Jerry shorts, and since the team produced their cartoons on a tighter budget of $10,000, the resulting films were considered surrealist in nature, though this was not Deitch's intention. The animation was limited and jerky in movement compared to the more fluid Hanna-Barbera shorts, and often utilized motion blur. Background art was done in a more simplistic, angular, Art Deco-esque style. The soundtracks featured sparse and echoic electronic music, futuristic sound effects, heavy reverb and dialogue that was mumbled rather than spoken. According to Jen Nessel of The New York Times, "The Czech style had nothing in common with these gag-driven cartoons."

Whereas Hanna-Barbera's shorts generally took place in and outside of a house, Deitch's shorts opted for more exotic locations, such as a 19th-century whaling ship, the jungles of Nairobi, an Ancient Greek acropolis, or the Wild West. In addition, Mammy Two Shoes was replaced as Tom's owner by a bald, overweight, short-tempered, middle-aged white man, who bore a striking resemblance to another Deitch character, Clint Clobber. Just like Spike the Bulldog, he was also significantly more brutal and violent in punishing Tom's actions as compared to previous owners, often beating and thrashing Tom repeatedly; the character and his extreme treatment of Tom was poorly received.

Chuck Jones era (1963–1967)

After the last of the Deitch cartoons were released, Chuck Jones, who had been fired from his 30-plus year tenure at Warner Bros. Cartoons, started his own animation studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions (later renamed MGM Animation/Visual Arts), 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.

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, Count Blood Count or Wile E. Coyote), a less complex look (including the color of his fur becoming gray), sharper ears, longer tail and furrier cheeks (resembling Jones' Claude Cat or Sylvester), 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, includes 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, June Foray and even Jones himself. These shorts contain a memorable opening theme, in which Tom first replaces the MGM lion, then is trapped inside the "O" of his name.

Though Jones's shorts were generally considered an improvement over Deitch's, they had varying degrees of critical success. MGM ceased production of Tom and Jerry shorts in 1967, by which time Jones had moved on to television specials and the feature film The Phantom Tollbooth. The shorts were released on DVD in 2009 on Tom and Jerry: The Chuck Jones Collection.

Tom and Jerry hit television

Beginning in 1965, the Hanna and Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoons began to appear on television in heavily edited versions. 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.

Recent telecasts on Cartoon Network and Boomerang retain Mammy with new voiceover work performed by Thea Vidale to remove the stereotypical black jargon featured on the original cartoon soundtracks. The standard Tom and Jerry opening titles were removed as well. Instead of the roaring MGM Lion sequence, an opening sequence featuring different clips of the cartoons was used instead. The title cards were also changed. A pink title card with the name written in white font was used instead.

Debuting on CBS' Saturday morning schedule on September 25, 1965, Tom and Jerry moved to CBS Sundays in 1967 and remained there until September 17, 1972.

Second Hanna-Barbera era: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975–1977)

In 1975, Tom and Jerry were reunited with Hanna and Barbera, who produced The Tom and Jerry Show for Saturday mornings. These 48 seven-minute cartoon shorts were paired with 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 mornings 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. This format has not been used in newer Tom and Jerry entries.

Around the same period, ABC's broadcast standards department also declined to carry the original theatrical Tom and Jerry shorts. Susan Futterman, who managed children's programming within the department from late 1976, cited excessive violence as the reason, even as the cartoons continued to air on competing networks at high ratings.

Filmation era (1980–1982)

Filmation Studios were commissioned by MGM Television to produce a Tom and Jerry TV series, The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show, which debuted in 1980 and featured new cartoons starring Droopy, Spike, Slick Wolf, and Barney 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 mornings from September 6, 1980, to September 4, 1982.

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. Tom and Jerry became the property of Turner Entertainment Co., where the rights stand today via Warner Bros., and have in subsequent years appeared on Turner-run channels, such as TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, The WB, Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies.

