Los angeles – Hanna, the co-chairman and co-founder of Hanna Barbera Studios, died at his home in North Hollywood, Warner Bros. spokesman Scott Rowe said. He was 90 years old. The cause of death was not immediately released.
Hanna and Barbera, who used to do five five-minute Tom and Jerry film cartoons a year for MGM, were doing up to 11 half hour shows on TV a week at the height of their fame.
Ultimately they produced 3 000 half-hour shows creating such characters as Huckleberry Hound, Scooby-Doo, Yogi Bear, the Jetsons, Atom Ant, Jonny Quest, Quick Draw McGraw, Top Cat, Magilla Gorilla, Pixie and Dixie, Josie and the Pussycats and, of course, Boo Boo, the sidekick and conscience of Yogi Bear who warned, “Mr Ranger is not going to like that.”
Among their most famous shows was The Flintstones a “modern stone age family” whose head of the house, Fred Flintstone, a character with Jackie Gleason girth and overtones, was famed for the shout of “Yabba-dabba-doo.”
Hanna and Barbera met on the lot of MGM in 1937 where they created the famed Tom and Jerry cartoon series. They formed their own animation company Hanna-Barbera in 1957 after the phone rang and they were told that the animation division at MGM was being shut.
Besides Tom and Jerry, they had made film history at MGM by mixing animation and live action sequences in such classic films as Gene Kelly’s Anchors Away and Invitation to Dance. They also created a similar sequence for Esther Williams in Dangerous When Wet.
“You have to realise that two guys who worked for 20 years on Tom and Jerry and had won every award including seven Oscars could not understand why the phone rang and a voice said ‘Close the studio’,” Barbera, who is 89, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times last year.
He added, “There was no warning, It was just close the studio. We were the best in the business and what were we going to do now? Sell hamburgers?.”
Instead, the two turned to television and a created a simpler and less expensive form of animation made especially for the small screen.
Sidney Jacobson, a veteran animation editor who created the Ritchie Rich, Wendy the Witch and Hot Stuff characters for cartoon rival Harvey Entertainment, called Hanna and Barbera “giants in the industry … They created television animation. … And they created a giant array of characters that are still on today.”
Jacobson said the “limited animation” technique they pioneered essentially was a “speedier animation with less detail in background.”
Born in Melrose, New Mexico on July 14, 1910, Hanna received early training as an engineer. He began his animation career during the Depression when he took a position in the ink and paint department of Hollywood’s Harman-Ising studios.
The Hanna-Barbera studio has been owned by Warner Bros., a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc., since 1996.
The duo received a star on the Hollywood walk of fame in 1976 and were inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1993.
Hanna was involved with the studio until his death. He was also a charter member of the Boy Scouts of America and remained active in the organisation throughout his life.
Hanna is survived by wife, Violet, two children, and seven grandchildren.