Early years (1937–1939) In March 1937, MGM hired film sales executive
Fred Quimby, who had no experience in the animation industry, Although it boasted a brand-new facility and good directors, the MGM cartoon studio's first series failed.
The Captain and The Kids, adapted from
Rudolph Dirks'
Katzenjammer Kids characters, was licensed by MGM without consulting its then-forming creative staff. Freleng, Hanna, and Allen, assigned to direct the
Captain and the Kids cartoons, were unable to translate the
Katzenjammer humor into animation, and the series folded after fifteen shorts. Only two of the
Captain and the Kids shorts were produced in Technicolor; the other thirteen were produced in black-and-white and released in
sepia-toned prints. MGM brought in established newspaper cartoonists such as
Milt Gross and
Harry Hershfield in an attempt to both bolster the
Captain and the Kids product and create original properties for MGM, but both cartoonists' tenures at the studio were short-lived. Gross managed to complete two cartoons,
Jitterbug Follies and
Wanted: No Master, with his characters
Count Screwloose of Tooloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog, while Hershfield completed no cartoons.
Harman and Ising return (1938–1943) In January 1939, Quimby, coming full-circle, hired Harman and
Rudolf Ising as the new creative heads of the studio, acting as both directors and producers, and in charge of many of the employees who had defected from the Harman-Ising studio a year before. Among Ising's first new cartoons for MGM was 1939's ''The Bear Who Couldn't Sleep'', the debut appearance of
Barney Bear, a lumbering anthropomorphic bear based upon both
Wallace Beery and Ising himself. Barney Bear would become MGM's first original cartoon star, regularly featured in cartoons until 1953, although his popularity never rose to the level of
Mickey Mouse or
Porky Pig. Ising focused on the
Barney Bear cartoons, while Harman focused on making elaborate one-shot cartoons, although Harman was able to establish a short-lived series of
Bear Family cartoons. At this time, Harman created his masterpiece,
Peace on Earth. Released during the holiday season of 1939 (immediately after the outbreak of
World War II in
Europe),
Peace on Earth was a serious work that dealt with the idea of what a
post-apocalyptic world would be like.
Peace on Earth was nominated for the 1939
Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons), as well as for the
Nobel Peace Prize.
Tom and Jerry (1940–1958) Friz Freleng, briefly assigned to work under Harman, returned to Schlesinger after his MGM contract expired in April 1939, and storyman Joseph Barbera was united with director William Hanna to co-direct cartoons for Rudolf Ising's unit. The partnership between
Hanna and Barbera would last for more than six decades until Hanna's death in 2001. The duo's first cartoon together was 1940's
Puss Gets the Boot, featuring a mouse's attempts to outwit a house cat named Jasper. Though released without fanfare, the short was financially and critically successful, earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) in 1940. On the strength of the Oscar nomination and public demand, Hanna and Barbera were assigned to direct more cat-and-mouse cartoons, soon christening the characters
Tom and Jerry.
Puss Gets the Boot did not win the 1940 Academy Award for Best Cartoon, but another MGM cartoon, Rudolf Ising's
The Milky Way did, making MGM the first studio to wrest the Cartoon Academy Award away from Walt Disney.
Tom and Jerry quickly became MGM's most valuable animated property. The shorts were successful at the box office, many licensed products (comic books, toys, etc.) were released to the market, and the series would earn twelve more Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons) nominations, with seven of the
Tom & Jerry shorts going on to win the Academy Award:
The Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943),
Mouse Trouble (1944),
Quiet Please! (1945),
The Cat Concerto (1947),
The Little Orphan (1949),
The Two Mouseketeers (1952) and
Johann Mouse (1953).
Tom and Jerry was eventually tied with Disney's
Silly Symphonies as the most-awarded theatrical cartoon series. Originally barred by Quimby from making a second cat-and-mouse short until the overwhelming success of
Puss Gets the Boot demanded it, Hanna and Barbera and their team of animators, who included George Gordon, Jack Zander, Kenneth Muse, Irven Spence, Ed Barge, Ray Patterson, and Pete Burness, worked on
Tom and Jerry cartoons almost exclusively from 1941 until 1955. Exceptions were half a dozen
one-shot theatrical shorts, including ''
Gallopin' Gals (1940), Officer Pooch (1941), War Dogs (1943), Good Will to Men (1955), and the last seven Tex Avery shorts featuring Droopy''. Key to the successes of
Tom and Jerry and other MGM cartoons was the work of
Scott Bradley, who scored virtually all of the cartoons for the studio from 1934 to 1957. Bradley's scores made use of both classical and jazz sensibilities. In addition, he often used songs from the scores of MGM's feature films, the most frequent of them being "The Trolley Song" from
Meet Me in St. Louis and "Sing Before Breakfast" from
Broadway Melody of 1936.
