Animation from 1975: “The Tom & Jerry Show”
Why 1975? Well, today’s my birthday and I was born in 1975. For those that are weak in the math department, that makes me 31. While I could have gone with “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”, I decided to focus on Tom & Jerry.
Anyway, here’s a bit about the show from the Aaron Handy III TV Web Shrine:
This little-seen and remembered, Hanna-Barbera produced, ABC Saturday Morning 1975-77 revival of the 1940-58/1961-67 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon short series featuring the Academy Award-winning cat and mouse duo has been my all-time favorite version for many years. In fact, it’s my all-time favorite Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Period.
Here, in a much toned down, non-violent, Yogi Bear/Boo Boo-esque format (in order to satisfy ABC-TV Broadcast Standards and Practices), the long-popular Tom and Jerry, after years of rivalry, have become the best of friends (and Jerry dons a red bowtie, so the animators would be able to “fragment” his movements), in episodes wherein they roamed the world competing in sports, enduring on-the-job misadventures, running afoul of dastardly villains, solving mysteries and helping others.
Having purchased rights from MGM to produce new Tom & Jerry cartoons for TV, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, T&J’s brainchildren, screened some of their best MGM theatrical-era T&Js for ABC execs. They laughed heartily at the antics of T&J then sighed because it was a shame that network Broadcast Standards and Practices rule out such violence on Saturday Mornings, and thus begat The New Tom & Jerry Show. But, out of respect for the characters who helped them pave the way for their newfound careers, H&B refused to cure Tom and Jerry of their all-too familiar trait: their uncanny inability to speak. Except for an occasional gulp, chuckle, gasp, pant, shriek and mumble provided by veteran Hanna-Barbera voice actor John Stephenson, Thomas “Tom” Cat and Gerald “Jerry” Mouse were entitled to their right to remain silent. (After all, they did win 7 Oscars, didn’t they? It’s the least they could do!) And Spike, a recurring regular in the T&J theatrical releases, was also brought back by HB to be a recurring regular on New Tom & Jerry.
Trivia footnote: New Tom & Jerry’s animation director, Ed Barge, and key animator Ken Muse had a history with Hanna-Barbera and Tom and Jerry: they animated the bulk of the classic Hanna-Barbera MGM T&J shorts in the 1940s and ’50s; the late Xerographer Robert “Tiger” West worked for MGM as an assistant on the T&J cartoons between 1950 and 1953.
Thanks again to Aaron Handy III for all the information. If you’re interested, there is much more information about the show on Aaron’s website: Aaron’s New Tom & Jerry Information Site.
As for birthdays, they’re ok. It beats the alternative.
![[large][black] FReDERATOR badge](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3502/3317571331_e33068a3c8_m.jpg)
»
On November 13th, 2006 at 12:00 am
The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape series was the biggest piece of dung from that decade. If you have fond memories of it, you’re obviously too young to remember real cartoons sonny.
I may only have been 9 at the time, but I still remember the series as the worst cartoon ever produced. The local station manager bumped it from the schedule and replaced it with old Tom and Jerry. It’s a pity the local station managers don’t have the same control today.
On November 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I choose to follow the advice of a certain philosophical post I read in a message board: “Don’t let anybody mess with your childhood memories.”
I don’t have anything against the classic T&Js; I grew up watching them (along with the ‘75 T&Js) after school weekday afternoons. It’s just that they’re overrated. People give them an awful lot more credit than they’re due; hence the years of critical backlash the laer T&Js (especially from 1975 and 1980) have endured.
Not every New Tom & Jerry cartoon from 1975 featured them buddy-buddy, however; there are 4 of the “sports-themed” episodes: #80-08, “The Wacky World Of Sports”, #80-11, “The Super Bowler,” #80-13, “The Tennis Menace,” and #80-25, “The Super Cyclists,” which pictured Tom as a dirty-tricks competitor always willing to stop at nothing to trounce Jerry in any form of sports competition. Many diehard classic T&J fans deem these to be the only saving grace of the ’70s series, the ones which revived the thrill of the chase in the MGM T&J shorts of yore. T&J were also pitted against one another in “The Ski Bunny” (80-02), “No Way, Stowaways” (80-03) and “An Ill Wind” (80-05).
And a final word to those of you diehard devotees of Hanna-Barbera’s classic MGM Tom & Jerry theatricals from 1940-58 who decree any version out of the realm of this scope as inferior, and plan to raise a big stink should CN or Boomerang ever decide to put the 1975 H-B New T&J made-for-TV shorts back on the air: just remember 2 important things:
1) Your TV set has an “Off” button and a remote control!
2) You don’t have to watch the 1975 H-B New T&J cartoons if any hint of their probable return to cable and satellite (and/or release on DVD!) makes you squirm!