Third Hanna-Barbera era: Tom & Jerry Kids (1990–1994)

One of the biggest trends for Saturday morning television in the 1980s and 1990s was the "babyfication" (child versions) of classic cartoon stars. On March 2, 1990, Tom & Jerry Kids, co-produced by Turner Entertainment Co. and Hanna-Barbera Productions (which was sold to Turner in 1991), debuted on Fox Kids, and aired for a few years on British children's block, 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. Tom & Jerry Kids was the last Tom and Jerry cartoon series produced in 4:3 (full screen) aspect ratio.

One-off productions (2001; 2005)

In 2001, a new television special titled 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, titled 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 September 27, 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, and last overall. He died shortly after production ended. Director/animator, Spike Brandt was nominated for an Annie award for best character animation. The short debuted on the Cartoon Network on January 27, 2006. The short was filmed in the standard Academy ratio and format.

Warner Bros. era (2006–present)

In 1996, Turner merged with Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Bros. The characters from the MGM library, including Tom and Jerry, were placed under the control of Warner Bros. Animation. A relaunch of the theatrical shorts series was planned for 2003 alongside a similar relaunch of the Looney Tunes theatrical shorts, but was canceled after the financial failure of Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

In 2006, a new series called Tom and Jerry Tales premiered. Thirteen half-hour episodes each consisting of three shorts were produced. Some of the segments, like The Karate Guard, had originally been produced and completed in 2003 and/or 2005 as part of the planned theatrical cartoon relaunch. The show debuted in markets outside the US and UK, before premiering in February 2006 on the UK version of Boomerang, and the following autumn in the US on Kids' WB on The CW. Tales is the first Tom and Jerry TV series that utilizes the original style of the classic shorts, along with the slapstick. Tales is the first Tom and Jerry production produced in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, but was cropped to 4:3 fullscreen aspect ratio when initially aired in the United States. The series was canceled in 2008, shortly before the Kids' WB block shut down.

Following Cartoon Network's 2012 reruns of Tom and Jerry Tales, the channel launched The Tom and Jerry Show (2014). Initially featuring two 11-minute segments, the series later shifted to 7-minute segments to better match the look and tone of the original theatrical shorts. Similar to other reboot works like Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and New Looney Tunes, several episodes the new series brought Tom and Jerry into contemporary environments, telling new stories and relocating the characters to more fantastic worlds, from a medieval castle to a mad scientist's lab. The series was produced by Warner Bros. Animation, with Sam Register serving as executive producer in collaboration with Darrell Van Citters and Ashley Postlewaite at Renegade Animation. Originally slated for a 2013 Cartoon Network premiere, the series was pushed back to April 9, 2014. It is the second Tom and Jerry production presented in 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio.

In November 2014, a two-minute sketch was shown as part of the Children in Need telethon in the United Kingdom. The sketch was produced as a collaboration with Warner Bros.

In May 2016, WB Kids began releasing excerpts from various Tom and Jerry works to the online platform YouTube. By January 2017, compilation videos of the Tom and Jerry franchise began to be released by WB Kids on the platform.

Outside the United States

When shown on terrestrial television in the United Kingdom, from April 1967 to February 2001, usually on the BBC, Tom and Jerry cartoons were not edited for violence, and Mammy was retained. As well as having regular slots, mainly after the evening BBC News with around two shorts 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, for example when live broadcasts overran, 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. In 2006, a mother complained to Ofcom about the smoking 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 very limited use of dialogue, Tom and Jerry was easily translated into various foreign languages. Tom and Jerry began broadcasting in Japan in 1965. A 2005 nationwide survey taken in Japan by TV Asahi, sampling age groups from teenagers to adults in their sixties, ranked Tom and Jerry No. 85 in a list of the top 100 "anime" of all time. Their web poll taken after the airing of the list ranked it at No. 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. In Japan, the word "anime" refers to all animation regardless of origin, not just Japanese animation.

Tom and Jerry serve as the long-time licensed mascots for Gifu-based Juroku Bank.

Tom and Jerry have long since been popular in Germany. The different shorts are usually linked together with key scenes from Jerry's Diary (1949), in which Tom reads about his and Jerry's past adventures. The cartoons are introduced with rhyming German language verse, and when necessary, a German voice spoke the translations of English labels on items and similar information.