Tex Avery (1942–1953) '' by
Tex Avery Hugh Harman left the MGM studio in April 1941, and Rudolf Ising departed two years later.
George Gordon took over Ising's department, continuing work on the
Barney Bear cartoons. He completed three Barney Bear cartoons as well as a few other such as ''The Stork's Holiday
and the short lived Ol' Doc Donkey'' series before he left the studio in 1943. In Harman's place, Quimby hired
Tex Avery, an animation director known for his wild comedic style at the Schlesinger studio. Avery's first short for MGM was the World War II parody
Blitz Wolf, which was nominated for the 1942 Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons). While Avery had revolutionized cartoon humor at Schlesinger's, he went several steps further in his MGM works. Avery exaggerated his characters and situations wildly, and was noted for the precise and hard-edged timing of his gags. Among Avery's most noted cartoons for MGM were slapstick comedies such as
Red Hot Riding Hood (1943),
Jerky Turkey (1945),
Northwest Hounded Police (1946),
King-Size Canary (1947),
Little Rural Riding Hood (1949), and
Bad Luck Blackie (1949). While Avery preferred to focus on gags instead of characterization, he established several popular MGM cartoon characters, including
Screwball "Screwy" Squirrel, the
Of Mice and Men derived pair of
George and Junior, and his best-known character,
Droopy. Droopy, voiced by
Bill Thompson (a.k.a. "Wallace Wimple" on
NBC Radio's
Fibber McGee and Molly show) debuted in 1943 with
Dumb-Hounded. He appeared in several more Avery cartoons (including
Northwest Hounded Police) before being officially given his own series in 1949 with
Señor Droopy. Also in 1949, Avery would debut
Butch (formerly named Spike) who would be a recurring antagonist in the Droopy films but also as a star in his own films such as
Magical Maestro (1952),
Rock-a-Bye-Bear (1952) and
Cellbound (1955) which was Avery's final cartoon for MGM. The influence of Avery's cartoons was felt across the animation industry; even Hanna and Barbera adapted their
Tom and Jerry shorts to match the levels of madcap humor and violence in Avery's films. Avery's team included storymen Rich Hogan and
Heck Allen, and animators such as
Michael Lah, Ed Love, and
Preston Blair, most famous for animating the sexy female singer in
Red Hot Riding Hood and its follow-ups. In 1946, Quimby assigned Blair and Lah to direct a new series of
Barney Bear cartoons, reversing the decision after three cartoons.
CinemaScope (1953–1957) Tex Avery was a perfectionist: he worked extensively on his films' stories and gags, revised his animators' drawings, and was even known to cut frames out of the final Technicolor answer print to sharpen the comedy timing. The strain of overwork caused Avery to quit MGM in May 1950, after completing
Rock-a-Bye Bear (not released until 1952 because of MGM's cartoon backlog). Former
Walter Lantz Productions and Disney director
Dick Lundy were brought in to head Avery's unit. Lundy completed one
Droopy and ten
Barney Bear cartoons before Avery returned in October 1951 and reassumed his role as director from Lundy, starting with
Little Johnny Jet (released in 1953). Avery directed eleven more cartoons for MGM, many of them showing the heavy influence of the newly popular
UPA studio and its simplified designs. In March 1953, MGM temporarily closed down the cartoon unit, thinking that the growing trend for
3D films would bring an end to the animated cartoon. Avery himself did not leave the studio until June, working with co-director Michael Lah on two more cartoons,
Deputy Droopy and
Cellbound, which Lah completed with the Hanna and Barbera staff (working during the most part of 1953 for commercials, as a predecessor of
H-B Enterprises) during the closure. Avery returned to Walter Lantz Productions the following February, while Lah went on to do commercial animation work. That year, Hanna and Barbera directed
Pet Peeve, the first MGM cartoon in the new widescreen
CinemaScope process, which had been was devised as a means to keep audiences attending movie theatres in the wake of the popularity of
television.
