Joseph Roland Barbera ( ; ; March 24, 1911 – December 18, 2006) was an American animator and cartoonist. He co-founded the animation studio Hanna-Barbera alongside William Hanna.
Born to Italian immigrants in New York City, Barbera hesitantly joined Van Beuren Studios in 1932 and subsequently Terrytoons in 1936. In 1937, he moved to California, and while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Barbera met Hanna. The two men began a collaboration that was at first best known for producing Tom and Jerry.
In 1957, after MGM dissolved its animation department, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, producing programs such as The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Top Cat, The Smurfs, Huckleberry Hound, and The Jetsons. In 1967, Hanna-Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained heads of the company. In 1991, the studio was sold to Turner Broadcasting System, which merged with Time Warner, owners of Warner Bros., in 1996; Hanna and Barbera stayed on as advisors.
Hanna and Barbera directed seven Academy Award-winning films and won eight Emmy Awards. Their cartoon shows 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 the 1960s and have been translated into more than 28 languages.
Early and personal life
Joseph Roland Barbera was born at 10 Delancey Street in the Little Italy, Lower East Side section of Manhattan, New York, to Italian Sicilian immigrants Vincenzo Barbera (1884–1969), born in Castelvetrano and Francesca Calvacca (1892–1974), born in Sciacca. Joseph Barbera's grandmother, also named Francesca, was born in Sciacca as well, as stated in his autobiography, My life in 'toons, in which he also described himself as Sicilian. He grew up speaking Italian, he had two brothers, Larry (1909–1982) and Ted (1919–1994), both of whom served in World War II. As a member of the United States Army, Larry participated in the invasion of Sicily. Ted was a fighter pilot with the United States Army Air Forces and served in the Aleutian Islands Campaign. While in high school, Barbera won several boxing titles. He was briefly managed by World Lightweight Boxing Champion Al Singer's manager but soon lost interest in boxing. The marriage officially ended in 1963. During the Great Depression, he tried unsuccessfully to become a cartoonist for The NY Hits Magazine. He supported himself with a job at a bank and continued to pursue publication for his cartoons. His magazine drawings of single cartoons, not comic strips, began to be published in Redbook, The Saturday Evening Post, and Collier's—the magazine with which he had the most success. Disney wrote back, saying he would call Barbera during an upcoming trip to New York, but the call never occurred.
Barbera took art classes at the Art Students League of New York and the Pratt Institute and was hired to work in the ink and paint department of Fleischer Studios. In 1932, he joined the Van Beuren Studios as an animator and storyboard artist. When Van Beuren closed in 1936, Barbera moved to Paul Terry's Terrytoons studio.
Film
Lured by a substantial salary increase, Barbera left Terrytoons and New York for the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio in California in 1937. By 1939, they had solidified a partnership that would last over 60 years. Barbera and Hanna worked alongside animator Tex Avery, who had created Daffy Duck and co-created Bugs Bunny for Warner Bros. and directed Droopy cartoons at MGM.
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, Barbera and Hanna's supervisor, Fred Quimby, did not want to produce more cat and mouse cartoons, believing that those were already enough. Hanna said they settled on this cartoon's cat and mouse theme because "we knew we needed two characters. We thought we needed conflict, 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. During World War II, they also made animated training films. The series won its first Academy Award for the 11th short, The Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943)—a war-time adventure. more than any other animated 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.
In addition to his work in animated cartoons, Barbera and Tom and Jerry layout artist Harvey Eisenberg moonlit to run a comic book company named Dearfield Publishing. Active from 1946 to 1951, Dearfield's titles included "Red" Rabbit Comics, Foxy Fagan, and Junie Prom.
Quimby accepted each Academy Award for Tom and Jerry without inviting Barbera and Hanna onstage. The cartoons were also released with Quimby listed as the sole producer, following the same practice for which he had condemned Ising. the studio soon realized that re-releasing old cartoons was far more profitable than producing new ones. Despite a lukewarm response for their first theatrical venture, Loopy De Loop, Hanna-Barbera soon established themselves with two successful television series: The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Yogi Bear Show. A 1960 survey showed that half of the viewers of Huckleberry Hound were adults. This prompted the company to create a new animated series, The Flintstones. A parody of The Honeymooners, the new show followed a typical Stone Age family with home appliances, talking animals, and celebrity guests. With an audience of both children and adults, The Flintstones became the first animated prime-time show to be a hit. Fred Flintstone's signature exclamation, "yabba dabba doo", soon entered everyday usage, The company also produced animated specials based on Alice in Wonderland, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cyrano de Bergerac, and feature-length films Charlotte's Web and Heidi's Song. Television programs had lower budgets than theatrical animation, and this economic reality caused many animation studios to go out of business in the 1950s and 1960s, putting many people in the industry out of work. Hanna and Barbera had first experimented with these techniques in the early days of Tom and Jerry. The new style did not limit the success of their animated shows, enabling Hanna-Barbera to stay in business, providing employment to many who would otherwise have been out of work.
In December 1966, Hanna-Barbera Productions was sold to Taft Broadcasting, renamed Great American Communications in 1987, for $12 million. The company was sold to the Turner Broadcasting System for an estimated $320 million.
Barbera and Hanna continued to advise their former company. They periodically worked on new Hanna-Barbera shows, including shorts for the series The Cartoon Cartoon Show and feature film versions of The Flintstones (1994) and Scooby-Doo (2002). In a new Tom and Jerry cartoon produced in 2000, The Mansion Cat, Barbera voiced the house owner.
Ten days before Hanna's death from throat cancer in March 2001, Hanna-Barbera was absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation, with the unit dedicated to the Cartoon Network original series spun off into Cartoon Network Studios. Barbera remained active as an executive producer for Warner Bros. on direct-to-video cartoon features and television series such as What's New, Scooby-Doo? and Tom and Jerry Tales. He also wrote, co-storyboarded, co-directed, and co-produced The Karate Guard (2005), the return of Tom and Jerry to the big screen. His final animated project was the direct-to-video feature Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale (2007).
Death
On December 18, 2006, Barbera died of natural causes at his home in Studio City, Los Angeles, California aged 95, ending a seventy-year career in animation. His wife Sheila was at his side at the end; Leonard Maltin says the Hanna–Barbera team "held a record for producing consistently superior cartoons using the same characters year after year—without a break or change in routine. Their characters are not only animated superstars, but also a very beloved part of American pop culture". They are often considered Walt Disney's only rivals in cartoon animation.
Barbera and Hanna had a lasting impact on television animation. Many of their characters have appeared in films, books, toys, and other media. including the 1960 award for The Huckleberry Hound Show, which was the first Emmy awarded to an animated series.
In 1992, Barbera met with pop musician Michael Jackson, an avid cartoon fan, in an unsuccessful attempt to arrange for Jackson to sing in Tom and Jerry: The Movie. Barbera drew five quick sketches of Tom and Jerry for Jackson and autographed them. Jackson autographed a picture of himself and his niece Nicole for Barbera with the words: "To my hero of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, with many thanks for all the many cartoon friends you gave me as a child. They were all I had. – Michael"