Hanna, William Denby

▪ 2002

      American animator (b. July 14, 1910, Melrose, N.M.—d. March 22, 2001, Los Angeles, Calif.), in his more than 50-year collaboration with Joseph Barbera, created such popular cartoon characters as Tom and Jerry, Yogi and Boo Boo Bear, Huckleberry Hound, and the Flintstones; Fred Flintstone's frequent exclamation “yabba dabba doo” became part of the contemporary vocabulary. The Hanna-Barbera team produced 113 Tom and Jerry cartoons and over 3,000 half-hour shows for 150 television cartoon series, and they won seven Academy Awards and eight Emmy Awards, including the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (1988). Hanna dropped out of college and was working as a construction engineer, but when he lost his job during the Depression, he took a job at Pacific Art and Title, which produced cartoons. In 1930 he moved to another cartoon-production company, Harman-Ising Studios, the home of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hired the company to produce some cartoons, for which Hanna, besides inking and painting, created songs and lyrics. When MGM added its own cartoon section in 1937, Hanna became a director there. He soon discovered that the gag-writing and sketching talents of another new employee, Barbera, were a perfect complement to his sense of timing and knack for story construction. They teamed up, and when their first cartoon, “Puss Gets the Boot” (1940), was nominated for an Academy Award, MGM allowed them to develop its cat-and-mouse theme. Fifteen years' worth of Tom and Jerry cartoons were the result, including the innovative teaming of cartoon and live action when Jerry danced with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh (1944) and both characters swam with Esther Williams in Dangerous When Wet (1953). MGM, however, closed its animation department in 1957, whereupon the two men formed their own company, Hanna-Barbera Productions, and began creating cartoons for television. Because of TV's budget limitations, Hanna and Barbera developed a “limited animation” technique that allowed them to produce cartoons much more cheaply by stressing character and witty dialogue instead of the action that had highlighted the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Their first TV show, The Ruff and Reddy Show (1957), was followed by Huckleberry Hound (1958), the first animated series to be awarded an Emmy. In 1960 The Flintstones, a Stone Age parody of the hit television series The Honeymooners, made its appearance. Equally appealing to children and adults, it was the first half-hour animated situation comedy and came to be considered Hanna-Barbera's greatest hit. A Space Age version, The Jetsons, debuted in 1962, and series featuring numerous other characters, including Magilla Gorilla and Scooby Doo, followed. In 1996 Warner Brothers bought Hanna-Barbera, but Hanna continued working, and the 166 episodes of The Flintstones continued to be broadcast around the world.

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