In Yugoslavia, Tom and Jerry also received locally titled theatrical releases. Contemporary Slovenian cinema listings record screenings of Tom in Jerry - Oskarjevca in 1984 and 1986.

Feature films

Tom and Jerry's first feature film appearance was in the 1945 MGM musical Anchors Aweigh, in which Jerry performs a dance number with Gene Kelly. In this scene, Tom made a cameo as a servant. Filmmakers had wanted Mickey Mouse for the scene, but Walt Disney had rejected the deal, as the Disney studio was focusing on its own cartoons to help pay off its debts after World War II. Eventually Disney lent out their effects wizard Joshua Meador to spruce up MGM's 1956 Forbidden Planet. William Hanna and Joe Barbera supervised animation for the scene.

In 1953, Tom and Jerry's second feature film appearance was swimming with Esther Williams in a dream sequence in another MGM musical, Dangerous When Wet.

On October 1, 1992, the first international release of Tom and Jerry: The Movie arrived when the film was released overseas to theaters in Europe and then domestically by Miramax Films on July 30, 1993, with future video and DVD releases that would be sold under Warner Home Video, which, following Disney's acquisition of Miramax and Turner's subsequent merger with Time Warner, had acquired the film's distribution rights. Barbera served as creative consultant for the picture, which was produced and directed by Phil Roman. The film was a musical with a structure similar to MGM's blockbusters, The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain.

In 2001, Warner Bros., which had, by then, merged with Turner and assumed its properties, released the duo's first direct-to-video film, Tom and Jerry: The Magic Ring, in which Tom covets a ring that grants mystical powers to the wearer, and has become accidentally stuck on Jerry's head. It was the last time Hanna and Barbera co-produced a Tom 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 film, directed by Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone, was Joe Barbera's last Tom and Jerry project due to his death in December 2006. The holiday-set animated film was released on DVD in late 2007 and dedicated to Barbera.

Controversies

Like many animated cartoons from the 1930s to the 1950s, Tom and Jerry featured racial stereotypes. After explosions, for example, characters with blasted faces would resemble blackface stereotypes, with large lips and bow-tied hair. Perhaps the most controversial element of the show is the character Mammy Two Shoes, a poor black maid who speaks in a stereotypical "black accent". Today, the blackface gags are often censored when these shorts are aired.

Following the 1949 re-issue of the 1943 Tom and Jerry short The Lonesome Mouse, the NAACP, which had begun protesting stereotypical and racist depictions of African-Americans in Hollywood cinema, began a campaign against the use of the maid character in the Tom and Jerry shorts. Lillian Randolph left her role as the voice of Mammy Two Shoes in 1952 to instead take a job on television in Amos & Andy, and Hanna and Barbera retired the character at that time.

In the 1960s, shorts featuring Mammy Two Shoes were re-animated in part by Chuck Jones' team at MGM, alongside their work on the newer entries produced by Jones, in order to be shown on television. These versions of the shorts replace the African-American maid with a white woman, voiced by June Foray with an Irish accent. These versions of the Tom and Jerry shorts were broadcast on television until the MGM catalog's acquisition by Turner in 1986. Turner redubbed Mammy Two Shoes' voice in these shorts in the mid-1990s to make the character sound less stereotypical.

Two shorts – His Mouse Friday, which depicts cannibals, and A Mouse in the House, which shows Mammy getting spanked repeatedly by Tom and Butch in the end resulting in racial abuse – have been removed from circulation. Two others in particular – Casanova Cat, which features a scene where Jerry's face is blackened by Tom with cigar smoke and he is forced to perform a minstrel dance, and Mouse Cleaning, where Tom is shown with blackface speaking in a stereotypical "Negro dialect" – were omitted from DVD/Blu-ray releases. Notably the other two – Fraidy Cat, showed Tom biting Mammy in the rear near the end, and The Mouse Comes to Dinner, including Jerry briefly dressing up as a Native American stereotype during the beginning – have Mammy edited in complete absence.

