Saturday Cartoon

The Cat Concerto This 1946 Academy Award winning Best Animated Short Subject features MGM's cartoon stars Tom and Jerry, and Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. It is considered one of the best of the Tom and Jerry series, and enjoys a place on the list of The 50 Greatest Cartoons, As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals. It was the first in which an anthropomorphized Tom appeared as more than a house cat, and is noteworthy for the realism of Tom's piano playing. The team of Hanna and Barbera devoted fifteen of their twenty years at MGM almost exclusively to creating the lavishly produced Tom and Jerry cartoons. But when MGM closed its animation shop, Hanna and Barbera moved to low-budget television production of "limited animation" (employing various techniques to reduce the labor and volume of drawings required to produce a cartoon, primarily to make it less expensive). And they established a great many memorable characters, including Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, the Flintstones and the Jetsons. Direction: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera Animation: Kenneth Muse, Ed Barge, Irv Spence Backgrounds: Bob Gentle Editing: Fred McAlpin Photography: Jack Stevens Music: Scott Bradley