WILLIAM HANNA

A trained engineer, Mr. Hanna began his animation career during the Depression. Soon after, while working at MGM, he partnered with Joe Barbera -- an alliance that would last for over 60 years and garner the two men international acclaim. Their first collaboration, "Puss Gets the Boot," introduced Tom and Jerry, whose escapades earned the animators seven Academy Awards®.

Mr. Hanna's specialty was comedic timing -- at this he was an undisputed master, as evidenced by the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons. The duo succeeds not with dialogue, but solely on the basis of well-timed gags, perfectly punctuated by music and sound effects.

When Hanna-Barbera Productions opened its doors in 1957, the two men developed a limited animation process that would revolutionize the way cartoons are produced, resulting in the timeliness and cost efficiency that enabled them to create season after season of classic TV animation.

It didn't take long for the team to assemble a phenomenal roster of shows, from the Emmy® Award-winning The Huckleberry Hound Show to the much-beloved Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw. In 1960, they triumphed with television's first animated sitcom, The Flintstones. The unforgettable modern Stone-Age family took the world by storm, eventually being translated into more than 80 languages. At one point, Hanna and Barbera could accurately proclaim, "Every hour of every day, someone somewhere in the world is watching The Flintstones."

In the years that followed, Hanna-Barbera solidified their reputations as hitmakers with the likes of The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and The Smurfs. Whether you grew up in the '40s or the '80s, or sometime in between, Hanna-Barbera creations played an indelible role in your childhood.