The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show

The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show (also known as The New Adventures of Tom and Jerry) is an American animated television series produced by Filmation in association with MGM Television featuring the popular cartoon duo Tom and Jerry. The show first aired on September 6, 1980 on CBS and continued until December 13 the same year. Its episodes were eventually added to syndicated Tom and Jerry packages in 1983. The series was broadcast on Pop in the United Kingdom in October 2013. Episodes of the show also occasionally appeared on Cartoon Network and Boomerang.
The series is the fifth incarnation of the popular Tom and Jerry cartoon franchise, and the second made-for-television production. The series was notable in being the first attempt since the closing of the MGM studio in the 1950s to restore the original format of the cat and mouse team. After the original 114 theatrical shorts run of the William Hanna and Joseph Barbera-directed series, the characters were leased to other animation studios, which changed the designs and eliminated all of the supporting characters. The previous made-for-TV series, The Tom and Jerry Show, was produced in 1975 by Hanna and Barbera under their own studio under contract to MGM, but it had made the cat and mouse friends in most of the episodes due to the reaction against violence in cartoons. MGM did not like what Hanna and Barbera had done with the characters, so they came to Filmation and asked the studio to do a new series and try to bring some life back to them. This series was able to restore the familiar slapstick chase format, though with Tom and Jerry as competing rivals rather than enemies, and reintroduced not only Spike and Tyke and Nibbles (here named "Tuffy"), but not Mammy Two Shoes who was retired from the cartoons in 1953 for portraying a Mammy archetype. Half-hour episodes consisted of two Tom and Jerry shorts in the first and third segments, plus one Droopy short in the middle segment, also often featuring some other classic MGM cartoon characters such as Barney Bear. Where the original series and the third series by Chuck Jones occasionally had favorable endings for Tom, this series followed the second series by Gene Deitch in almost never having definite "wins" for Tom (although he won at the end of "Most Wanted Cat" (with Jerry) and "Superstocker" and they ended off mutual in "When the Rooster Crows" and "A Connecticut Mouse In King Arthur's Cork"). Spike from Tom and Jerry was used in many of the Droopy episodes as well, filling in for the other "Spike" bulldog created by Tex Avery for the old Droopy films, who was not used as a separate character here. The villainous wolf from the classic series was also included, and named "Slick Wolf"; however, as the series was produced under the "Seal of Good Practice" code, the title character from "Red Hot Riding Hood", where the Wolf debuted, did not reappear. The Droopy episodes usually featured Slick and sometimes Spike as antagonists. Barney had miscellaneous roles, such as being Droopy's boss at a movie studio in "Star-Crossed Wolf" and a frightful companion in "Scared Bear".
The show's opening begins with Tom chasing Jerry through a blank yellow screen. They continue chasing, as all of the other stars build a giant "Tom and Jerry" sign (similar to the second opening of Tom & Jerry Kids). The familiar rotating executive producer credit of Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott briefly runs as Tom chases Jerry past the screen, knocking things over and running over others along the way. After the opening sequence, the wraparound segments, hosted by Droopy, would begin. He would start by painting the whole background with a single large brush stroke and he and the other speaking characters would engage in brief comedic sketches (like Droopy's opening poem in one of them "Roses are red, violets are blue, painting's my job, that's what I do; cute and somewhat wet").
