Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader, page 33
THE TOM AND JERRY STORY
The cartoon world’s most famous cat and mouse are almost sixty years old. But with cable TV airing their cartoons daily, a whole new generation knows (and apparently loves) them.
BACKGROUND
In the late thirties, MGM had a full-time animation studio. But while Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons became more popular each year, MGM’s list of cartoon flops kept growing. One reason was their disorganized and indecisive management. Another was weak characters; MGM had nothing to compare with Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse.
William Hanna and Joe Barbera, two young MGM animators, were convinced that the studio would soon fold, so they decided they might as well develop a cartoon of their own. After all, what did they—or MGM—have to lose? They picked a cat and mouse as their subjects because, as Joe Barbera put it, “half the story was written before you even put pencil to paper.”
DON’T CALL US...
In 1940, they finished “Puss Gets the Boot” about a cat named Jasper trying to catch an unnamed mouse. The brass at MGM didn’t care for it, but since they didn’t have anything else in the works, they released it to theatres. To their surprise, the public loved it. It was even nominated for an Academy Award.
It was just what MGM needed. So Hanna and Barbera were shocked when MGM executives called them in and told them to “stop making the cat and mouse cartoons.” Why? Because they “didn’t want to put all our eggs in one basket.”
Top 5 male cat names in the U.S.: Tiger/Tigger, Smokey, Pepper, Max/Maxwell, and Simon.
“Of course,” Barbera says wryly, “before ‘Puss Gets the Boot,’ MGM didn’t have a single good egg to put in any basket.” But orders were orders. Shortly after, however, MGM got a letter from a leading Texas exhibitor asking, “When are we going to see more of those adorable cat and mouse cartoons?” He was too important to ignore, so Hanna and Barbera were given the green light to develop the series.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Now that the team was going to make more cat and mouse cartoons for MGM, they needed names for their characters. Instead of painstakingly researching and developing a title for the pair, Hanna and Barbera asked fellow workers to put pairs of names into a hat. The pair they picked: “Tom and Jerry.” An animator named John Carr won fifty dollars for the idea. MGM, on the other hand, made millions.
For seventeen years, Hannah and Barbara, still unknown to the public, made over 120 Tom and Jerry cartoons in the basement at MGM. Because their lead characters didn’t talk, the cartoon’s success was dependent on top-notch animation, plus writing that relied heavily on facial expressions and timing. This was all held together by composer Scott Bradley’s complex music scores for each cartoon. Tom and Jerry cartoons won seven Academy Awards. Due to financial constraints at the studio, however, the series was dropped in 1958. Hanna and Barbera went on to create their own animation studio and churn out more made-for-TV cartoons than anyone in history, including The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, and Scooby Doo.
MEANWHILE...
In 1963, five years after the last Tom and Jerry cartoon was made, legendary Warner Brothers animator Chuck Jones moved to MGM to resurrect the series. Not only did he have the unenviable task of toning down the violence in a cartoon that revolved around it, but by Jones’ own admission, he didn’t understand the characters. What came out was a wimpy copy of the Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons that didn’t have the budget of the previous Tom and Jerry series. Not only were the plots and animation static, but Scott Bradley’s carefully constructed scores were replaced by stock ’60s music. After three unsuccessful years, MGM dropped the cat and mouse for good.
Since then, the series has been resurrected for TV in a number of different varieties (like Tom and Jerry Kids)...by Hanna-Barbera Studios.
The Netherlands has more burglaries per capita than any other country on earth.
PART VI: THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING
It isn’t the world’s tallest skyscraper anymore, but the Empire State Building is still one of the most popular skyscrapers in the world, and as enduring a symbol of New York City as the Statue of Liberty. Here’s the story of how it was built. (Part V is on page 248.)
FAMILY PLOT
In 1827, William Backhouse Astor, son of New York land baron John Jacob Astor, bought a large plot of farmland in what is now mid-Manhattan. He didn’t do much with it; he just held on to it because he figured that one day it might be worth more than the $20,500 he paid for it.
