Joseph Barbera life and biography

Joseph Roland "Joe" Barbera (born March 24, 1911 – died December 18, 2006) was an influential American animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and cartoon artist, whose movie and television cartoon characters entertained millions of fans worldwide for much of the twentieth century. Through his young adult years, Barbera lived, attended college, and began his career in New York City.

After working odd jobs and as a banker, Barbera joined Van Beuren Studios in 1932 and subsequently Terrytoons in 1936. In 1937 he moved to California and while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Barbera met William Hanna. The two men began a collaboration that was at first best known for producing Tom and Jerry and live action films. In 1957, after MGM dissolved their animation department, they co-founded Hanna–Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, producing programs such as The Flintstones, The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, The Smurfs, and Yogi Bear. In 1967, Hanna–Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained head of the company until 1991. At that time the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, which in turn was merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors.

Hanna and Barbera won seven Academy Awards and eight Emmy Awards. Their cartoons have become cultural icons, and their cartoon characters have appeared in other media such as films, books, and toys. Hanna–Barbera's shows have a global audience of over 300 million people and have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Film

Lured by a substantial salary increase, Barbera left Terrytoons and New York for the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) cartoon unit in California in 1937. He found that Los Angeles was suffering just as much from the Great Depression as Brooklyn and almost returned to Brooklyn.

Barbera's desk was opposite that of William Hanna. The two quickly realized they would make a good team. By 1939 they had solidified a partnership that would last 50 years.Barbera and Hanna worked alongside animator Tex Avery, who had created Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny for Warner Bros. and directed Droopy cartoons at MGM.

In 1940 Hanna and Barbera jointly directed Puss Gets the Boot, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best (Cartoon) Short Subject. The studio wanted a diversified cartoon portfolio, so despite the success of Puss Gets the Boot, Barbera and Hanna's supervisor, Fred Quimby, did not want to produce more cat and mouse cartoons. Surprised by the success of Puss Gets the Boot, Barbera and Hanna ignored Quimby's resistance and continued developing the cat-and-mouse theme. By this time, however, Hanna wanted to return to working for Ising, to whom he felt very loyal. Barbera and Hanna met with Quimby, who discovered that although Ising had taken sole credit for producing Puss Gets the Boot, he never actually worked on it. Quimby then gave Hanna and Barbera permission to pursue their cat-and-mouse idea. The result was their most famous creation, Tom and Jerry.

Modeled after the Puss Gets the Boot characters with slight differences, the series followed Jerry, the pesky rodent who continuously outwitted his feline foe, Tom.Hanna said they settled on the cat and mouse theme for this cartoon because "we knew we needed two characters. We thought we needed conflict, and chase and action. And a cat after a mouse seemed like a good, basic thought." The revamped characters first appeared in 1941's The Midnight Snack. Over the next 17 years, Barbera and Hanna worked exclusively on Tom and Jerry, directing more than 114 popular cartoon shorts. During World War II they also made animated training films.Tom and Jerry relied mostly on motion instead of dialog. Despite its popularity, Tom and Jerry has often been criticized as excessively violent.Nonetheless, the series won its first Academy Award for the 11th short, The Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943)—a war-time adventure. Tom and Jerry was ultimately nominated for 14 Academy Awards, winning 7. No other character-based theatrical animated series has won more awards, nor has any other series featuring the same characters. Tom and Jerry also made guest appearances in several of MGM's live-action films, including Anchors Aweigh (1945) and Invitation to the Dance (1956) with Gene Kelly, and Dangerous When Wet (1953) with Esther Williams.

Quimby accepted each Academy Award for Tom and Jerry's without inviting Barbera and Hanna onstage. The cartoons were also released with Quimby listed as the sole producer, following the same practice for which he had condemned Ising.Quimby also once took six months to give Barbera a promised raise. When Quimby retired in late 1955, Hanna and Barbera were placed in charge of MGM's animation division. As the studio began to lose more revenue due to television, MGM soon realized that re-releasing old cartoons was far more profitable than producing new ones. In 1957 MGM ordered Barbera and Hanna's business manager to close the cartoon division and lay off everyone by a phone call. Barbera and Hanna found the no-notice closing puzzling because Tom and Jerry had been so successful.