At the start of the 2005 Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection: Vol 2. DVD set, a disclaimer by actress and comedian Whoopi Goldberg warns viewers about the potentially offensive material in the cartoons. Goldberg's disclaimer emphasizes that the racial and ethnic stereotypes present in the shorts were "wrong then and they are wrong today", borrowing a phrase used in disclaimers done for Warner Bros. Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD sets. This disclaimer is also used in the Tom and Jerry Golden Collection: Volume 1 Blu-ray/DVD/digital release as well.

In other media

Comic books

Tom and Jerry began appearing in comic books in 1942, as one of the features in Dell Comics' 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. That title ran 212 issues with Dell before being handed off to Western Publishing's line of Gold Key Comics, where it ran until issue #344 (June 1984). Tom and Jerry continued to appear in various comic books for the rest of the 20th century. Tom and Jerry comics were also extremely popular in Norway, Germany, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia and Australia. A licensed European version has been drawn by Spanish artist Oscar Martin since 1986. Another licensed version was published in Yugoslavia, started in 1983 and drawn by a number of artists, including Zoran Kovačević, Bojan Đukić, Zdravko Zupan and Dušan Reljić.

Comic strip

A Tom and Jerry comic strip was syndicated from 1950 to 1952. Although credited to MGM animation studio head Fred Quimby, experts believe the strips were ghosted by Gene Hazelton and possibly Ernie Stanzoni and Dan Gormley. Tom and Jerry was revived as a comic strip from 1989 to 1994, syndicated to the South American market by Editors Press Service. The strip was produced by Kelley Jarvis during this era, with the exception of a short period in 1990–1991 when it was done by Paul Kupperberg & Rich Maurizio.

Tom to Jerry: Nanairo

Tom to Jerry: Nanairo (Japanese: とむとじぇりーナナイロ, romanized: Tomu to Jerī Nanairo, lit. 'Tom and Jerry: Seven Colors') is a short-lived series of Japanese comics authored by Chara Chara Makiart as a spin-off of Tom and Jerry. It was first featured in the August 2021 issue of the Nakayoshi magazine. Nanairo, along with Chara Chara Makiart's other project Harapeko Penguin Cafe, was cancelled in December 2021 as Kodansha (Nakayoshi's publisher) has terminated its contract with the creative unit after one of Makiart members was found guilty for sexually assaulting a minor.

Musical adaptation

A musical, or music drama (音楽劇, ongaku geki), adaptation of the cartoon series, titled Tom and Jerry: Purr-Chance to Dream (トムとジェリー 夢よもう一度, Tomu to Jerī Yume yo Mōichido), debuted in Japan in 2019 in advance of the series' upcoming 80th anniversary. The musical was composed by Masataka Matsutoya, staged by Seiji Nozoe, and written by Shigeki Motoiki.

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 was not the more powerful Tom who usually came out on top. In 2005, TV Asahi ranked Tom and Jerry as 58th of the Top 100 Animated TV Series in Japan overall, outranking titles like Rurouni Kenshin, Initial D, and even Macross. In January 2009, IGN named Tom and Jerry as the 66th best in the Top 100 Animated TV Shows.

In popular culture

Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner were originally meant to parody Tom and Jerry.

In 1973, the magazine National Lampoon referenced Tom and Jerry in a violence-filled comic book parody, Kit 'n' Kaboodle. In The Simpsons, The Itchy & Scratchy Show is a spoof of Tom and Jerry—a "cartoon within a cartoon". In an episode of the series titled "Krusty Gets Kancelled", Worker and Parasite, a replacement cartoon for Itchy & Scratchy, is a reference to Soviet-era animation. The Italian adult black comedy comic strip Squeak the Mouse created by artist Massimo Mattioli satirizes Tom and Jerry, taking the content to extreme levels, which includes gory, horror, violence, and explicit sexual content.

Tom and Jerry made a cameo appearance in the 1992 animated TV special The Rosey and Buddy Show.