By the mid-1850s, several of the Astors had built mansions on the property, including William’s daughter-in-law, Caroline. Much of the surrounding area was still farmland and pasture, but that was okay—Mrs. Astor liked the peace and quiet.
PAIN IN THE ASTOR
As the years passed, the property surrounding the Astor mansions was also developed, first into mansions for other millionaires, and later into upscale shops and other commercial buildings. In 1893, Mrs. Astor’s nephew, William Waldorf Astor, built a 13-story hotel right next door to her mansion. He named it the Waldorf, after himself.
The Waldorf soon became the finest hotel in New York, playing host to royalty, captains of industry, and visiting heads of state—but Mrs. Astor, the queen of New York society, was furious that her own flesh and blood had forced her to live next door to transients. So she struck back—she tore down her mansion and in its place, built a 16-story hotel whose only purpose was to steal business from the Waldorf. Like her nephew, Mrs. Astor named her hotel—the Astoria—after herself.
Heaviest U.S. president: William Howard Taft (332 lbs). Lightest: James Madison (100 lbs).
Eventually, Mrs. Astor and her nephew patched up their differences and began operating the hotels jointly as the Waldorf-Astoria. It was more than a hotel—it was the gathering-place for the city’s high-society. The millionaires who lived nearby would frequently drop in for dinner, drinks or tea while out on their daily strolls. But as time went on and the relentless commercialization of the neighborhood continued, many wealthy neighbors abandoned the area. With fewer and fewer of the city’s elite living in walking distance, the hotel faded in importance. By the 1920s, the Waldorf-Astoria was passé; its fading velvet-tassle Victorian decor completely out of step with contemporary fashion. In 1929, the Astors sold the hotel(s) and some surrounding property to the Bethlehem Engineering Corporation for $16 million.
STARTING OVER
Bethlehem planned to demolish the building and replace it with a 55-story structure that would be the largest (though not the tallest) office building in the city.
But they couldn’t arrange the financing. In September 1929, they sold the property to the Empire State Building Corporation.
Dynamic Duo
This new group of developers had financial and political clout that Bethlehem could only have dreamed of. Two of the most important members were John J. Raskob, a former vice president of General Motors, and Al Smith, the scrappy former governor of New York and Democratic presidential nominee.
Raskob was in charge of coming up with the money to build what was going to be called the Empire State Building. Smith was in charge of public relations. His job was to sell the building, not just to the public, but also to prospective tenants. He was the right man for the job—nicknamed “the Happy Warrior,” he’d worked his way up from the sidewalks of New York City into the governor’s mansion, and was one of the most popular politicians New York had ever seen. Besides, a lot of people owed him favors.
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
Bethlehem had planned to make its 55-story building low and wide. Raskob and his partners figured that a taller, skinnier building would make more money. So they told their architectural firm, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, to come up with a design for one.
The sailfish is the fastest fish in the world. It has a top speed of 68 miles per hour.
“Bill, how high can you make it so that it won’t fall down?” Raskob supposedly said to architect William Lamb. Lamb replied that it was possible to construct a building 80 stories tall or higher. When the architects asked what the building should look like, either Smith or Raskob (both men later claimed credit) pulled out a big pencil and pointed it skyward. “It should look like this,” they supposedly said.
Competing with Chrysler
Raskob decided to build the biggest building on Earth, and not just for the bragging rights. He had a personal motive—revenge. Apparently, Raskob had once made a deal with Walter P. Chrysler to join the Chrysler company...and Chrysler had reneged. Now Mr. Chrysler was building his own world’s-tallest-skyscraper several blocks away. As John Tauranac writes in The Empire State Building, “Raskob wanted a building that would literally and figuratively put Walter Chrysler’s building in the shade.”
The only problem was that nobody except Walter Chrysler himself knew how tall the Chrysler building was going to be, and he wasn’t talking.
