Eighty years of cat and mouse: the timeless appeal of Tom and Jerry

Stop the world, I want to get off! How often we have thought that – and now it has, we’re all at home with nothing but unfinished to-do lists and endless time to spend seeking out cheerful displacement activities and indulging in every guilty pleasure and distraction.

I confess to one of mine: Tom and Jerry, the ultimate game of cat and mouse we all remember from childhood, which turned 80 in February this year. It was first broadcast in the UK on BBC One around “teatime”, which meant that, like much post-war telly, it was part of the “family entertainment” catch-all.

Kids today, growing up in a multi-channel, multi-platform environment, are often unaware that for most of the 20th century, Britain had only two or three viewing options – Channel 4’s arrival in 1982 gave us an embarras de richesses! But for a while longer, “family viewing” remained – we all remember Tom and Jerry because we were all exposed to it.

And it was, indeed, fun for all the family, mouse Jerry’s endless battle to outsmart the malevolent Tom, often with the help of Spike the bulldog, who also found the cat a troublesome presence, disrupting sleep and stealing bones. Spike, with his Jimmy Durante-style voice, is the chattiest of the trio and the least bright.

In one early episode, they all agree a “peace treaty”, which finds them sharing dinner and a sofa – surely the inspiration for that 1980s “Will You Still Love me Tomorrow” British Gas advert. But Tom can’t stop himself, and Spike tells Jerry that if he needs help he should “just whistle, little pal”, which of course he can’t do when Tom has stuffed his mouth full of bubble gum. Tom’s is the smile on the face of the tiger. The diminutive Jerry always outwits them all.

Tom and Jerry eventually ran to 164 MGM shorts, the majority – 114 classics – created by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna in the late 1930s, when both were working in the studio’s animation unit.

Louis B Mayer, MGM’s co-owner, was keen to create some new cartoon characters, so they pitched a concept about two “equal characters who were always in conflict with each other”. Their first idea was for a fox and a dog. Fred Quimby, head of MGM Shorts, wasn’t keen but greenlit one episode, Puss Gets the Boot, about a cat called Jasper and a mouse called Jinx, which was released into cinemas in February 1940. Its two creators moved on to other projects.

A few months passed, and a Texas businessman wrote to MGM asking if any more cat-and-mouse capers would be produced. Quimby overcame his reservations and commissioned a series. A contest was held among staff to name the protagonists, animator Jim Carr winning $50 for his suggestion that they be named after the Christmas-time drink, a sort of eggnog. Meanwhile, Puss Gets the Boot was nominated for an Academy Award.

In 1941, The Midnight Snack marked the first official Tom and Jerry short. Hanna and Barbera would work together until 1958, winning seven Academy Awards and 13 nominations. On average, each cartoon took around six weeks to make and had a budget of $50,000.

The appearance of the two stars evolved over the years – Jerry less squeaky, his eyelashes shorter; Tom acquiring sleeker fur and bigger eyebrows, and standing rather than walking on his four paws. The action picked up speed, becoming more manic and surreal, the psychotic Tom often transformed into a cubist cat as he’s biffed and bashed, or crashes into a wall during a high-speed chase – at which point a positively feline shiver restores his normal body shape.

In that first episode, Puss Gets the Boot, the mouse Jinx is conspiring to cause the eviction of Jasper. Inevitably, he’s successful, engineering a fight that leads to all the crockery getting smashed. Housemaid Mammy Two Shoes hears the commotion, her slippered feet seen stomping down the stairs – her face is never shown. The mouse flees the crime scene and watches in undisguised delight from his hidey-hole as Mammy drags the hissing cat out by his tail: “When I says out, Jasper, I means out,” she scolds. “O-U-W-T”.

It was 1940, black domestic workers were all too common in American life and subject to racial stereotyping and prejudice. As enlightenment dawned, charges of racism were hurled at the series. Mammy didn’t stay the course, edited out and redubbed in later showings, but restored in the 2010 DVD set introduced by Whoopi Goldberg.

For the actress, an unabashed fan, Mammy’s presence was just a reflection of once-prevalent attitudes that should not be airbrushed out, however un-PC they may now be. A reminder of less enlightened times, Mammy did not detract from Goldberg’s lifetime enjoyment of what she called “the quintessential cartoon comedy team in that slapstick tradition of great silent comics… one of film history’s most beloved comedy duos”.

Mary Whitehouse, self-appointed guardian of 1960s and 70s British morality, was more worried about the violence Tom and Jerry inflicted on each other, and as late as 2016 Salan Abdel Sadeq, the head of Egypt’s State Information Service, warned that the slapstick cartoons promoted physical aggression among Middle Eastern youth. Still, the mostly dialogue-free cartoon was shown around the world and Tom and Jerry remain global superstars.

They’re all on YouTube and more than 60 are on Amazon Prime. Click through – you’ll be engrossed for hours, laughing out loud at their crazy adventures, which sometimes took them away from home. Mouse in Manhattan (1945) finds Jerry quitting the countryside for “Broadway and the bright lights”, as his farewell note to Tom puts it.

He glides across the Grand Central Concourse, his diminutive bottom immediately stuck on chewing gum. In Salt Water Tabby (1947), Tom heads for the beach, where he tries to pull a posh pussy – but Jerry rains on his parade and a crab takes chunks out of his long, lush tail. Casanova Cat (1951) finds Jerry playing along as Tom tries to woo the kitty heiress who has inherited an apartment in the Ritz. A rival appears and Jerry ties the two cats’ tails together, leaving them locked in futile combat as he dances off into the sunset with the object of their affections.

The visuals are wonderful but what makes Tom and Jerry truly iconic is Scott Bradley’s pitch-perfect music. In recent years, suites derived from the series have been recorded by the Berlin Philharmonic under Simon Rattle and in 2013 performed at the BBC Proms under John Wilson’s baton. Never have so many percussionists had so much fun – required to whistle, woof, scream and snore.

The impression is of Gershwin – and George would surely have been proud to have written the music that accompanies Jerry’s Fred and Ginger-style-routine as he dances with a doll. Yet Bradley drew inspiration from Bartok, Stravinsky, Hindemith and even Schoenberg, whose 12-tone serial technique appears in Puttin’ on the Dog (1944). He also quotes widely from traditional and popular song – “Oh! Susanna” as Jerry, blackened by Tom’s cigar smoke, is forced to dance on a hot plate, in another now-controversial moment.

Lou Raderman, violinist and MGM concertmaster, once reflected: “Scott writes the most blank-blank-blank difficult fiddle music in Hollywood … He is going to break my fingers!” Which, given that Tom and Jerry between them broke pretty much everything else, seems appropriate. Looney Tunes? You bet!