The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio (also commonly referred to as MGM Cartoons) was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's in-house animation studio during the Golden Age of American animation. Active from 1937 until 1957, the studio was responsible for producing animated shorts to accompany MGM's feature films in Loew's Theaters, which included popular cartoon characters and series such as Tex Avery's various cartoon characters and William Hanna and Joseph Barbera's Tom and Jerry series.
Prior to forming its own cartoon studio, MGM released the work of independent animation producer Ub Iwerks, and later the Happy Harmonies series from Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. The MGM cartoon studio was founded to replace Harman and Ising, although both men eventually became employees of the studio. After a slow start, the studio began to take off in 1940 after its short The Milky Way became the first non-Disney cartoon to win the Academy Award for Best Short Subjects: Cartoons. The studio's roster of talent benefited from an exodus of animators from the Warner Bros. and Disney studios, who were facing issues with union workers. Originally established and run by executive Fred 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, at which time Hanna and Barbera took much of the staff to form their own company, Hanna-Barbera Productions, then named H-B Enterprises.
Turner Broadcasting System (via Turner Entertainment Co.) took over the library in 1986 after Ted 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 with Time Warner, the parent company of Warner 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 into Warner Bros. Animation and replaced by Cartoon Network Studios in 2001 following the death of William Hanna.
Background 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 its Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoons. 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 to Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies shorts from then-distributors Columbia Pictures and United Artists. However, they succeeded in contracting Disney to work on their 1934 musical comedy Hollywood Party; a segment in Technicolor called The Hot Choc-late Soldiers, and a sequence with Jimmy Durante interacting with an animated Mickey Mouse were produced. Future attempts in collaborations with Disney, including Anchors Aweigh, did not materialize.
MGM's first foray into animation was the Flip the Frog cartoon series, produced independently for Celebrity Pictures by Ub 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 the Flip the Frog cartoons. The first Flip the Frog cartoon, Fiddlesticks, was released in January 1931,Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons, p. 165. and over two-dozen other Flip cartoons followed during the next three years. In 1934, the Flip character was dropped in favor of Willie Whopper. Willie Whopper failed to catch on, and MGM terminated its distribution deal with Iwerks and Powers, who had already begun independently distributing the Iwerks ComiColor cartoons.Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons, p. 167. Barrier notes that Iwerks and Powers released the first ComiColor cartoon, Jack and the Beanstalk, in December 1933, nine months before the final Willie Whopper cartoon was released to theatres.
In August 1934, MGM signed a new deal with Disney alumni Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, which had just broken ties with producer Leon Schlesinger and Warner Bros. Pictures over budget concerns, to work on a new series of high-budget color cartoons.Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons, p. 188. The director team brought with them much of their staff from their time with Schlesinger, including animators and storymen such as C. G. Maxwell, William Hanna, and brothers Robert and Thomas McKimson.Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic, p. 281 Also following Harman and Ising from Schlesinger was Bosko, a successful character the duo had created for the Looney Tunes series. After learning from Disney's experiences with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, whose ownership by Universal Pictures led to Winkler Pictures' collapse after Disney's departure, Harman and Ising retained the rights to Bosko alongside their other characters; only Bosko was used in a significant capacity.
The first entry in MGM's new Happy 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-strip Technicolor in 1935. The Happy Harmonies canon included a handful of entries starring Bosko, who, by 1936, was redesigned from an ambiguous "inkblot" character to a discernible little African-American boy.Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic, p. 280-281 The directors worked separately on their own films, although both strived to create elaborate films that would compete with Disney's award-winning Silly Symphonies.Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons, p. 189.
However, budget problems threatened to plague Harman and Ising a second time: Happy Harmonies cartoons regularly ran over budget, and Harman paid no heed to MGM's demands that he reduce the costs of the shorts.Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons, p. 190. 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.Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons, p. 192.Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic, p. 283 The final Happy Harmonies short, The Little Bantamweight, was released in March 1938, and Harman and Ising went on to do freelance animation work for Walt Disney before their studio closed down for bankruptcy.
History
Early years (1937–1939) In March 1937, MGM hired film sales executive Fred Quimby, who had no experience in the animation industry, to set up and run the new MGM cartoon department. Among the holdovers from the Harman-Ising regime, William Hanna and Robert Allen were appointed directors, and C. G. Maxwell became production manager. Quimby raided every major American animation studio for talent, extracting artists, directors, and writers such as Friz Freleng from Leon Schlesinger Productions, Emery Hawkins from Screen Gems and much of the top staff at Terrytoons (Joseph Barbera, Jack Zander, Ray Kelly, Dan Gordon, George Gordon and others). 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.Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons, p. 288.
Although it boasted a brand-new facility and good directors, the MGM cartoon studio's first series failed. The Captain and The Kids, adapted from Rudolph Dirks' Katzenjammer Kids characters, was licensed by MGM without consulting its then-forming creative staff.Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic, p. 283-284 Freleng, Hanna, and Allen, assigned to direct the Captain and the Kids cartoons, were unable to translate the Katzenjammer humor into animation, and the series folded after fifteen shorts. Only two of the Captain and the Kids shorts were produced in Technicolor; the other thirteen were produced in black-and-white and released in sepia-toned prints.United States Copyright Office, Motion Pictures, 1912 to 1939, Washington, D. C., 1951, p. 689.
MGM brought in established newspaper cartoonists such as Milt Gross and Harry Hershfield in an attempt to both bolster the Captain 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 and Wanted: No Master, with his characters Count Screwloose of Tooloose and J.R. the Wonder Dog, but left due to his poor relationship with Quimby. Hershfield completed no cartoons.
Harman and Ising return (1938–1943)
In January 1939, Quimby, coming full-circle, hired Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising as the new creative heads of the studio after their previous studio closed down, acting as both directors and producers, and in charge of many of the employees who had defected from that studio a year before.Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons, p. 291. Harman and Ising agreed to join under the condition Scott Bradley follow them to the studio.
Among Ising's first new cartoons for MGM was 1939's The Bear Who Couldn't Sleep, the debut appearance of Barney Bear, a lumbering anthropomorphic bear based upon both Wallace Beery and Ising himself. Barney Bear would become MGM's first original cartoon star, popular enough to be regularly featured in cartoons until 1954. Ising focused on the Barney Bear cartoons, while Harman focused on making elaborate one-shot cartoons, although Harman was able to establish a short-lived series of Bear Family cartoons.
At this time, Harman created his masterpiece, Peace on Earth. Released during the holiday season of 1939 (immediately after the outbreak of World War II in Europe), Peace on Earth was a dramatic cartoon that dealt with the idea of what a post-apocalyptic world would be like. Peace on Earth was nominated for the 1939 Academy Award for Short Subjects (Cartoons).
Tom and Jerry (1940–1958)