Hanna-Barbera

Hanna-Barbera, partnership of American animators William Hanna (1910-2001) and Joseph Barbera (1911-2006). The two became well known while producing Academy Award-winning short films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. After forming their own animation studio, Hanna-Barbera Productions, in 1957, they produced such popular television series as The Flintstones, which ran from 1960 to 1966.

Hanna was born in Melrose, New Mexico, and studied journalism and engineering before going to work for the Harman and Ising animation studio in 1931. In 1937, after the studio closed, he and many of the other employees moved to the animation unit at MGM, where he met Joe Barbera.

Barbera was born in New York City. He studied banking in college while working part-time as a magazine cartoonist, but soon turned to animation, first at the Van Buren Studio and then at Paul Terry’s Terrytoon Studio. In 1937 Barbera joined many other animators, including Bill Hanna, at MGM. Hanna and Barbera worked as a team on various MGM projects, but are best known for producing its Academy Award-winning Tom and Jerry series. The series was shown in movie theaters from 1940 until 1956, a year before MGM closed its animation unit (the unit reopened a few years later).

After leaving MGM, Hanna and Barbera opened their own studio. They began producing animation in association with Columbia Pictures for the young but rapidly growing television industry. In large measure, Hanna-Barbera Productions owed its great success to its use of limited animation techniques. Limited animation calls for relatively few drawings and less action than standard animation and relies more heavily on dialogue. These qualities were attractive to the expanding television industry, which needed a lot of animation produced quickly on low budgets.

The first series to come from Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Ruff and Reddy Show (1957), was not a commercial success, but its second series, The Huckleberry Hound Show (1958-1962), gained immense popularity in the United States and abroad. Subsequently, the studio became known for such series as The Jetsons (1962-1963, 1984-1985, 1987-1988) and The Smurfs (1981-1990), as well as for animation starring the character Scooby-Doo, which they began producing in 1969. In 1991 Hanna-Barbera Productions was purchased by Turner Broadcasting Company, and in 1995 they launched a series called What a Cartoon! in which they produced short works by selected artists. Turner used the Hanna-Barbera catalog to help launch the Cartoon Network, a cable channel for animated shows. In 1996 the studio came under the ownership of yet another company, Time Warner Inc. Hanna and Barbera retained offices on the studio lot, although they served mainly in an advisory capacity.