Via The Everett Collection

There are only a handful of shows (whether animated or live-action) that have become an integral part of the growing up years of several generations. One of these shows is Tom and Jerry, the animated cat and mouse pair that have given people the chuckles with their run-around antics.

What makes Tom and Jerry special is the timeless nature of the humor especially the practically futile attempts of Tom to gain one upmanship over Jerry. Even people from today's generation will find humor in watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon despite the dated animation techniques. This interaction is reminiscent of the interactions between Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner in Looney Tunes, another animated classic.

This may lead one to wonder, just how old is the Tom and Jerry series? MGM released the first in a series of Tom and Jerry animated short films on February 10, 1940. The title of the first film was Puss Gets the Boot.

The characters were created by Joseph Barbera and William Hanna. Yes, it's the same duo who eventually left MGM to form Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. But well before The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, and The Smurfs, were more than ideas in their heads, the pair produced Tom and Jerry short films for MGM until 1958, 114 of them, in fact.

But if you thought that was fascinating enough, here are some details about the Tom and Jerry series that few, if any, fans knew about.

1 - We could have had Jasper and Jinx instead of Tom and Jerry

Via Hollywood Reporter

It's hard to imagine the adorable duo having any other name but in the first film, Puss Gets the Boot, the cat is called Jasper. Not only that, he looked much closer in appearance to a real cat than how he eventually turned out to be.

The chubby mouse in the film never gets named but supposedly, in pre-production he was referred to as Jinx. But it seems even the creators themselves were divided over the names. In Hanna's memoir A Cast of Friends, he thought of the mouse as named Jinx. Barbera, however, didn't think so!

2 - The names "Tom" and "Jerry" were the results of a contest

Via Entertainment Weekly

Given that Hanna and Barbera were unable to agree on the names of the characters, how did the characters get named Tom and Jerry? By a contest that gave out a prize, of course. There's nothing like prize money to motivate people to come up with a good idea. The winning names were suggested by John Carr, one of the animators. He won $50 for his effort which translates to about $800 today. That's still a decent sum although still a pittance considering how iconic the series became.

3 - You won't believe how Tom and Jerry got their names

Via The Everett Collection

For a cartoon that was supposed to elicit fun and laughter in kids, you may be surprised to find out that "Tom and Jerry" came from the name of a popular booze concoction. The mixture of the same name is often made for the Yuletide and involves adding brandy and eggnog to rum.

The recipe had its origins in the 1820s, well before the cartoon characters, but it is a strange inspiration for them. It just goes what some booze can do to help power up that imagination!

But the "Tom and Jerry" name wasn't just confined to the drink. In 1823, Pierce Egan used the term "Tom and Jerry" to refer to boisterous youngsters in his book Life in London (also called Days and Nights of Jerry Hawthorne and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom). British society at the time picked up the term and started using them to refer to rowdy boys.

4 - Seven films in the Tom and Jerry series won an Oscar

Via Steemit

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), also known as the body that gives out the Oscar Awards, had traditionally been reticent about giving Academy Awards to animated films. Before the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature category was created in 2002, there were only special awards given for a select number of animated films. Among these were Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1998), and Toy Story (1995).

So it may come as a surprise that the Tom and Jerry films won SEVEN Oscar Awards, albeit in the "Short Subject, Cartoon" category. Still, the fact that 13 of the 114 Tom and Jerry films were nominated and won 7 of them just shows that the cat and mouse duo were just as dear to the Academy Award judges as they were to the children who were the target audience!

5 - The characters appeared alongside Gene Kelly in a movie

Via Once Upon A Screen

Gene Kelly was a dancing icon who appeared in most of the major musical films in their heydey of the 1940s to 50s. Even he took notice of the popularity of Tom and Jerry and the two characters appeared in Anchors Aweigh in 1945. Jerry Mouse and Kelly appeared together to sing "The Worry Song." Jerry played royalty in that scene and Tom Cat had a cameo as a servant.