Filmation hired John Kricfalusi in the layout department headed by Franco Cristofani, where he worked on the Droopy episodes. Eddie Fitzgerald had recently shown the studio's character designer, Alberto De Mello, some original construction model sheets of cartoon characters from the 1940s and Preston Blair's animation instruction books, much to De Mello's excitement. The animators had to draw Alberto De Mello's model sheets, but Kricfalusi refused to do so, using the old model sheets instead. Many of the scripts were written by Coslough Johnson and Jack Hanrahan, though additional episodes were written by Charlie Howell, Fitzgerald, and animators Mike Joens, Steve Clark, Tom Minton, Mike O'Connor, Jim Mueller and Wendell Washer. Despite the series' low budget, Filmation tried to let animators go wild and add a lot of slapstick. Kricfalusi and some of the animators wanted to rebel against Filmation's mandates of reusable animation and their strict "on-model" policies (where model sheets had to be traced), as seen in episodes such as "Scared Bear" and "Jerry's Country Cousin". Fitzgerald, Minton and many other storyboard artists drew funny and lively storyboards as reference for the animators, developing unscripted sight gags as part of a rivalry with the writing staff. Kricfalusi found layout work easier than creating storyboards, as he could focus more on the characters' poses and expressions. He copied poses from Fitzgerald's boards, enlarged them, and added more details to the expressions and poses to break down the actions. The other layout artists in the department would come over to see and admire his work. After Kricfalusi did the layouts, Lynne Naylor would animate the Droopy episodes. At the time Kricfalusi was discovering old cartoons that he had never seen before, and tried to put elements of them into his layouts. One scene in an episode that he was doing a layout for had a character doing a fast zip pan from one area to another. Kricfalusi had been studying Chuck Jones' The Dover Boys at Pimento University, and saw abstract background pans that propelled the movement along. He drew a long panning shot of a normal background, filled with crazy, abstract shapes and floating eyeballs. A few days later, the head of the background department, Erv Kaplan, had a fit upon discovering Kricfalusi's eyeball pan and refused to paint it. He told Kricfalusi never to put eyeballs or abstract shapes in the backgrounds again. Naylor would never try to offend anyone, but offended Lou Scheimer one time. He had seen a section of "Pest in the West" at the Moviola, which was full of "smear frames". He threatened to fire Naylor over her use of them, but the head of the animation department went to advocate for her and managed to calm Scheimer down. Naylor kept her job, but was more cautious after that episode.
In addition to the use of limited animation, the show was characterized by a very limited music score. The particular genre of music used in the show was ragtime, in an attempt to mimic the classic cartoons (which used swing music, big band and funk music, but not ragtime). All of the shorts, both the Tom and Jerry and Droopy segments, used the same stock music, mostly created new for the series but consisting of only a handful of largely synthesized tunes, either with minor variations or played at different speeds or pitches. This did match the chase scenes, but gave the episodes a very monotonous soundtrack, making these episodes "stand out" to many Tom and Jerry viewers when they aired.
The show was called The Cat and Jam Comedy Show in an animation cel.
Frank Welker and Filmation producer Lou Scheimer provided the voices for the first six episodes; Welker voiced Tyke (in "The Puppy Sitter"; the character was silent in the wraparound segments) and Droopy, and Scheimer voiced Tom and Jerry, with both alternating the voices of Spike, Tuffy (Scheimer erroneously gave him an adult voice, although his voice sounded appropriately higher and childlike in the wraparound segments before "Droopy's Restless Night", "Pest in the West", "Old Mother Hubbard" and "The Great Mousini"), Slick, Barney and Tom's owner and voicing other characters in the wraparound segments and episodes. When a Screen Actors Guild strike hit, Welker was unable to continue work, so Scheimer had to fill in as a voice actor. Despite this, Welker's voice was still heard as Droopy from the seventh episode onward, as well as in the eighth, 12th, 13th and 14th episodes as Tuffy, Slick, Barney and other characters. Additional voices were done by Linda Gary, Alan Oppenheimer, Diane Pershing, Jay Scheimer and others.
The rights to The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show were currently owned by Warner Bros. through its Turner Entertainment Co. banner. However, due to the show's negative reception and legal issues involving MGM outsourcing the animation to Filmation (whose library is owned by DreamWorks Animation), Warner Bros. has no plans for a DVD box set of the show. However, one episode, "Jerry's Country Cousin", did surface on the 70th anniversary DVD collection in 2010. In late 2022, another episode, "Snowbrawl", was included as one of the 3 bonus cartoons on the Tom and Jerry: Snowman's Land DVD. All 30 Tom and Jerry segments of this incarnation (along with 8 Droopy segments) were available on the Boomerang app.