Classic Hanna-Barbera on Blu-ray.

Beside all the spectacular CGI animations that are coming our way on Blu-Ray just in time for the Christmas holidays ('Cars 2', 'Kung Fu Panda 2', 'The Smurfs' and Dreamworks' 'Dragons' compilation ('Gift of the Night Fury' and 'Book of Dragons') there will also be some great traditionally animated classic cartoons available in high def for the first time, as Warner will be releasing the first volume of their 'Tom & Jerry' Golden collection on October 25th on Blu-ray. All the classic cartoons have been digitally restored and are presented in 1080p full HD for the very first time!

Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones.

In October 2004, exactly seven years ago, Warner started published their 'Spotlight' collection on DVD, containing all the theatrical shorts of their complete 'Tom & Jerry' library from the 1940-1958 MGM era,which were directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera themselves.

In Europe, The Gene Deitch era shorts (thirteen cartoons produced between 1961-1962) and the Chuck Jones cartoons (34 theatrical shorts directed by the famous Chuck Jones between 1963-1967) were part of the 12 disc single-layer collection, while the US edition only collected the first 114 Hanna-Barbera shorts. In 2009 Warner published the 'Chuck Jones collection' for the US seperately with some extra documentaries, not part of the earlier European release.

The first volume of the 'Golden collection' will collect the first 37 cartoons, created between 1940 and 1948 and include the Academy Award nominated 'Puss gets the boot' (1940), 'The Night before Christmas' (1941) and 'Dr Jekyll and Mr. Mouse' (1947). It also includes the Academy Award winning shorts 'Yankee Doodle Mouse' (1943), 'Mouse Trouble' (1944), 'Quiet, please' (1945) and 'The Cat Concerto' (1947), which received the Award for 'Best Animated Short'.

Critisism.

The Classic collection contained 159 of the 161, while the 'Spotlight' collection had 112 of the 114 cartoons created by Hanna-Barbera. In the US, 'Mouse Cleaning' (1948) and 'Casanova Cat' (1951) are on the banned cartoon list and were excluded for stereotype racism: An African-American maid called 'Mammy Two shoes' often appears in the cartoons (althought you never see her face), based on the 'Mammy' character from 'Gone with the wind' (portrayed by the actress Hattie McDaniel). Strangely enough, the two banned cartoons were part of the European collection, which had two different cartoons omitted without any given reason: 'The Million Dollar Cat' (1944) and 'Busy Buddies' (1956).

Above: original cel drawing of Mammy for one of the Tom & Jerry cartoons.
Originally voiced by African-American actress Lillian Randolph, a lot of the scenes starring Mammy Two Shoes had a redubbed track, done by voice actress June Foray (known for her work on 'Cinderella', 'Rocky & Bullwinkle'. The original voice was altered because of the stereotypical African-American dialect. (The soundtrack was later redubbed again by comedian Thea Vidale after Turner Broadcasting had acquired the entire HB cartoon library and studio while planning to launch the Cartoon Network 24-hour tv channel). There was a lot of critisism on the editing of the cartoons in the original collections, where Mammy Two shoes was sometimes cut altogether and other characters were taken out by zooming/panning on the original footage (like in 'His Mouse Friday' where an African savage was cropped out). The Golden Collection will be newly restored from the CRI negatives and sometimes even from newly discovered prints. All cartoons will be included uncensored, even the banned cartoons, which are restored from their original nitrate negatives.

Below: original model sheets from 'Jasper & Jinx' aka Tom & Jerry, dated August 8, 1939 (MGM/Cartoon Network archive).

Bill Hanna & Joe Barbera.

In 1937 William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had both started working for MGM's animation studio, setup by Fred Quimby in August 1937 to create animated shorts that would run in front of any MGM produced feature films. Hanna had studied engineering at UCLA but had changed his career to work in animation. He had worked at the story and layout departments of the Harman-Ising studio since 1931, until Quimby came along, looking for talented staff members for his new studio and asked to join him.

The Tom & Jerry team with their seven Academy Awards in 1952. From left to right: Ed Barge, Irv Spence, Dick Bickenbach, Joe Barbera, Bill Hanna and Ken Muse.

Joe Barbera was originally a banker, who had studied accounting at the New York University. But he had always dreamt of becoming a cartoonist and was good at drawing. After he succeeded in selling several of his drawings to magazines he decided to make a living out of it and joined the Van Beuren animation studios in New York in 1932, where he worked as an in-betweener and later became animator and story man on their 'Tom & Jerry' series. No, not the colorfull cat and mouse chases Hanna & Barbera would be producing, but early black & white sound cartoons starring two guys (their names would later change to Dick & Larry in 1950 when Van Beuren sold all their cartoons to 'Official Films' for distribution on TV.

When the Van Beuren studios closed down in 1936 Barbera joined Paul Terry's Terrytoon studios in New York (famous for their 'Mighty Mouse' and 'Heckle & Jeckle' cartoon shorts). In 1937 he left for California and started working for Fred Quimby. While Hanna directing three 'Captain and the Kids' cartoons for MGM (based on Rudolph Dirk's popular 'The Katzenjammer Kids' comic strips), Barbera worked as an animator on the cartoons of Harman and Ising (Rudolph Ising and Hugh Harman had formerly worked for Disney and created the anti-war animated short 'Peace on Earth' in 1939, which was nominated for an Oscar. Rudolph Ising also created 'Barney Bear' for MGM in 1939 and they both won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in 1940 for 'The Milky Way').

In 1939, 'Puss gets the boot' was the first animated short Hanna and Barbera created together for MGM. And although it was a single short project which was nominated for an Oscar that year, it would become the first in a long series of 'Tom & Jerry' cartoons, Although that wasn't the actual character's names back then. The original modelsheets from 1939 show the characters were still called 'Jasper & Jinx' back then. Hanna-Barbera's cat and mouse theme proved very succesfull and they wrote and directed 114 shorts for MGM between 1940 and 1958.

Because MGM closed their animation department abruptly in 1957, Hanna and Barbera decided to found their own production company Hanna-Barbera and start creating animation specifically for television. Being on a tighter budget, they introduced limited animation and literally created dozens of popular animated shows and a seemingly endless stream of memorable cartoon characters like 'The Flintstones', 'Scooby-Doo', 'Yogi Bear', 'Top Cat', 'The Jetsons', 'Huckleberry Hound' and many more. Using limited animation meant they would recycle backgrounds and only animate certain parts of a character's body, which took a lot less drawing (instead of 14.000 drawings for a seven minute cartoon they needed 2.000). Their technique did not only rescue their business, but also helped save an entire industry.

Artwork from some less known shows Hanna-Barbera created for TV. Above: 'The Magilla Gorilla Show' (1963-1964). Below: model sheet of 'Penelope Pitstop', one of the characters on 'Wacky Races', an animated cartoon show between 1968-1970 about rivaling race car drivers and their race through the USA. She later got her own series 'The Perils of Penelope Pitstop' (1969-1971).