 Studio's opening title card, 1953–1958 | |
| MGM Cartoons | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
| Industry | Animation Motion pictures |
| Predecessor | Harman-Ising Productions |
| Founded | August 23, 1937; 88 years ago (1937-08-23) |
| Founder | Fred Quimby |
| Defunct | May 15, 1957; 68 years ago (1957-05-15) |
| Fate | Closed |
| Successors | Studio: MGM Animation/Visual Arts Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Animation Hanna-Barbera Library: Warner Bros. (throughTurner Entertainment Co.) |
| Headquarters | Overland and Montana Avenue[1][2][3],, United States |
Key people | William Hanna Joseph Barbera Hugh Harman Rudolf Ising Tex Avery Fred Quimby Preston Blair Michael Lah |
| Products | Animated theatricalshort films |
| Parent | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
TheMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio (also commonly referred to asMGM Cartoons) was an Americananimation studio operated byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer during theGolden Age of American animation. Active from 1937 until 1957, the studio was responsible for producinganimatedshorts to accompany MGM feature films inLoew's Theaters, which included popular cartoon characters and series such asWilliam Hanna andJoseph Barbera'sTom and Jerry series andTex Avery'sDroopy.
Prior to forming its own cartoon studio, MGM released the work of independent animation producerUb Iwerks, and later theHappy Harmonies series fromHugh Harman and Rudolf Ising.[4] The MGM cartoon studio was founded to replace Harman and Ising, although both men eventually became employees of the studio.[5] After a slow start, the studio began to take off in 1940 after its shortThe Milky Way became the first non-Disney cartoon to win theAcademy Award for Best Short Subjects: Cartoons.[6] The studio's roster of talent benefited from an exodus of animators from theWarner Bros. and Disney studios, who were facing issues with union workers. Originally established and run by executiveFred Quimby, Hanna and Barbera became the heads of the studio in 1955 following Quimby's retirement. The cartoon studio was closed on May 15, 1957,[7] at which time Hanna and Barbera took much of the staff to form their own company,Hanna-Barbera Productions, then named H-B Enterprises.[8]
Turner Broadcasting System (viaTurner Entertainment Co.) took over the library in 1986 afterTed Turner's short-lived ownership of MGM/UA. When Turner sold back the MGM/UA production unit, he kept the pre-May 1986 MGM library, including the MGM cartoons, for his own company. In 1996, Turner Broadcasting System merged withTime Warner, the parent company ofWarner Bros., which currently owns the rights to the pre-May 1986 MGM library via Turner Entertainment Co. and also owns the rights to much of Hanna-Barbera's library after Hanna-Barbera was absorbed intoWarner Bros. Animation and replaced byCartoon Network Studios in 2001 following the death of William Hanna.
In the 1930s, to promote their films and attract larger theater audiences, the studios produced many short subjects to supplement the main feature, including travelogues, serials, comedies, newsreels, and cartoons. During the late 1920s,Walt Disney Productions had achieved enormous popular and critical success with itsMickey Mouse cartoons forPat Powers' Celebrity Pictures (distributing forColumbia Pictures). Several other studios,Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer among them, noted Disney's success and began looking for ways to equal or surpass Disney. MGM had tried but failed to acquire distribution rights toMickey Mouse andSilly Symphonies shorts from Pat Powers, who was distributing them to Columbia Pictures.
MGM's first foray into animation was theFlip the Frog cartoon series, starring an anthropomorphic talking and singing frog. The series was produced independently for Celebrity Pictures byUb Iwerks, formerly the head animator at the Disney studio. Celebrity Pictures' Pat Powers had hired Iwerks away from Disney with the promise of giving Iwerks his own studio, and was able to secure a distribution deal with MGM for theFlip the Frog cartoons. The firstFlip the Frog cartoon,Fiddlesticks, was released in January 1931,[9] and over two-dozen otherFlip cartoons followed during the next three years. In 1934, the Flip character was dropped in favor ofWillie Whopper, a new series featuring a lie-telling little boy.Willie Whopper failed to catch on, and MGM terminated its distribution deal with Iwerks and Powers, who had already begun independently distributing the IwerksComiColor cartoons.[10]
For the 1934 MGM musical comedyHollywood Party, a cartoon sequence was added—but MGM no longer had anyone to produce it. Walt Disney Productions created a sequence inTechnicolor calledThe Hot Choc-Late Soldiers, and a sequence withJimmy Durante interacting with an animatedMickey Mouse. It is one of only a few examples where Disney produced animation for other studios.