One-Upsmanship
When the Chrysler Building was finally completed at 1,048 feet, Raskob was free to make new plans. He had announced the height of the Empire State Building as 1,000 feet. But it was still on the drawing board. So he ordered Shreve, Lamb & Harmon to add 5 stories to the building, making it 85 stories and 1,050 feet tall—two feet higher than the finished Chrysler Building. At this stage, the Empire State Building called for a flat-topped building with no tower or spire on the roof. That would come a little later...and it, too, would outdo the Chrysler building.
TRIAL BALLOON
Geography quiz: Which country borders 16 other countries? China
In December 1929, Al Smith announced a change in the design of the building that would increase the height from 1,050 feet to 1,250 feet. Smith wasn’t talking about adding a flagpole. He was talking about constructing a mooring mast for dirigibles, which would enable the building to serve as a sort of downtown airport for lighter-than-air balloons. The airships would tie up to the building in much the same way that a ship ties up to a pier. Passengers would then disembark via a gangplank that extended from the airship to the mooring mast. The topmost floors of the Empire State Building would be arrival and departure lounges, ticket counters, and passenger services.
This may sound absurd today, but at the time, dirigibles seemed like the future of long-distance air travel. “No kidding,” Smith told reporters. “We’re working on the thing now.” In September 1931, a small zeppelin actually did tie up to the mooring mast, and two weeks later a Goodyear blimp picked up a stack of newspapers from the top of the New York Evening Journal magazine and delivered them to the top of the Empire State Building. The stunt was an attempt to demonstrate that roof-to-roof deliveries might be a way to reduce congestion in the traffic-clogged streets below.
HOT AIR
Nobody knew whether the plan was really feasible, but that didn’t stop Raskob and Smith. John Tauranac explains:
No estimate of the additional cost of the project had been made at the time of the announcement, nor had feasibility studies been made or any market research done to determine whether people were actually willing to walk a gangplank from a dirigible to a mooring mast suspended almost 1,250 feet in the air. Nevertheless, Raskob had told Smith to proceed....The whole job was estimated at about $750,000, a paltry addition to the final costs.
The dirigible mast remained a part of the building’s design and actually did get built. The idea of actually using it, however, was quietly dropped, and the landing gear that would have enabled dirigibles to use it was never installed. As for the space that was set aside for the ticket counter and passenger lounge, it was converted to “the world’s highest soda fountain and tea garden.”
As long as you’re already visiting the Empire State Building, why not turn to the next installment, Part VII? It’s on page 322.
According to our experts, there was no punctuation until the 15th century.
IRONIC, ISN’T IT?
More irony to put the problems of your day-to-day life in proper perspective.
DELICIOUS IRONY
“A 1978 newsletter edited at a branch of Mensa, an organization for high-IQ people, had numerous misspellings—including the word, ‘intelligense.’” —The Literary Life and Other Curiosities
• “The U.S. Postal Service suffered a courtroom setback in 1992. USPS needed to get an expert-witness list to a Dayton, Ohio, judge by the next day in an unemployment discrimination case in order to be able to use the witnesses at trial. The list was sent from Washington, D.C., by the Postal Service’s overnight Express Mail but did not arrive for ten days.” —The Concrete Enema
• “In 1993 near Alvin, Texas, Andrea Guerrero, 18, and her brother came across a man who was slumped over his truck and not breathing. Andrea saved his life by administering CPR until an ambulance arrived. At the time, Guerrero was on her way home from a CPR certification exam, which she had flunked.” —The Concrete Enema
• “[In 1986,] our For What It’s Worth Department concludes that Orlando, Florida has one prejudiced jury! In the Orange County Courthouse, a jury of twelve...was stuck for twenty minutes in a courthouse elevator...On their way to the courtroom to hear a case against the Otis Elevator Company!” —Paul Harvey’s For What It’s Worth
• “In 1978 Ray Wright of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was promoting his burglar alarm business, leaving flyers on autos. They read, ‘If you didn’t see me put this on your windshield, I could just as easily have stolen your car.’ While he busy advertising, someone stole his truck.” —Encyclopedia Brown’s Book of Facts
EMBARRASSING IRONY
• “[In 1994,] author James Herriot, whose gentle accounts of the life of a British country veterinarian (such as All Creatures Great and Small) are sold throughout the world and have inspired a television series, was in the hospital yesterday after being attacked by a flock of sheep.” —News Report
Foot fetish: 15 percent of Americans secretly bite their toenails.
