46 Fun Facts About Tom and Jerry

Which two animators created Tom and Jerry at MGM in 1940?

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were both under 30 and bored at a studio with no hit characters when they tried a cat chasing a mouse, an idea that had been done countless times.

Which 1940 short, where a mouse dangles glassware to blackmail a house cat, was the first Tom and Jerry cartoon?

Puss Gets the Boot earned an Oscar nomination, yet its two directors went uncredited and managers told them not to put all their eggs in one basket.

What was Tom the cat called in his 1940 debut, before the famous name arrived?

Jasper became Tom only once MGM ordered a series, which it did after an influential figure in the Texas film trade wrote asking for more of the cat and mouse.

How were the names Tom and Jerry chosen?

A studio contest won by an animator, who collected $50, settled it; the phrase had already named a hot egg-and-rum drink for about a century.

Tom and Jerry's creators went on to found a TV studio behind which hit show?

The Flintstones made the pair's new studio a prime-time name; MGM had closed its cartoon unit after finding that reissued old shorts earned almost as much as new ones.

Tom and Jerry's seven Oscars tie which series, home of Three Little Pigs?

Silly Symphonies rarely reused its characters, so Tom and Jerry's matching seven wins leave them with more Oscars than any other cartoon characters.

Which 1943 short was the first Tom and Jerry cartoon to win an Oscar?

The Yankee Doodle Mouse stages a cellar chase as a war film: Jerry lobs eggs from a carton marked hen-grenades, drives a cheese-grater jeep and signs off with the dispatch 'Send more cats!'

In The Cat Concerto, Tom performs which piece at a formal concert while Jerry sabotages the piano?

Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 also drove Warner's Rhapsody Rabbit, made at the same time with strikingly similar gags; Tom's version won the Oscar and the rabbit's was not even nominated.

An Oscar-winning Tom and Jerry short is set in the Vienna home of which composer, whose playing Jerry cannot resist dancing to?

Johann Strauss goes away on a journey, so Tom teaches himself to play the piano in six easy lessons and lures the dancing mouse out of hiding.

Whose voice supplied most of Tom's screams and yelps in the classic MGM shorts?

William Hanna, the co-director, did the yelling himself, so the cat's trademark, almost human scream came from one of the two men who invented him.

Tom and Jerry's composer Scott Bradley made life hard for MGM's musicians by weaving in which avant-garde technique?

Twelve-tone serialism first crept into 1944's Puttin' on the Dog; he later wrote that he hoped Dr. Schoenberg would forgive him for using his system to produce funny music.

What is the name of the puppy son of Spike, Tom's bulldog nemesis?

Tyke arrived in 1949's Love That Pup, and father and son finally got a series of their own in 1957, only for MGM to shut the cartoon studio after just two entries.

Spike's gruff speaking voice imitated which American comedian, famous for his large nose?

Jimmy Durante's gravelly New York delivery was the model from 1949's Love That Pup onwards, the short that turned the bulldog into a doting father forever growling 'That's my boy!'

Nibbles, the little orphan mouse, speaks which language when he appears as the second Mouseketeer?

French it is: he sings Alouette while making a sandwich and, after a tumble into a glass of champagne, jabs Tom with his sword crying 'Touche, pussy cat!'

Which unusual thing happens in the 1956 short Blue Cat Blues?

Jerry narrates in voiceover as Tom, jilted for a far richer cat, drowns his sorrows in milk; the short ends with both of them sitting glumly on a railway line.

Which duckling, a Yogi Bear Show regular, was modelled on the little duck from the Tom and Jerry shorts?

Yakky Doodle was patterned on Quacker, the Tom and Jerry duckling who in one short hatches beside Tom, a cat who only wants to eat him, and decides he has found his mother.

In The Mouse Comes to Dinner, a smug Tom asks Toots what's cooking and gets which reply?

'You are, stupid' is the answer, because Jerry has slipped something hot beneath him and a preening Tom needs a moment to notice.

Jerry danced with which star in the 1945 MGM musical Anchors Aweigh?

Gene Kelly plays a sailor who cheers up a lonely mouse king, Jerry, in a land where singing and dancing are against the law; the sequence is known as The King Who Couldn't Dance.

Which MGM star shared an animated underwater dream with Tom and Jerry in 1953's Dangerous When Wet?

Esther Williams plays a Channel swimmer who dreams up an underwater ballet with the cat and mouse, in which cartoon sea creatures stand in for the people in her life.

Who was credited as producer on nearly every classic Tom and Jerry short until 1955?

Fred Quimby had little creative input, yet as head of MGM's cartoon studio it was he whom the Academy named as winner of every Tom and Jerry Oscar; he retired in the mid-1950s.

In which Iron Curtain city were 13 Tom and Jerry shorts made from 1961 to 1962?

Prague sat behind the Iron Curtain, so the Czech animators' names were Americanised in the credits to stop audiences linking the cartoons with Communism.

Gene Deitch admitted he was never a fan of the original cartoons, calling them what?

Needlessly violent was his honest view, yet he took the job anyway, on a tight budget and with a crew who had never even seen one of the cartoons.

Which ex-Warner Bros. director produced 34 Tom and Jerry shorts between 1963 and 1967?

Chuck Jones gave Tom thicker eyebrows and a more twisted face, much like the Grinch he also animated; his Hollywood studio made the shorts until MGM stopped in 1967.

What is the housekeeper who owns Tom in the early Tom and Jerry shorts commonly known as?

Mammy Two Shoes is usually seen only from the waist down; when the shorts later reached television she was often redrawn as someone else or given a new voice.

