Production
The series is the fifth incarnation of the popular Tom and Jerry cartoon franchise, and the second made-for-television production. The series was notable in being the first attempt since the closing of the MGM studio in the 1950s to restore the original format of the cat and mouse team. After the original 114 theatrical shorts run of the William Hanna and Joseph Barbera-directed series, the characters were leased to other animation studios, which changed the designs and eliminated all of the supporting characters. The previous made-for-TV series, The Tom and Jerry Show , was produced in 1975 by Hanna and Barbera under their own studio under contract to MGM, but it had made the cat and mouse friends in most of the episodes due to the reaction against violence in cartoons. MGM did not like what Hanna and Barbera had done with the characters, so they came to Filmation and asked the studio to do a new series and try to bring some life back to them. This series was able to restore the familiar slapstick chase format, though with Tom and Jerry as competing rivals rather than enemies, and reintroduced not only Spike and Tyke and Nibbles (here named "Tuffy"), [2] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] but not Mammy Two Shoes who was retired from the cartoons in 1953 for portraying a Mammy archetype. [9] Half-hour episodes consisted of two Tom and Jerry shorts in the first and third segments, plus one Droopy short in the middle segment, also often featuring some other classic MGM cartoon characters such as Barney Bear. Where the original series and the third series by Chuck Jones occasionally had favorable endings for Tom, this series followed the second series by Gene Deitch in almost never having definite "wins" for Tom (although he won at the end of "Most Wanted Cat" (with Jerry) and "Superstocker" and they ended off mutual in "When the Rooster Crows" and "A Connecticut Mouse In King Arthur's Cork"). Spike from Tom and Jerry was used in many of the Droopy episodes as well, filling in for the other "Spike" bulldog created by Tex Avery for the old Droopy films, who was not used as a separate character here. The villainous wolf from the classic series was also included, and named "Slick Wolf"; [4] however, as the series was produced under the "Seal of Good Practice" code, the title character from "Red Hot Riding Hood", where the Wolf debuted, did not reappear. The Droopy episodes usually featured Slick and sometimes Spike as antagonists. Barney had miscellaneous roles, such as being Droopy's boss at a movie studio in "Star-Crossed Wolf" and a frightful companion in "Scared Bear".
The show's opening begins with Tom chasing Jerry through a blank yellow screen. They continue chasing, as all of the other stars build a giant "Tom and Jerry" sign (similar to the second opening of Tom & Jerry Kids ). The familiar rotating executive producer credit of Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott briefly runs as Tom chases Jerry past the screen, knocking things over and running over others along the way. After the opening sequence, the wraparound segments, hosted by Droopy, would begin. He would start by painting the whole background with a single large brush stroke and he and the other speaking characters would engage in brief comedic sketches (like Droopy's opening poem in one of them "Roses are red, violets are blue, painting's my job, that's what I do; cute and somewhat wet").
Filmation hired John Kricfalusi in the layout department headed by Franco Cristofani. There were two layout units, and Kricfalusi was in Cristofani's working on the Droopy episodes. The studio's character designer, Alberto De Mello, had recently discovered construction model sheets of classic cartoon characters from the 1940s, which showed artists how to draw the characters by dividing them into their basic shapes, like in Preston Blair's animation instruction books. Eddie Fitzgerald or one of the storyboard artists had shown him the Preston Blair book and some original studio model sheets, much to De Mello's excitement. [10] [11] [12] The animators had to draw Alberto De Mello's model sheets, which Kricfalusi described as "wildly elaborate, yet nonsensical", with the characters "being made up of frightening balloon-like shapes and sausage fingers and toes". He refused to draw them this way, using the old model sheets instead. [13] [11] Working with the high-energy MGM characters seemingly created similar manic energy in Filmation's staff, for the writers were suddenly able to come up with the laughs needed to make the show work. A lot of the scripts were written by Coslough Johnson or Jack Hanrahan, but others such as animators Steve Clark and Jim Mueller contributed so much to the stories that they got their names added to the credits. Due to the series' low budget, Filmation could not put the same quality of animation that MGM had done for the theatrical shorts, but did try to let animators go wild as much as possible and add a lot of slapstick. [14] Kricfalusi and some of the animators, including old animators who had worked on classic 1930s-1940s cartoons like Tom Baron, Ed Friedman, Dick Hall, Don Schloat, Larry Silverman, Kay Wright, Lou Zukor, Ed DeMattia, Lee Halpern, Alex Ignatiev, Jack Ozark and Curt Perkins, wanted to rebel against Filmation's mandates of reusable animation and their strict "on-model" policies where model sheets had to be traced, and sneak in some fluid animation, as seen in episodes such as "Scared Bear" and "Jerry's Country Cousin". [15] [16] The working environment came to resemble that of the MGM animation studio, as Fitzgerald, Tom Minton and many other storyboard artists drew some funny and lively storyboards as reference for the animators, developing unscripted sight gags as part of a genial rivalry with the writing staff. [2] Kricfalusi found layout work to be much easier than creating storyboards. All the staging was already figured out, and Kricfalusi could draw bigger and concentrate more on the poses and expression of the characters. He always hoped for Fitzgerald's boards because they were the easiest and most fun to work from, with clear staging, and dynamic, direct, funny poses. He copied Fitzgerald's poses, making them bigger, drawing them tighter and adding more details to the expressions. He also started to add more poses on his own to break down the actions. Filmation only wanted one pose per scene, but drawing the characters acting was where Kricfalusi could get creative and enjoy himself. The other layout artists in the department would come over to see and admire his work, which he described as "livelier than the typical TV layout drawing". [13] [11] After Kricfalusi did the layouts, Lynne Naylor, who was in the animation department, would animate the Droopy episodes. According to Kricfalusi, this was the way that everything would get through the pipeline without being watered down. [17] [11] At the same time Kricfalusi was still discovering old cartoons that he had never seen before, and tried to put elements of them into his layouts. There was one particular scene of a cartoon that he was doing a layout for, where a character had to do a fast zip pan from one area to another. Kricfalusi had been studying Chuck Jones' The Dover Boys at Pimento University , and saw abstract background pans that did not make sense but propelled the movement along. He drew a long panning shot where each end of the pan was a normal background, but filled the middle with crazy, abstract shapes and floating eyeballs. A few days later, the head of the background department, Erv Kaplan, had a fit upon discovering Kricfalusi's eyeball pan and refused to paint it. Kricfalusi started talking about The Dover Boys to Kaplan, but he did not want any part of it, telling him never to put eyeballs or abstract shapes in the backgrounds again. [13] [11] Naylor would never try to offend anyone, but she apparently offended Lou Scheimer one time. He had seen a section of "Pest in the West" at the Moviola, which was full of "smear frames". He threatened to fire Naylor over her use of them, but the head of the animation department went to bat for her and managed to calm Scheimer down. Naylor kept her job, but was more cautious after that episode. [17] [11]
In addition to the use of limited animation, the show was characterized by a very limited music score. The particular genre of music used in the show was ragtime, in an attempt to mimic the classic cartoons (which used swing music, big band and funk music, but not ragtime). All of the shorts, both the Tom and Jerry and Droopy segments, used the same stock music, mostly created new for the series but consisting of only a handful of largely synthesized tunes, either with minor variations or played at different speeds or pitches. This did match the chase scenes, but gave the episodes a very monotonous soundtrack, making these episodes "stand out" to many Tom and Jerry viewers when they aired.
The show was called The Cat and Jam Comedy Show in an animation cel. [18]