In an interview found on the DVD releases, several Mad TV cast members stated that Tom and Jerry is one of their biggest influences for slapstick comedy. Also in the Cartoon Network show MAD, Tom and Jerry appear in three segments: "Celebrity Birthdays", "Mickey Mouse Exterminator Service", and "Tom and Jury". Johnny Knoxville from Jackass has stated that watching Tom and Jerry inspired many of the stunts in the films.

In 2003, British agency Ogilvy & Mather produced a 40-minute Ford UK commercial promoting their then-recent Ford Mondeo, which featured Tom and Jerry. In the commercial, the characters break out of a television, wrecking the living room, and eventually breaking the door and going outside. Jerry then enters the Ford Mondeo via the exhaust pipe, and Tom gets chased away by a bulldog. The commercial was directed by Jeff Stark, written by Dale Winton, drafted by Paul Frost, and produced by Kim Parrot and Cathy Green. Animation was done by Jerry Forder at Icepics Animation Studios, with backgrounds by Monica Herman and art direction by Hamish Pinnell and John Bramble. Sound design was done by James Saunders. The music was composed by Goldstein. Post-production was done by Paul Hannaford at Rushes.

The supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei likened the rivalry between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran to Tom and Jerry, with the United States in the role of Tom and Iran in the role of Jerry. Time Magazine noted that late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat admired Tom and Jerry because, in his view, the mouse always outwits the cat—mirroring how Palestinians, seen as the underdog, persist despite adversity.

Home media

In the pre-video era, Tom and Jerry cartoons were a popular subject for 8mm home movies, with the UK-based Walton Films issuing dozens of titles as colour one-reel Super 8 films, in both silent and sound editions. Walton's agreement with MGM obligated them to release the films in slightly edited form, even though the single-reel format would have comfortably accommodated the cartoons' seven to eight minute running time. These releases were discontinued before the dawn of the 1980s.

As early as 1981, MGM/CBS released Tom and Jerry Cartoon Festival, the very first Tom and Jerry release on numerous home video formats, including VHS, Betamax, CED Videodisc, and Laserdisc, and mostly consisted the original Hanna-Barbera-era shorts (excluding the CinemaScope cartoons). The VHS and Beta versions released a total of four volumes up through 1984, while releases on the other two formats were discontinued after the second volume due to marketing difficulties of Laserdisc and CED players during that time period.

Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, MGM/UA Home Video released a series of Tom and Jerry VHS tapes under their Cartoon Movie Stars banner. Also in the early 1990s, MGM/UA released a released three volumes of Laserdisc box sets for collectors, entitled The Art of Tom & Jerry. Volumes 1 and 2 contain all of the Hanna and Barbera era shorts in chronological order, with the CinemaScope shorts being presented in letterboxed versions. The cartoons were mostly presented uncut with three exceptions: His Mouse Friday, where the cannibal's dialogue had been removed, Saturday Evening Puss, which is the re-drawn version with June Foray's voice added, and The Framed Cat where Mammy-Two Shoes' dialogue had been redubbed. A third volume to The Art of Tom & Jerry was released and contains all of the Chuck Jones-era Tom and Jerry shorts; however, it omitted any of the Gene Deitch-era shorts. This was the final home media release of Tom and Jerry release by MGM.

In 1999, three years after Time Warner's acquisition of Turner Broadcasting, the rights to Tom and Jerry (along with the rest of MGM's Pre-1986 library) moved from MGM to Warner Bros. with Warner Home Video handling all future releases. DVD and Blu-Ray releases of Tom and Jerry have encountered difficulties in terms of restoration, due to most of the original film negatives to the Pre-1951 MGM cartoons being destroyed in a vault fire in the 1970s, leaving only inferior duplicate copies.

Theatrical shorts

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

1943: The Yankee Doodle Mouse

1944: Mouse Trouble

1945: Quiet Please!

1946: The Cat Concerto

1948: The Little Orphan

1952: The Two Mouseketeers

1953: Johann Mouse

These cartoons were nominated for the Academy Award 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: Touché, Pussy Cat!

Television