1st Hanna-Barbera Era
In June 1937, animator and storyman Joseph Barbera began to work for MGM. With fellow MGM animator and director William Hanna, Barbera pitched the concept of two "equal characters who were always in conflict with each other". An early thought involved a fox and a dog before they settled on a cat and mouse.
The first short, Puss Gets the Boot, features a cat named Jasper and an unnamed mouse, named Jinx in pre-production, and an African American housemaid named Mammy Two Shoes. It was released onto the theatre circuit on February 10, 1940 and the pair, having been advised by management not to produce any more, focused on other cartoons. However, when Texas businesswoman Bessa Short sent a letter to MGM asking whether more cat and mouse shorts would be produced, which helped convince management to commission a series. Later, a studio contest held to rename both characters was won by animator John Carr, who suggested Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse after the Christmastime drink.
After MGM gave the green-light for Hanna and Barbera to continue, the studio entered production on the second Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Midnight Snack (1941). The pair would continue to work on the series for the next fifteen years of their career.
Hanna and Barbera produced 114 cartoons for MGM, thirteen of which were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject and seven went on to win, breaking the winning streak held by Walt Disney's studio in the category. Tom and Jerry won more Academy Awards than any other character-based theatrical animated series.
The rise in television in the 1950s caused problems for the MGM animation studio, leading to budget cuts on Tom and Jerry cartoons due to decreased revenue from theatrical screenings. Additionally, the studio found that re-releases of older cartoons were earning as much as new ones, resulting in the executive decision to cease production on Tom and Jerry and later the animation studio on May 15, 1957. The final cartoon produced by Hanna and Barbera, Tot Watchers, was released on August 1, 1958. The pair were decided to leave and went on to focus on their own production company Hanna-Barbera Productions.