In August 1934, MGM signed a new deal with theHarman-Ising studio, which had just broken ties with producerLeon Schlesinger and theWarner Bros. studio over budget concerns, to work on a new series of high-budget color cartoons.[4] The director team brought with them much of their staff from their time with Schlesinger, including animators and storymen such as Carmen "Max" Maxwell,William Hanna, and brothersRobert and Tom McKimson.[11] (The McKimsons would later return to Schlesinger.) Also following Harman and Ising from Schlesinger wasBosko, a successful character the duo had created for the Warner cartoons. After learning from Disney's experiences withOswald the Lucky Rabbit, where Disney created the character but didn't own it, Harman and Ising retained the rights to Bosko.
The first entry in MGM's newHappy Harmonies series,The Discontented Canary, was completed in September 1934 and released in October. The series continued for three years, moving from two-strip to three-stripTechnicolor in 1935. TheHappy Harmonies canon included a handful of entries starring Bosko, who, by 1936, was redesigned from an ambiguous "inkblot" character to a discernible littleAfrican-American boy.[12] The directors worked separately on their own films, although both strived to create elaborate films that would compete with Disney's award-winningSilly Symphonies.[13]
However, budget problems threatened to plague Harman and Ising a second time:Happy Harmonies cartoons regularly ran over budget, and Hugh Harman paid no heed to MGM's demands that he reduce the costs of the shorts.[14] MGM retaliated in February 1937 by deciding to open its own cartoon studio and hired away most of the Harman-Ising staff to do so.[5][15] The finalHappy Harmonies short,The Little Bantamweight, was released in March 1938, and Harman and Ising went on to establish a new studio to do freelance animation work forWalt Disney.
In 1937, Disney's animators were overworked withSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs and theHarman-Ising studio provided artists to work on the feature and theSilly Symphonies shortMerbabies in exchange for artist training.
In March 1937, MGM hired film sales executiveFred Quimby, a man with no experience in the animation industry,[15] to set up and run the new MGM cartoon department. Among the holdovers from the Harman-Ising regime, William Hanna and Bob Allen were appointed directors, and Carmen Maxwell became production manager. Quimby raided every major American animation studio for talent, extracting artists, directors, and writers such asFriz Freleng from Leon Schlesinger Productions, Emery Hawkins fromScreen Gems and much of the top staff atTerrytoons (Joseph Barbera, Jack Zander, Ray Kelly, Dan Gordon, George Gordon and others).[15] After spending some time headquartered in a nearby house, the new MGM cartoon studio at Overland Ave. and Montana Ave. opened its doors on August 23, 1937.[16]
Although it boasted a brand-new facility and good directors, the MGM cartoon studio's first series failed.The Captain and The Kids, adapted fromRudolph Dirks'Katzenjammer Kids characters, was licensed by MGM without consulting its then-forming creative staff.[17] Freleng, Hanna, and Allen, assigned to direct theCaptain and the Kids cartoons, were unable to translate theKatzenjammer humor into animation, and the series folded after fifteen episodes. Only two of theCaptain and the Kids shorts were produced in Technicolor; the other thirteen were produced in black-and-white and released insepia-toned prints.[18]
MGM brought in established newspaper cartoonists such asMilt Gross andHarry Hershfield in an attempt to both bolster theCaptain 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 andWanted: No Master, with his charactersCount Screwloose of Tooloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog, while Hershfield completed no cartoons.
