Puss Gets the Boot
Puss Gets the Boot is a 1940 American animated short film and the first short in what would become the Tom and Jerry cartoon series, though neither are yet referred to by these names. It was directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, and produced by Rudolf Ising. It is based on the Aesop's Fable, The Cat and the Mice. As was the practice of MGM shorts at the time, only Rudolf Ising is credited. It was released to theaters on February 10, 1940, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In the first short, the cat is named Jasper, and appears to be a scruffy, battle-hardened street cat, more malicious than the character that Tom would develop into over time. The unnamed mouse (named Jinx during the pre-production) is similar to who would become the Jerry character, albeit slightly thinner. The basic premise is the one that would become familiar to audiences; in The Art of Hanna-Barbera, Ted Sennett sums it up as "cat stalks and chases mouse in a frenzy of mayhem and slapstick violence". Though the studio executives were unimpressed, audiences loved the film and it was nominated for an Academy Award. This short ultimately lost to The Milky Way, a MGM short about three kittens who lost their mittens and were forced to go to bed without their dinner of milk.
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The Midnight Snack
The Midnight Snack is a Tom and Jerry cartoon released on July 19, 1941. It is the second of the Tom and Jerry films, returning to the basic premise of the previous film, Puss Gets the Boot, following that cartoon's Academy Awards nomination. This cartoon features the second appearance of Tom and Jerry, and is the first in which the characters are given their familiar names; the first cartoon, Puss Gets the Boot has the cat named Jasper and the mouse without a name.
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The Night Before Christmas
The Night Before Christmas is a 1941 American one-reel animated cartoon and is the third Tom and Jerry short directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, produced by Fred Quimby and animated by Jack Zander, George Gordon, Irven Spence and Bill Littlejohn. It was nominated for the 1941 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons, but lost to the Mickey Mouse short film Lend a Paw, making it the only Tom and Jerry cartoon to lose to a Disney film. This third cartoon uses what has become the basic "cat stalks mouse" premise, but also hints at a softening in Tom's character: when Jerry is out in the freezing cold, Tom worries about him, indicating that the rivalry between them may not be entirely a fight to the death.
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