A coin toss decided whose name came first in Hanna-Barbera
When MGM shut its cartoon unit in 1957, the two men behind Tom and Jerry started their own studio for television. Flipping a coin settled the billing, and William Hanna won. Within three years their Stone Age sitcom became the first animated series shown in American prime time.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera met in MGM's animation department in 1938 and began a partnership that lasted six decades. Hanna ran the animation and Barbera handled story and pre-production on all 114 Tom and Jerry cartoons. Seven of those shorts won Oscars between 1943 and 1953, though the statuettes went to producer Fred Quimby, who had no hand in making them. The pair only took charge of the studio after Quimby retired in 1955, and two years later MGM decided it had enough old shorts to reissue and closed the unit.
They had already sketched an idea for a TV show about a cat and a dog. MGM passed, but director George Sidney offered to partner with them and brought in Screen Gems, while Columbia chief Harry Cohn took an 18 percent stake and supplied working capital. The new company opened on July 7, 1957, in rented space at the old Charlie Chaplin lot, staffed largely by former MGM animators.
Hits came fast. The Ruff and Reddy Show premiered in December 1957, and The Huckleberry Hound Show followed in 1958, becoming the first cartoon to win an Emmy. The Flintstones reached ABC on September 30, 1960, loosely modelled on The Honeymooners; Jackie Gleason considered suing but decided against being remembered for pulling Fred Flintstone off the air. It stayed the longest-running animated prime-time show until The Simpsons overtook it in 1997. Yogi Bear, Top Cat and The Jetsons soon joined the line-up.
Taft Broadcasting bought the studio for $12 million in 1966, after a delay caused by a lawsuit from Cohn's heirs. Turner acquired it in 1991 and mined its library to launch Cartoon Network in 1992. After Hanna died in 2001 the studio was absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation, though its name still appears on the classic characters.
Source: Hanna-Barbera