In January 1939, Quimby, coming full-circle, hired Hugh 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.[19]
Among Ising's first new cartoons for MGM was 1939'sThe Bear Who Couldn't Sleep, the debut appearance ofBarney Bear, a lumbering anthropomorphic bear based upon bothWallace 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 ofMickey Mouse orPorky Pig. Ising focused on theBarney Bear cartoons, while Harman focused on making elaborate one-shot cartoons, although Harman was able to establish a short-lived series ofBear Family cartoons.
At this time, Harman created his masterpiece,Peace on Earth. Released during the holiday season of 1939 (immediately after the outbreak ofWorld War II inEurope),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 1939Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons), as well as for theNobel Peace Prize.
Friz Freleng, briefly assigned to work under Harman, returned to Schlesinger after his MGM contract expired in April 1939,[20] and storyman Joseph Barbera was united with director William Hanna to co-direct cartoons for Rudolf Ising's unit. The partnership betweenHanna and Barbera would last for more than six decades until Hanna's death in 2001. The duo's first cartoon together was 1940'sPuss 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 charactersTom and Jerry.Puss Gets the Boot did not win the 1940 Academy Award for Best Cartoon, but another MGM cartoon, Rudolf Ising'sThe Milky Way did, making MGM the first studio to wrest the Cartoon Academy Award away from Walt Disney.[6]
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 theTom & 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) andJohann Mouse (1953).Tom and Jerry was eventually tied with Disney'sSilly Symphonies as the most-awarded theatrical cartoon series. Originally barred by Quimby from making a second cat-and-mouse short until the overwhelming success ofPuss 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 onTom and Jerry cartoons almost exclusively from 1941 until 1955. Exceptions were half a dozenone-shot theatrical shorts, includingGallopin' Gals (1940),Officer Pooch (1941),War Dogs (1943),Good Will to Men (1955), and the last seven Tex Avery shorts featuringDroopy.
Key to the successes ofTom and Jerry and other MGM cartoons was the work ofScott 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" fromMeet Me in St. Louis and "Sing Before Breakfast" fromBroadway Melody of 1936.[21]
Hugh Harman left the MGM studio in April 1941,[22] and Rudolph Ising departed two years later.[23] George Gordon took over Ising's department, continuing work on theBarney Bear cartoons, but only completed three cartoons before he left the studio in 1943. In Harman's place, Quimby hiredTex 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 parodyBlitz 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.[24] Among Avery's most noted cartoons for MGM were slapstick comedies such asRed Hot Riding Hood (1943),Jerky Turkey (1945),Northwest Hounded Police (1946),King-Size Canary (1947),Little Rural Riding Hood (1949), andBad Luck Blackie (1949).[25] While Avery preferred to focus on gags instead of characterization, he established several popular MGM cartoon characters, includingScrewball "Screwy" Squirrel, theOf Mice and Men derived pair ofGeorge and Junior, and his best-known character,Droopy.[26] Droopy, voiced byBill Thompson (a.k.a. "Wallace Wimple" onNBC Radio'sFibber McGee and Molly show) debuted in 1943 withDumb-Hounded. He appeared in several more Avery cartoons (includingNorthwest Hounded Police) before being officially given his own series in 1949 withSeñor Droopy.
The influence of Avery's cartoons was felt across the animation industry; even Hanna and Barbera adapted theirTom and Jerry shorts to match the levels of madcap humor and violence in Avery's films.[27] Avery's team included storymen Rich Hogan andHeck Allen, and animators such asMichael Lah, Ed Love, andPreston Blair, most famous for animating the sexy female singer inRed Hot Riding Hood and its follow-ups. In 1946, Quimby assigned Blair and Lah to direct a new series ofBarney Bear cartoons, reversing the decision after three cartoons.[28][29]
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.[30] The strain of overwork caused Avery to quit MGM in May 1950, after completingRock-a-Bye Bear (not released until 1952 because of MGM's cartoon backlog). FormerWalter Lantz and Disney directorDick Lundy were brought in to head Avery's unit. Lundy completed oneDroopy and tenBarney Bear cartoons before Avery returned in October 1951 and reassumed his role as director from Lundy, starting withLittle Johnny Jet (released in 1953).
