This little-seen and remembered, Hanna-Barbera produced, ABC Saturday Morning 1975-77 revival of the 1940-57/1961-67 MGM cartoon short series featuring the Academy Award-winning cat and mouse duo has been my all-time favorite version for many years. In fact, it's my all-time favorite Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Period. And this is the world's first and only known web site devoted solely to the preservation and perpetuation of the 1975 version of Tom and Jerry! Here, in a much toned down, non-violent, Yogi Bear/Boo Boo-esque format (in order to satisfy ABC-TV Broadcast Standards and Practices), the long-popular Tom and Jerry, after years of rivalry, have become the best of friends (and Jerry dons a red bowtie, so the animators would be able to "fragment" his movements), in episodes wherein they roamed the world competing in sports, enduring on-the-job misadventures, running afoul of dastardly villains, solving mysteries and helping others. Having purchased rights from MGM to produce new Tom & Jerry cartoons for TV, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, T&J's brainchildren, screened some of their best MGM theatrical-era T&Js for ABC execs. They laughed heartily at the antics of T&J then sighed because it was a shame that network Broadcast Standards and Practices rule out such violence on Saturday Mornings, and thus begat The New Tom & Jerry Show. But, out of respect for the characters who helped them pave the way for their newfound careers, H&B refused to cure Tom and Jerry of their all-too familiar trait: their uncanny inability to speak. Except for an occasional gulp, chuckle, gasp, pant, shriek and mumble provided by veteran Hanna-Barbera voice actor John Stephenson, Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse were entitled to their right to remain silent. (After all, they did win 7 Oscars, didn't they? It's the least they could do!) Trivia footnote: The New Tom & Jerry Show's animation director, Ed Barge, and key animator Ken Muse had a history with Hanna-Barbera and Tom and Jerry: they animated the bulk of the classic Hanna-Barbera MGM T&J shorts in the 1940s and '50s.

Debuting at 8:30 (EST), Saturday Morning, September 6, 1975 on ABC-TV was the 60-minute New Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape Show, wherein each hour-long telecast was split into five segments in a specific format: alternating with three 7-minute New Tom & Jerry segments were two 10-minute ones concerning a 40-foot purple ape, Grape Ape (voiced by Bob Holt) and his fast-talking beagle buddy, a carnival hustler answering to the unlikely moniker of Beegle Beagle (voiced by Marty Ingels), or "Beegley Beagley," as G.A. would lovingly refer to him. The only new series put out by Hanna-Barbera Productions for the fall of 1975, The New Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape Show introduced a technique that would become a standard in many HB comedies: the "theater marquis logo" main title card. It also kicked off a trend of Saturday Morning shows spawned from Golden Age era 'toons (The All-New Popeye Hour, The New Adventures Of Mighty Mouse With Heckle And Jeckle, etc.). A total of 48 7-minute New Tom & Jerry cartoons (the first ones produced by Hanna-Barbera since the mid-'60s MGM Tom & Jerry compilation 'toons "Matinee Mouse" [1966] and "Shutter-Bugged Cat" [1967], both of which featured new T&J footage from Hanna-Barbera as well as classic T&J footage) were made exclusively for TV and networkcast firstrun on ABC over a 15-week period.* Feverish ratings compelled ABC to renew it for a second season, whereupon 16 6-minute segments of The Mumbly Cartoon Show a new Hanna-Barbera comedy-mystery revolving around the exploits of a snickering plainclothesman detective hound, Mumbly (voiced by the late Don Messick and patterned loosely after Muttley of Wacky Races [CBS, 1968-70] and Dastardly And Muttley In Their Flying Machines [CBS, 1969-71] fame) and his schlocky stooge, Shnooker (voiced by John Stephenson), were added to run with 2 reruns each of Tom and Jerry and Grape Ape. The revamped Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show soldiered on for 2 months until The Great Grape Ape parted ways with the cast (in order to enable ABC to make room for expanding the 60-minute Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour to 30 minutes [The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Show]) and left behind Tom & Jerry and Mumbly (whose main title theme was almost identical to T&J, whcih was natural, since they ran together) in the half-hour Tom & Jerry/Mumbly Show. Despite these gaunt changes in cast, Hanna-Barbera's attempt to win an audience with this tame, mild resurrection of their beloved cat-and-mouse creations was in vain, and, predictably, it folded in 1977. (Mumbly and Grape Ape, however, survived the fallout and were spun off in two new shows on ABC that same fall: Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics and The Great Grape Ape Show.)