• “The always-so-correct British Broadcasting Corporation was severely embarrassed when news leaked out that they had paid white film extras up to five times as much as black extras during African location shooting of a documentary film series. Its title: The Fight Against Slavery.” —The World’s Greatest Mistakes
• “Human Kindness Day took place in Washington, D.C. on May 10, 1975. At a press conference afterwards, police said there had been 600 arrests, 150 smashed windows, and 42 looted refreshment stands.” —The Book of Heroic Failures
IRONY FROM ABOVE
• “In 1979 the Allied Roofing and Siding Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan was engaged in cleaning snow from roofs in the area to prevent damage or collapse from the weight of heavy snow. But guess what roof did collapse from the weight of snow? The roof over the Allied Roofing and Siding Company.” —The Book of Blunders
• “In Jacksonville, the Riverside Chevrolet Company launched a sales campaign featuring the slogan, ‘Look for it! Something BIG is going to happen!’ A few hours later, the showroom ceiling collapsed on six new cars.” —Not a Good Word About Anybody
• “The American Institute of Architects held their 1979 annual conference in Kansas City, to be near the Kemper Arena, to which they had awarded their prize as ‘One of the finest buildings in the nation.’ On the first day of the conference, hordes of architects toured the inspired structure, with its wide spanning roof trusses, which The Architectural Record described as having ‘an almost awesome muscularity.’ On the second day, the roof of the $12 million building fell down. Twenty-six architects were hospitalized.” —The Book of Heroic Failures
According to scientific tests, the odors that most commonly arouse women sexually are: pumpkin pie, lavender, cucumbers, baby powder, and Good ’n’ Plenty candy.
THE TOP 10 HITS OF THE YEAR, 1988–1991
Here’s another installment of BRI’s Top Ten of the Year list.
1988
(1) Faith —George Michael
(2) Need You Tonight —INXS
(3) Got My Mind Set On You —George Harrison
(4) Never Gonna Give Up —Rick Astley
(5) Sweet Child O’ Mine —Guns N’ Roses
(6) Heaven Is A Place On Earth —Belinda Carlisle
(7) So Emotional —Whitney Houston
(8) Hands To Heaven —Breathe
(9) Could’ve Been —Tiffany
(10) Roll With It —Steve Winwood
1989
(1) Look Away —Chicago
(2) My Prerogative —Bobby Brown
(3) Every Rose Has Its Thorn —Poison
(4) Miss You Much —Janet Jackson
(5) Straight Up —Paula Abdul
(6) Wind Beneath My Wings (from Beaches) —Bette Midler
(7) Cold Hearted —Paula Abdul
(8) Girl You Know It’s True —Milli Vanili
(9) Baby, I Love Your Way/Freebird Medley —Will To Power
(10) Giving You The Best That I Got —Anita Baker
1990
(1) Hold On —Wilson Phillips
(2) Nothing Compares 2 U —Sinead O’Connor
(3) It Must Have Been Love (from Pretty Woman) —Roxette
(4) Poison —Bell Biv Devoe
(5) Vogue —Madonna
(6) Another Day In Paradise —Phil Collins
(7) Vision Of Love —Mariah Carey
(8) Hold On —En Vogue
(9) Cradle Of Love (from Ford Fairlane) —Billy Idol
(10) Blaze Of Glory (from Young Guns II) —Jon Bon Jovi
1991
(1) (Everything I Do) I Do It For You (from Robin Hood) —Bryan Adams
(2) I Wanna Sex You Up (from New Jack City) —Color Me Badd
(3) Gonna Make You Sweat —C&C Music Factory
(4) One More Try —Timmy T.
(5) Rush Rush —Paula Abdul
(6) Unbelievable —EMF
(7) I Like The Way (The Kissing Game) —Hi-Five
(8) More Than Words —Extreme