Avery directed eleven more cartoons for MGM, many of them showing the heavy influence of the newly popularUPA studio and its simplified designs. In March 1953, MGM temporarily closed down the cartoon unit, thinking that the growing trend for3D films would bring an end to the animated cartoon.[31] Avery himself did not leave the studio until June, working with co-director Michael Lah on two more cartoons,Deputy Droopy andCellbound, which Lah completed with the Hanna and Barbera staff (working during the most part of 1953 for commercials, as a predecessor ofH-B Enterprises) during the closure. Avery went on to join the Walter Lantz staff the following February, while Lah went on to do commercial animation work.[31] Because of the backlog of completed MGM cartoons, the cartoons Avery completed during his second tenure at the studio were not released until after he left again;Cellbound was not released until 1955.
Meanwhile, after the studio reopened in 1954, budget cuts required Hanna and Barbera to reduce the level of detail in theirTom and Jerry shorts (a precursor of what was to come), and to also begin doing one "cheater" short per year composed mostly of footage from previously released cartoons.[32] That year, Hanna and Barbera directedPet Peeve, the first MGM cartoon in the new widescreenCinemaScope process, which had been was devised as a means to keep audiences attending movie theatres in the wake of the popularity oftelevision.Pet Peeve, released in late 1954, was followed by a sporadic number of CinemaScopeTom and Jerrys, with several otherTom and Jerrys being dual-released in standard format and in CinemaScope. AfterPecos Pest (released in 1955), all MGM cartoons were released in CinemaScope. Six previous MGM cartoons, among them Hugh Harman'sPeace on Earth, were remade in CinemaScope. Like the originalPeace on Earth in 1939, its 1955 remake,Good Will to Men, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).
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 featureInvitation to the Dance, and stayed on to supervise a new series of CinemaScopeDroopy cartoons to accompany the new CinemaScopeTom and Jerry cartoons.
Lah'sOne Droopy Knight was nominated for the 1957 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons). However, for the most part, both the 1955–1957 CinemaScopeDroopy andTom 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.[33] 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,[34] 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'sScrewy Squirrel andGeorge and Junior cartoons were reissued.[7][35]
The MGM cartoon studio was closed on May 15, 1957 (though the last cartoon made by the studio was released in 1958), and Hanna and Barbera took most of their unit and began producing television cartoons with their companyHanna-Barbera Productions. Hanna-Barbera first approached MGM to distribute their cartoons for television but was turned down.[8]Columbia Pictures'Screen Gems picked up Hanna-Barbera's product, and the studio soon became the most successful producers of television animation in the world. MGM would later haveGene Deitch create a series ofTom and Jerry cartoons before contractingChuck Jones and Les Goldman'sSib Tower 12 studio to create moreTom and Jerry shorts. Sib Tower 12 was absorbed by MGM in 1964 and was renamedMGM Animation/Visual Arts.
Many MGM cartoons have become fan favorites throughout the years due to their animation style, plot, humor, cartoon violence (specifically theTom and Jerry shorts), music and (at times) sexual innuendos (with regards to shorts starring Red). Individual shorts such asTo Spring (1936) andThe Dot and the Line (1965) have been acclaimed for their artistic designs while others such asScrewball Squirrel (1944) andKing-Size Canary (1947) are celebrated for their sheer lunacy. Though not as popular with the general public as the Disney or Warner Bros. cartoons, MGM cartoons are heavily studied and praised by film historians and members of the animation industry.
As of 2009, nearly all of the Hanna and Barbera-producedTom and Jerry shorts are available on DVD under theTom 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 theTom and Jerry shorts as part of theTom and Jerry Golden Collection series of DVD andBlu-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, in1080phigh 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 ofDroopy's cartoons was released in May 2007. Rumors have floated around for years of a box set consisting ofTex Avery's MGM work, but nothing has been released besides theSpotlight andGolden box sets forTom and Jerry and theDroopy 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, whenWarner Archive Collection madeTex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 1 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 released in CinemaScope, alongside the 2 Spike and Tyke CinemaScope cartoons, and "Good Will to Men".
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