Television

In 1957, Barbera reteamed with his former partner Hanna to produce cartoon films for television and theatrical release. The two brought different skills to the company; Barbera was a skilled gag writer and sketch artist, while Hanna had a gift for timing, story construction, and recruiting top artists. Major business decisions would be made together, though each year the title of president alternated between them. A coin toss determined that Hanna would have precedence in the naming of the new company, first called H-B Enterprises but soon changed to Hanna–Barbera Productions.

The first offering from the new company was The Ruff & Reddy Show, a series which detailed the friendship between a dog and cat. Despite a lukewarm response for their first theatrical venture, Loopy De Loop, Hanna–Barbera soon established themselves with two successful television series: The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Yogi Bear Show. A 1960 survey showed that half of the viewers of Huckleberry Hound were adults. This prompted the company to create a new animated series, The Flintstones. A parody of The Honeymooners, the new show followed a typical Stone Age family with home appliances, talking animals, and celebrity guests. With an audience of both children and adults, The Flintstones became the first animated prime-time show to be a hit. Fred Flintstone's signature exclamation "yabba dabba doo" soon entered everyday usage, and the show boosted the studio to the top of the TV cartoon field. The company later produced a space-age version of The Flintstones, known as The Jetsons. Although both shows reappeared in the 1970s and 1980s, The Flintstones was far more popular.

By the late 1960s, Hanna–Barbera Productions was the most successful television animation studio in the business. The Hanna–Barbera studio produced over 3000 animated half-hour television shows. Among the more than 100 cartoon series and specials they produced were: Atom Ant, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy (an imitation of the earlier Spike and Tyke MGM cartoons), Jonny Quest, Josie and the Pussycats, Magilla Gorilla, Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks, Quick Draw McGraw, and Top Cat. Top Cat was based on Phil Silvers's character Sgt. Bilko, though it has been erroneously reported that Sgt. Bilko was the basis for Yogi Bear. The Hanna–Barbera studio also produced Scooby-Doo (1969–1986) and The Smurfs (1981–1989). The company also produced animated specials based on Alice in Wonderland, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cyrano de Bergerac as well as the feature-length movie Charlotte's Web.

As popular as their cartoons were with 1960s audiences, they were disliked by artists. Television programs had lower budgets than theatrical animation, and this economic reality caused many animation studios to go out of business in the 1950s and 1960s, putting many people in the industry out of work.Hanna–Barbera was key in the development of an animation technique known as limited animation, which allowed television animation to be more cost-effective, but often sacrificed artistic qualityHanna and Barbera had first experimented with these techniques in the early days of Tom and Jerry. To reduce the cost of each episode, shows often focused more on character dialogue than detailed animation. The number of drawings for a seven-minute cartoon decreased from 14,000 to nearly 2,000, and the company implemented innovative techniques such as rapid background changes to improve viewing. Critics criticized the change from lush, detailed animation to flat characters with repetitive motion. Barbera once said that their choice was to adapt to the television budgets or change careers. The new style did not limit the success of their animated shows, enabling Hanna–Barbera to stay in business, providing employment to many who would otherwise have been out of work. Limited animation paved the way for future animated characters such as Homer Simpson and those in South Park. The television animation techniques and story methodology of the team are now legendary.

In 1966, Hanna–Barbera Productions was sold to Taft Broadcasting (renamed Great American Communications in 1987) for $12 million. Barbera and Hanna remained at the head of the company until 1991. At that point, the company was sold to the Turner Broadcasting System for an estimated $320 million, which itself merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., in 1996. This began a close association with the Cartoon Network. Barbera and Hanna continued to advise their former company and periodically worked on new Hanna–Barbera shows, including the series The Cartoon Cartoon Show and hit silver screen versions of The Flintstones (1994) and Scooby-Doo (2002). In the Tom and Jerry cartoon The Mansion Cat (2000) Barbera voiced the houseowner.

After Hanna's death in 2001, Barbera remained active as an executive producer for Warner Bros. Animation on direct-to-video cartoon features as well as television series such as What's New, Scooby-Doo? and Tom and Jerry Tales. He also wrote, co-storyboarded, co-directed and co-produced The Karate Guard (2005), the first theatrical Tom and Jerry short in more than 45 years.His final animated project was the direct-to-video feature Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale (2007)

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