Tom and Jerry

Tom and Jerry is an American animated cartoon series created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that centred on a never-ending rivalry between its two title characters, Tom (a cat) and Jerry (a mouse) whose chases and often battled involved slapstick comedy and comic violence.

Hanna and Barbera wrote and produced 114 Tom and Jerry shorts at the MGM cartoon studio between 1940 and 1957, when the animation unit was shut down. The original series is notable for having won seven Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film, tying it with Disney's Silly Symphonies as the most-awarded theatrical animated series. Tom and Jerry had a worldwide audience that consists of children, teenagers and adults, and has also been recognized as one of the most famous and longest-lived rivalries in American cinema. Time had named the series one of the greatest television shows of all time in 2000.

In addition to the original 114 H-B shorts, MGM had new cartoons produced by Rembrandt Films, led by Gene Deitch in Eastern Europe, beginning in 1960. In 1963, production of the Tom and Jerry cartoons had returned to Hollywood under Chuck Jones's Sib Tower 12 Productions; this series lasted until 1967, making it a total of 161 shorts.