Former magazine cartoonist who joined MGM in 1937 after an application to the Disney studios was unsuccessful. With fellow MGM employee William Hanna, Barbera earned a place in animation history by creating the ever-popular, ever-violent, but everlasting "Tom and Jerry" characters in 1940 and producing more than one hundred of the often delightful cat-and-mouse shorts over the next two decades, seven of which earned Oscars for Best Animated Short.
Hanna and Barbera were appointed heads of the MGM cartoon department in 1955 and, when the department was cut two years later, left in order to set up Hanna-Barbera productions. The company was a huge success, turning out limited-animation series such as "The Flintstones" and "Yogi Bear" directly for TV.
After enjoyed a highly prolific period of producing animated series for TV (mostly the Saturday morning children's audience), the team re-entered the feature film market in 1990 with the release of the full-length animated film, "The Jetsons", which they co-directed as well.
- Also Credited As:
Joe Barbera, Joseph Barbera, Joseph Roland Barbera
- Born:
March 24, 1911 in New York City, New York, USA
- Died:
December 18, 2006.
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Job Titles:
Animator, Executive, Director, Producer, Story writer, Accountant
Family
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Daughter: Jayne Earl Barbera. mother, Dorothy Earl
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Daughter: Lynne Meredith Barbera. mother, Dorothy Earl
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Father: Vicente Barbera.
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Mother: Frances Barbera.
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Son: Neal Francis Barbera. mother, Dorothy Earl
Significant Others
Education
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American Institute of Banking, New York, New York
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New York University, New York, New York
Milestones
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1937 Signed with MGM as writer; teamed with William Hanna
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1940 First venture with Hanna, Puss Gets the Boot ; nominated for an Academy Award for Best (Cartoon) Short Subject
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1955 With Hanna succeeded Fred Quimby as head of MGM cartoon department; MGM closed the division in 1957
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1957 Teamed up with William Hanna to produce the series The Ruff & Reddy Show, under the company name H-B Enterprises, soon changed to Hanna-Barbera Productions
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1968 Hanna and Barbera continued to operate studio under agreement with Taft Co.
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1968 Produced live action feature film, Project X
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1988 Taft and the Hanna-Barbera Studio sold to Great American Broadcasting, with Barbera appointed president
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1991 Ted Turner announced the signing of definitive agreements for Turner Broadcasting Systems Inc to buy Hanna-Barbera Productions Inc. (and its library of more than 3,000 half-hours of animated programming and more than 350 different series, telefilms and theatrical relases) for $320 million from Great American Communications Co. in November
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1994 Inducted into the TV Hall of Fame by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
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2005 Wrote, co-storyboarded, co-directed and co-produced the theatrical Tom and Jerry short The Karateguard
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Co-directed (with William Hanna) the feature-length animated films, Hey There, It s Yogi Bear (1964) and A Man Called Flintstone (1966)
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Worked for Van Beuren Studio as writer of Tom and Jerry series (of no relation to later MGM cartoon)