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Hanna had dropped out of college and was working as a construction engineer when he lost his job during the
Great Depression
, but he found work as an artist at Pacific Art and Title, an animation studio. In 1930 he moved to another cartoon-production company, Harman-Ising Studios, the home of the
Looney Tunes
and Merrie Melodies series.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
(MGM) hired the company to produce cartoons, for which Hanna, in addition to inking and painting, created songs and lyrics. When
MGM
added its own animation department in 1937, Hanna became a director there.
He soon discovered that the gag-writing and sketching talents of another new employee,
Joseph Barbera
, were a perfect
complement
to his own sense of timing and knack for story construction, and they teamed up. When their first cartoon,
Puss Gets the Boot
(1940), was nominated for an
Academy Award
, MGM allowed them to develop its cat-and-mouse theme. Fifteen years’ worth of Tom and Jerry cartoons were the result, including the innovative teaming of cartoon and live action when Jerry danced with
Gene Kelly
in
Anchors Aweigh
(1944) and when both Tom and Jerry swam with
Esther Williams
in
Dangerous When Wet
(1953). When MGM closed its animation department in 1957, the two men formed their own company, Hanna-Barbera Productions, and began creating cartoons for television.
Because of TV’s budget limitations, Hanna and Barbera developed a “limited animation” technique that allowed them to produce cartoons much more cheaply—by stressing character and witty
dialogue
instead of the action that had highlighted the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Their first TV show,
The Ruff and Reddy Show
(1957), was followed by
Huckleberry Hound
(1958), the first animated series to be awarded an
Emmy
. In 1960
The Flintstones
, a
Stone Age
parody of the hit television series
The Honeymooners
, made its appearance. Equally appealing to children and adults, it was the first half-hour animated
situation comedy
, and Fred Flintstone’s frequent exclamation of “yabba dabba doo!” became part of the contemporary vocabulary. A space-age sitcom,
The Jetsons
, debuted in 1962, and series featuring numerous other characters, including Magilla Gorilla and Scooby-Doo, followed.
In 1996
Warner Brothers
bought Hanna-Barbera, eventually shuttering the studio and marketing its properties under the Cartoon Network brand. The 166 episodes of
The Flintstones
, as well as hundreds of animated shorts, continued to be broadcast around the world. The Hanna-Barbera team had produced more than 3,000 half-hour shows for 150 television cartoon series, and they won seven Academy Awards and eight Emmy Awards, including the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (1988).
