Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Cartoon Studios, Inc. was the in-house division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) during the Golden age of American animation. Active from 1937 until 1957, the studio was responsible for producing animated shorts to accompany MGM feature films in Loew's Theaters, which included popular cartoon characters Tom and Jerry, Droopy and Barney Bear.
Prior to forming its own cartoon studio, MGM released the work of independent animation producer Ub Iwerks, and later the Happy Harmonies series from Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising.[1] The MGM cartoon studio was founded to replace Harman and Ising, although both men eventually became employees of the studio.[2] After a slow start, the studio began to take off in 1940 after its short The Milky Way became the first non-Disney cartoon to win the Academy Award for Best Short Subjects: Cartoons.[3] The studio's roster of talent benefited from an exodus of animators from the Warner Bros. Cartoons and Disney studios, who were facing issues with union workers.
Originally established and run by executive Fred Quimby, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, the creators of the Tom and Jerry cartoons, became the heads of the studio in 1955 following Quimby's retirement. The cartoon studio was closed on May 15, 1957[4], at which time Hanna and Barbera took much of the staff to form their own company, Hanna-Barbera Productions, then named H-B Enterprises.[5]
Turner Broadcasting System (via Turner Entertainment Co.) took over the library in 1986 after Ted Turner's short-lived ownership of MGM/UA. When Turner sold back the MGM/UA production unit, he kept the pre-1986 MGM library, including the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoons, for his own company. In 1996, Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Bros., which currently owns the rights to the pre-1986 MGM library.
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This page uses content from the English Wikipedia page Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio. The revision history lists the authors. The text on Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Wiki and Wikipedia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA). |