The real reason Tom and Jerry have lasted 75 years (2024)

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Some critters are hard to kill. Now 75 years old, Tom the cartoon cat and Jerry the house mouse are still going at each other with a stick, an axe, a bomb, a saw, a weight dropped on the head or 10,000 other forms of despatch, none of which has a fatal result. The series is a monument to the power of recuperation, not to mention animosity and, of course, old-fashioned cel animation.

Perhaps that is one of the things we love most about cartoons: no-one really dies. Death has no dominion in the 'toon world.

The violence of the Tom and Jerry cartoons was new when the series premiered in February 1940, in Puss Gets the Boot, an MGM Technicolour cartoon made by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who had been paired a year earlier by Fred Quimby, boss of the department. They were very different individuals.

Barbera was born on Delancey Street in New York, among the Sicilian migrants of Little Italy, but raised in Brooklyn. His humour was broad and wild, with an inclination towards violence.

Hanna came from an Irish-American family of seven children – six girls and him. He grew up all over the western US, as his father built railroads and sewers. The family moved to Los Angeles, where he dropped out of college and washed cars in the early years of the Depression. His talent for music and drawing got him into the Harman-Ising animation studio in 1930. When Harman-Ising broke with Warner Bros in 1933 to move to MGM, Hanna went with them.

Barbera came west in 1937, as MGM was about to dump Harman-Ising. Fred Quimby wanted rowdier cartoons with more violence, and Rudy Ising had resisted him.

There were already two distinct streams in Hollywood animation – the sweeter, sentiment-laden Disney productions, and the harder-edged style of Warner Bros, where Chuck Jones and Tex Avery were developing Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Porky Pig cartoons – all of which were wackier, more surreal and more violent than anything in the market.

Quimby put Hanna and Barbera together early in 1939 to come up with a new idea, which they did not. They rejigged one of the oldest ideas in the game – a chase format, featuring cat and mouse. There had been hundreds of these, even before Felix the Cat started in 1919. Indeed, other MGM animators thought this new series was old-hat.

So why did it become one of the most successful in cartoon history – winner of seven Oscars, more than any other series? Part of the answer is when, not how. In 1940, war had started in Europe and would follow for the US in December 1941. Depression-era audiences liked the more adult stories that Warners was putting out, in which firearms were often present (duck and "wabbit" hunting was a mainstay). Disney's internal rules prohibited piercing of the cartoon body with sharp instruments. They stayed close to the rules of physics, aiming for realism but with exaggeration.

Barbera and Hanna went for stylisation and more graphic violence. In the first cartoon, Jerry punches Tom directly in the eye – a sign of things to come. In their otherwise domestic life, war is a constant, and all weaponry, sharp or not, can be used. Tom almost chops Jerry in two with an axe in Sufferin' Cats (1943); Jerry seems to saw Tom in half in Mouse Trouble (1944).

Tom never gives up in his desire to catch Jerry, and Jerry never loses a fight. He is inventive, courageous and stronger than he looks. In almost all the early cartoons there is a repeated gag when Jerry grabs a plank and bashes Tom's behind with great force and verve. He enjoys inflicting the pain.

Fairly quickly, Hanna and Barbera moved away from the idea that Jerry was food. Tom does try to eat him occasionally, but most of their warfare is about pain and humiliation. Each of them enjoys it. They won't back down, nor give quarter – unless a third party intrudes. Jerry uses the big stupid bulldog as a weapon against Tom, but he defends Tom when a trio of nasty alley cats beats his "friend" up. They are not above short-term alliances – a bit like Russia and the US during the war, one might say. They're also a good metaphor for labour and capital – natural enemies except in war.

The curious thing about all this is the affection between them, despite the pain. There are numerous scenes in which they bend gender, leading to kisses. Jerry is supposed to be male, but sometimes he's not, as in the scene in Baby Puss (1942) when Jerry takes a bath in a doll's house and is horrified when (Peeping) Tom watches him/her through the window. Jerry covers his/her nakedness with his/her hands and squeals. Tom dresses up as a woman in more than one cartoon.

Of course, the real reason they have lasted so long in our affection is the level of invention in Hanna and Barbera's early work. They made 114 cartoons over 17 years, and these are still the best of the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Funnier, punchier, better animated and more thoughtfully conceived to say something true about human nature. Other animators succeeded them – notably Chuck Jones in the '60s – but none has bettered them.

Twitter: @ptbyrnes