William Hanna

**William Denby Hanna** (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator, director, producer, voice actor, cartoon artist, and musician whose film and television cartoon characters entertained millions of people for much of the 20th century.

*Tom and Jerry* won seven Academy Awards, while Hanna and Barbera were nominated for two others and won 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 had a worldwide audience of over 300 million people in their 1960s heyday, and have been translated into more than 28 languages.

## Early and personal life

William Hanna was born to William John (1873-1949) and Avice Joyce (Denby) Hanna (1882-1956) on July 14, 1910, in Melrose, New Mexico Territory. He was the third of seven children. Hanna described his family as "a red-blooded, Irish-American family". His father was a construction superintendent for railroads as well as water and sewer systems throughout the western regions of America, requiring the family to move frequently.

When Hanna was three years old, the family moved to Baker City, Oregon, where his father worked on the Balm Creek Dam. It was there that Hanna would develop his love of the outdoors. The family moved to Logan, Utah, before moving to San Pedro, California, in 1917. During the next two years they moved several times before eventually settling in Watts, California, in 1919.

In 1922, while living in Watts, he joined Scouting. He attended Compton High School from 1925 through 1928, where he played the saxophone in a dance band. His passion for music carried over into his career; he helped write songs for his cartoons, including the theme for *The Flintstones*. Hanna became an Eagle Scout as a youth and remained active in Scouting throughout his life. As an adult, he served as a Scoutmaster and was recognized by the Boy Scouts of America with their Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 1985. Despite his numerous career-related awards, Hanna was most proud of this Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. His interests also included sailing and singing in a barbershop quartet. Hanna studied both journalism and structural engineering at Compton City College, but had to drop out of college with the onset of the Great Depression.

On August 7, 1936, Hanna married Violet Blanch Wogatzke (July 23, 1913 – July 10, 2014), and they had a marriage lasting over 64 years, until his death. The marriage produced two children, David William and Bonnie Jean, and seven grandchildren. In 1996, Hanna, with assistance from Los Angeles writer Tom Ito, published his autobiography—Joe Barbera had published his own two years earlier.

## Tom and Jerry and spin-offs

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*, Hanna and Barbera's supervisor, Fred Quimby, did not want to produce more cat and mouse cartoons. Surprised by the success of *Puss Gets the Boot*, Hanna and Barbera 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. Hanna and Barbera 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, who had wanted to start a new animation unit independent of Ising, 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 rodent who continually 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 Hanna and Barbera worked almost exclusively on *Tom and Jerry*, directing more than 114 highly 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* without inviting Hanna and Barbera onstage. The cartoons were also released with Quimby listed as the sole producer, following the same practice for which he had condemned Ising. 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 Hanna and Barbera's business manager to close the cartoon division and lay off everyone by a phone call. Hanna and Barbera found the no-notice closure puzzling because *Tom and Jerry* had been so successful.

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were together as the producer of the cartoon "Spike and Tyke", the spin-off of the Tom and Jerry cartoon. Hanna and Barbera made great contributions in this cartoon, which was released to the screen in 1957. But unfortunately the spin-off lasted only 2 episodes, and after returning to the Tom and Jerry cartoons, it was not a year that Hanna ended Tom and Jerry.

## Death and legacy

Hanna died of esophageal cancer at his home in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California on March 22, 2001, at the age of 90. After his death, Cartoon Network aired a 20-second segment with black dots tracing Hanna's portrait with the words "We'll miss you – Cartoon Network" fading in on the right-hand side. This same type of tribute happened for Chuck Jones in 2002 and Hanna's partner, Joseph Barbera in 2006, when each of them died. However, Barbera, unlike the other two, had an audio clip of his voice playing in his Cartoon Network promotional tribute. Hanna is buried at Ascension Cemetery in Lake Forest, California.

In March 2005 the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and Warner Bros. Animation dedicated a wall sculpture at the Television Academy's Hall of Fame Plaza in North Hollywood to Hanna and Barbera. Hanna's audio of Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse's archived screams were reused in *The Tom and Jerry Show (2014)* and the upcoming 2021 movie, *Tom & Jerry*.