Pet Peeve, released in late 1954, was followed by a sporadic number of CinemaScope
Tom and Jerry shorts, with several other
Tom and Jerry shorts being dual-released in standard format and in CinemaScope. After
Pecos Pest (released in 1955), all MGM cartoons were released in CinemaScope. Six previous MGM cartoons, among them Hugh Harman's
Peace on Earth, were remade in CinemaScope. Like the original
Peace on Earth in 1939, its 1955 remake,
Good Will to Men, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).
Later years (1955–1957) Quimby retired in 1955, and Hanna and Barbera became the new heads of the studio. Michael Lah returned to the studio in 1955 to direct an animated sequence for the MGM feature
Invitation to the Dance, and stayed on to supervise a new series of CinemaScope
Droopy cartoons to accompany the new CinemaScope
Tom and Jerry cartoons. Lah's
One Droopy Knight was nominated for the 1957 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons). However, for the most part, both the 1955–1957 CinemaScope
Droopy and
Tom and Jerry cartoons had lost their appeal in the eyes of critics due to weaker stories and simplistic animation, which were the result of the budget cuts. MGM had begun reissuing previously released cartoons since the 1940s, but decided in late 1956 that, due to the reissued shorts bringing in as much revenue as the new shorts, it could save $600,000 a year by shutting down production on new shorts. Most of the reissued cartoons were Tom and Jerry, Droopy, and Tex Avery's shorts featuring Tex Avery's showgirl, Red. None of Tex Avery's
Screwy Squirrel and
George and Junior cartoons were reissued. The MGM cartoon studio was closed on May 15, 1957; the last cartoon made by the studio was released in 1958. Hanna and Barbera took most of their unit and began producing television cartoons with their company
Hanna-Barbera Productions. Hanna-Barbera first approached MGM to distribute their cartoons for television but was turned down.
Columbia Pictures'
Screen Gems picked up Hanna-Barbera's series, and the studio soon became the most successful producers of television animation in the world. MGM would later have
Gene Deitch create a series of
Tom and Jerry cartoons before contracting
Chuck Jones and Les Goldman's
Sib Tower 12 studio to create more
Tom and Jerry shorts. Sib Tower 12 was absorbed by MGM in 1964 and was renamed
MGM Animation/Visual Arts.
Legacy Many MGM cartoons have received critical acclaim throughout the years due to their extremely high quality animation, especially the
Tom and Jerry shorts, or in the case of Tex Avery's work, their raunchy nature and fast pacing. Individual shorts such as
To Spring (1936) and
The Dot and the Line (1965) have been acclaimed for their artistic designs while others such as
Screwball Squirrel (1944) and
King-Size Canary (1947) are celebrated for their sheer lunacy.
Turner Entertainment Co. owns all MGM cartoons through their acquisition of MGM's pre-1986 library. As of 2009, nearly all of the Hanna and Barbera-produced
Tom and Jerry shorts are available on DVD under the
Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection, a series of three DVD box sets that were released from October 2004 to September 2007 (however, two cartoons are missing due to politically incorrect scenes, and several of the released ones are edited).
Warner Home Video would later release the
Tom and Jerry shorts as part of the
Tom and Jerry Golden Collection series of DVD and
Blu-ray boxsets, which started with the first volume being released October 25, 2011, with the shorts being presented uncut, restored, remastered, in chronological order, and for the Blu-ray version, in
1080p high definition. A second volume was also announced, but was ultimately scrapped as Warner Home Video still had reservations about two politically incorrect shorts (the Volume 2 restorations were released internationally for digital releases and TV airings). Moreover, a two-disc collection of all of
Droopy's cartoons was released in May 2007. Rumors have floated around for years of a box set consisting of
Tex Avery's MGM work, but nothing has been released besides the
Spotlight and
Golden box sets for
Tom and Jerry and the
Droopy collection in the United States, although all of Tex Avery's cartoons were released on DVD in France through Warner Home Video. However, in 2020, Tex Avery cartoons finally started being released on Blu-ray, when
Warner Archive Collection made
Tex Avery Screwball Classics this February with 19 of the cartoons. A second volume was announced in March and was released on December 15, 2020, followed by a third one that was released on October 5, 2021. On February 11, 2025, the Warner Archive Collection released "Tom and Jerry: The Complete CinemaScope Collection", which collects the 23
Tom and Jerry cartoons released in CinemaScope, alongside the 2 Spike and Tyke CinemaScope cartoons, and "Good Will to Men". On December 2, 2025, the Warner Archive Collection released
Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology, which collects all of the Hanna and Barbera-produced
Tom and Jerry cartoons. == Productions ==