Joe Barbera's first cartoon storyboards (1935).

Above: Joe Barbera (left) and Bill Hanna (right) working on a scene for the Tom & Jerry theatrical shorts at the MGM cartoon division in the 1940s.

In 1940, Joe Barbera and his friend Bill Hanna directed their first of many Tom & Jerry cartoons for MGM, 'Puss get's the boot', which immediately got nominated for an Academy Award in the category 'Best Animated Short'. After 114 cartoons shorts and 14 Oscar nominations, winning the studio 7 Academy Awards, MGM closed down their cartoon division in 1957. Hanna and Barbera decided to start their own company, introducing many more characters to the world, and making them the most succesful cartoon producers for TV.

But before all that, Joe started his career in animation at the Van Beuren studio's in New York in 1932, a studio that produced silent cartoons, mostly known for Paul Terry's popular 'Aesop's Fables'. They also had a series of early sound cartoons that Barbera worked on, which featured two guys named 'Tom and Jerry'.

In 1936 Van Beuren closed down, but Barbera continued working for Paul Terry, who had left earlier in 1929 to start his own 'Terrytoons studio's'. One of the cartoons Barbera worked on was Terry's own 'Farmer Al Falfa' series, which he had started while still working for another early New York animation studio, run by J.R. Bray. In one of these cartoons, 'Farmer Al Falfa's prize package', released on July 31, 1936, the farmer receives a package from his brother, containing a kangaroo. This lead the way to a new series of ten cartoons starring 'Kiko the Kangaroo'.

Above: An authentic poster from 1938 presenting Paul terry's 'The last Indian' theatrical cartoon, with Farmer Al Falfa and his dog to the right and Kiko the Kangaroo left. The short was directed by Connie Rasinksi and released on June 24, 1938.

In  his autobiography 'My life in Toons', Barbera explained that he had taken it upon himself to create an eleventh story, where Kiko got in an airplane race against a handlebar-mustachioed dog named Dirty Doug. Director Manny Davis liked what he saw, and made arrangements to present it to Paul Terry himself. Terry passed on the story, but Barbera said he was not in the least disappointed. He had proven to himself that he could do a storyboard, and that he had gained the experience of presenting it.

So for the first time ever, have a look below at some of Barbera's original storyboards for his first own cartoon, which wound up with his mother, who passed them on to a nephew. They have always stayed in the Barbera family, until they were put up for sale recently. Click to enlarge!