Tom and Jerry

Tom and Jerry is an American animated series of theatrical cartoons, TV shows and specials, a feature film, and home films created by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbara for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that centred on a never-ending rivalry between a cat (Tom) and a mouse (Jerry) whose chases each other and battles often involved slapstick comedy and comic violence. Hanna and Barbara wrote, produced, and directed one hundred and fourteen Tom and Jerry shorts at the MGM cartoon studio in Hollywood, California between 1940 and 1957, when the animation unit was shut down. The original series is notable for having won the Academy Award for the Best Animated Short Film seven times, tying it with Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies as the theatrical animated cartoon series with the most Oscars. Tom and Jerry has a worldwide audience that consists of children, teenagers and adults, and has also been recognized as one of the most famous and longest-lived rivalries in American cinema. In 2000, time named the series one of the greatest TV shows of all time.

Beginning in the 1960s, in addition to the original Hanna-Barbara shorts, MGM had new cartoons produced by Rembrandt Films, led by Gene Deitch in Eastern Europe. Production of the Tom and Jerry cartoons had returned to Hollywood under Chuck Jones' Sib Tower 12 Productions in 1963; the series lasted in 1967, making it a total of 161 cartoons. The cat and mouse stars later resurfaced in TV cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbara and Filmation Studios during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s; an animated feature film, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, in 1992 (released domestically in 1993); and in 2000, their first made-for television cartoon, Tom and Jerry: The Mansion Cat for Boomerang. The most recent Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoon, The Karate Guard, was written and co-directed by Barbara and debuted in Los Angeles cinemas on September 27, 2005.