Lillian Randolph, the voice of Tom's housekeeper, also played the Baileys' maid in which Christmas classic?

It's a Wonderful Life put her face on screen in 1946; in nineteen Tom and Jerry shorts between 1940 and 1952 audiences heard her voice but almost never saw the character's head.

Which media mogul bought MGM in 1986 and kept the film library, bringing Tom and Jerry to TBS and Cartoon Network?

Ted Turner had to sell the studio again almost at once to cover his debts, but he kept its film library and in 1992 launched Cartoon Network to show off the cartoons in it.

Tom & Jerry Kids, starring the pair as youngsters, arrived in September 1990 on which brand-new children's block?

Fox Kids launched the same day the show began, and its back-up segments starring Droopy and his son Dripple were later spun off as Droopy, Master Detective.

What did Tom and Jerry do all through their 1992 feature film that they almost never did in the classic shorts?

Speak, and even sing: the 1992 musical gave the near-silent pair full dialogue, and it went on to a disappointing run at the box office.

In the 1992 film, Tom and Jerry help a runaway girl named Robyn Starling escape from whom?

Her evil legal guardian, 'Aunt' Pristine Figg, is after the family fortune and hides a telegram proving that Robyn's father survived an avalanche in Tibet.

The 2021 live-action/animated Tom and Jerry film was directed by Tim Story and starred which actress?

Chloë Grace Moretz plays a new hotel hire who recruits Tom to evict Jerry before a society wedding; the film proved a surprise hit, grossing more than $100 million worldwide.

Which show-within-a-show on The Simpsons is a blood-soaked spoof of Tom and Jerry?

Itchy & Scratchy flips the formula: the mouse starts nearly all the violence and the hapless cat almost never wins, to howls of laughter from Bart and Lisa.

In the Oscar-winning short The Little Orphan, Jerry and little Nibbles raid a table laid for which holiday?

Thanksgiving is the occasion: always-hungry Nibbles battles Tom across the dinner table, and when all three finally sit down in peace he devours the whole turkey before the others can lift a fork.

In 2006 a complaint to Ofcom led to talk of editing UK broadcasts of Tom and Jerry over what?

Smoking scenes that seemed to glamorise the habit were to be cut by Boomerang, among them Tom rolling and lighting a cigarette one-handed to impress a female cat in 1950's Texas Tom.

In the mid-1950s, as television ate into cinema audiences, MGM began making Tom and Jerry shorts in which widescreen format?

CinemaScope arrived with 1954's Pet Peeve as MGM tried to win audiences back from television; the last shorts before the studio closed were made only in the wide format.

In the last short by Tom and Jerry's original creators, the pair unite to rescue which wanderer from a building site?

A baby keeps crawling out of its pram while the sitter chats on the phone; after the pair save it from the girders in 1958's Tot Watchers, the police arrest them as kidnappers.

In Heavenly Puss, a dead Tom can board the train to cat heaven only if Jerry gives him what?

A signed pardon, in the form of a certificate of forgiveness, is the price: a falling piano kills Tom mid-chase, and the gatekeeper gives him one hour to win over the mouse he has tormented all his life.

Which of Tom's regular co-stars stays almost silent throughout the classic shorts?

Toodles Galore barely makes a sound in the classic shorts, even while Tom and Butch flatten each other for her affection in Springtime for Thomas and Casanova Cat.

Which original Tom and Jerry creator, then in his nineties, co-directed the 2005 short The Karate Guard?

Barbera was in his nineties; his last Tom and Jerry project was the direct-to-video film that preceded his death in December 2006.

Why have the shorts His Mouse Friday and A Mouse in the House so often been cut or kept off television?

Content now judged racist is the reason: blackface gags and caricatured islanders turn up in a handful of shorts, and the worst offenders are usually cut from collections and streaming services.

In Solid Serenade, Tom croons 'Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby' beneath a window while playing which instrument?

A double bass is his instrument of choice; by the end Spike is the one doing the serenading, with Tom tied on in place of the strings.

Long before the cartoon, Tom and Jerry were two young men on a spree in an 1821 bestseller set in which city?

London was their playground: Pierce Egan's Life in London sent Corinthian Tom and his country cousin Jerry Hawthorn on rambles and sprees, and their names soon attached to a hot rum-and-egg drink.

In Mouse Trouble, the series' second Oscar winner, where does Tom get his mouse-catching ideas?

A how-to book on catching mice arrives for Tom, and every tip in it backfires on him; when he finally gives up on the manual and turns to explosives, that goes no better.

In the 1975 Saturday morning show that turned Tom and Jerry into pals, Jerry gained which new accessory?

A red bow tie marked the gentler Jerry of 1975: fresh network rules on violence meant the old enemies had to become pals, and they stayed that way for all 48 new cartoons.

Which star did MGM first want for the Anchors Aweigh dance, before Disney said no and Jerry got the part?

Mickey Mouse was the first choice, but the Disney studio turned the job down rather than take on outside work, so the dance went to MGM's own cartoon unit and its own mouse.

Which comedian introduces a 2005 Tom and Jerry DVD collection with a warning about the racial stereotypes in the old shorts?

Whoopi Goldberg explains that the caricatures were wrong then and are wrong today, but that removing them would be the same as claiming the prejudice never existed.

Which classic film was retold with Tom and Jerry added for a 2011 animated feature?

The Wizard of Oz gains two extra travellers: the cat and mouse are swept up by the twister with Dorothy and Toto, and a sequel, Back to Oz, followed in 2016.