After its unsuccessful performance on network TV, the 48 New Tom & Jerry cartoons from 1975 (now retitled The Tom & Jerry Show, which featured each 7-minute New Tom & Jerry cartoon framed inbetween main and end title credits) were meshed with the backlog of theatrical-era MGM Tom & Jerry cartoons from 1940 to 1967 for syndication, where they played on and off local TV stations for many years (which is how I first came into them; more on that later), and only there did they finally recieve their niche with young viewers. Aside from a mid-'80s revival on Superstation TBS (then known as Superstation WTBS), the cartoons were virtually forgotten and rarely shown much these days, either on the Turner cable stations or on local television, and were therefore the most rare Tom & Jerry cartoons of any kind...save for brief pop-ups on the Canadian all-cartoon channel Teletoon as part of its RetroNights package, restored from the original film interpositive masters and seen for the first time in a 30-minute format (but, unfortunately, with the "floating" Turner logo unnecessarily featured in lieu of the HB logo and MGM roaring lion title following the show's end credits, instead of placing it after them!). But thankfully, Cartoon Network's new sister channel Boomerang stepped in and showed them for the first time on Monday April 2, 2001 @ 10 AM (CST), as part of a week-long T&J marathon celebrating Boomerang's first year on the air, and has gone a step better with frequent showings of the original New Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape Show and more 1975 Tom & Jerry (Hanna-Barbera) repeats on its Saturday schedule (starting in August 2001)! Many theatrical cartoon fans of the Golden-Age era of Tom & Jerry virtually switched away from The New Tom & Jerry Show in droves mainly due to the tried-and-true battling buddies T&J being nonviolent friends most of the time, hence the abysmal ratings that hindered it throughout its 2-season run on ABC. Either that, or it was severely damaged by CBS' The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Hour and repeats of Sigmund And The Sea Monsters and Josie And The PussyCats and first-runs of The Secret Lives Of Waldo Kitty on NBC, all initial ratings monsters, which aired directly opposite ABC's New Tom & Jerry/Grape Ape Show. Now me, I myself never saw Hanna-Barbera's sadly underrated new version of T&J on network TV as a kid, as I was only 3 going on 4 @ the time it premeired and too young to be aware of the fact it existed; that was before I first saw the 1975 New Tom & Jerry TV cartoons in a weekday afternoon slot (Monday-Friday @ 3:30) on the New Orleans ABC-cum-FOX affilliate, WVUE-TV, in early 1979 and took a liking to them that has never abated--and that's what led to my building this webpage: to show all and sundry that there was someone out there who took interest in them and, to a degree at least, put an end to all the bad press they've been getting. Don't get me wrong, there are a few T&J theatrical 'toons which I do like, but, for my cash the 1975 version is and shall forever remain the best version, despite what others think of it! There are 5 reasons which contribute to my being a big fan of the 1975 New Tom & Jerry Show:

• Those exquisite opening/ending titles accompanied by that wonderful Main Title "Circus Parade" theme song (co-written by the late, very great Hoyt S. Curtin) - the best part of the show!
• Jerry's red bow tie (a distinguishing characteristic of many "tie-wearing" HB toons). He looks better in it!
• The Yogi Bear/Boo-Boo-esque camaderie developed between Tom and Jerry.
• That jazzy underscore (also courtesy of the phenomenal Mr. Curtin).