'PUSS GETS THE BOOT', THE DEBUT OF TOM AND JERRY

Arriving to the National Museum of Catalan History

Sunday, The Grandma has gone to the National Museum of Catalan History in Barcelona and has enjoyed a wonderful visit learning new information about Catalan history and its relation with European one.

The museum is divided in different ages that talk about the origins of Catalan country and its situation nowadays. All seasons are interesting but The Grandma has been very interested in how cartoons have been a way of transmission of popular culture and historic events.

A cartoon is not only a group of animated drawings for children but there is always a hidden message behind its story. It is a demonstrated fact in other ways of Literature and Animation like Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault's tales or Walt Disney stories.

It is important to give cartoons the importance that they deserve and because of this, The Grandma wants to talk about one of the most popular cartoons around the world, which aired its first episode on a day like today in 1940, Tom and Jerry.

Before visiting the Museum, The Grandma has started to work with her new English grammar book, Intermediate Language Practice.

Tom and Jerry is an American comedy slapstick cartoon series created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. It centers on a rivalry between the title characters Tom, a cat, and Jerry, a mouse. Many episodes also feature several recurring characters.

In its original run, Hanna and Barbera produced 114 Tom and Jerry shorts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1940 to 1958. During this time, they won seven Academy Awards for Animated Short Film, tying for first place with Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies with the most awards in the category.

Tom and Jerry

After the MGM cartoon studio closed in 1957, MGM revived the series with Gene Deitch directing an additional 13 Tom and Jerry shorts for Rembrandt Films from 1961 to 1962.

Tom and Jerry then became the highest-grossing animated short film series of that time, overtaking Looney Tunes. 

Chuck Jones then produced another 34 shorts with Sib Tower 12 Productions between 1963 and 1967. Three more shorts were produced, The Mansion Cat in 2001, The Karate Guard in 2005, and A Fundraising Adventure in 2014, making a total of 164 shorts.

A number of spin-offs have been made, including the television series The Tom and Jerry Show (1975), The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show (1980–82), Tom and Jerry Kids (1990–93), Tom and Jerry Tales (2006–08), and The Tom and Jerry Show (2014–present). The first feature-length film based on the series, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, was released in 1992, and 13 direct-to-video films have been produced since 2002.

More information: Hypebeast

Puss Gets the Boot is a 1940 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the first short in the Tom and Jerry cartoon series, though the duo are not identified as such in this short. It was directed by William Hanna, Joseph Barbera and Rudolf Ising, and produced by Rudolf Ising and Fred Quimby. As was the practice of MGM shorts at the time, only Rudolf Ising is credited. It was released to theaters on February 10, 1940 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Puss Gets the Boot marked the debut of Tom and Jerry. In 1939, Joseph Barbera and William Hanna teamed up together in animation. Their first idea together was a cartoon series about a cat and a mouse. They built the cartoon but just as they were making the cartoon series theme, after releasing the short, the boss of MGM's cartoon studio, Fred Quimby, asked them to pursue other themes, believing that cat-and-mouse cartoons were old and boring. 

Tom and Jerry

However, after the success of the cartoon, the first nomination for an Academy Award and a letter from a very important distributor in Texas asking for more of the wonderful and delightful cat and mouse cartoons, Fred Quimby changed his mind.

Puss Gets the Boot was directed, drawn and written out by Hanna and Barbera but they gave sole credit to their close friend: animation teacher Rudolf Ising, who actually just looked it over and permitted release of the short. Originally produced as a stand-alone cartoon, the entry was so popular with audiences that MGM commissioned additional cartoons from Hanna and Barbera. It was with the second release, The Midnight Snack, that the characters were explicitly named Tom and Jerry.

Puss Gets the Boot was nominated for an Oscar, losing to another MGM cartoon, The Milky Way.

At over nine minutes, Puss Gets the Boot has the longest running time in the series. The names in the short also differ from the later entries in the series, which named Tom and Jerry after a holiday cocktail; in Puss Gets the Boot, Jerry has not yet been named publicly, design sheets referred to the mouse by the name Jinx, while the cat, for the first and only time in the series, bears the name Jasper.

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.

More information: MAAC India

I never got tired of Tom and Jerry, but I did have 

a dream of doing more with my life than making cartoons.

Joseph Barbera