Tom And Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology (1940-1958) - Warner Archive Collection

I’m old…but I’m not that old. Born well after their original theatrical debuts, I grew up watching Tom and Jerry shorts alongside my regular rounds of Saturday-morning cartoons. As much as I spent time with old favorites like Transformers and G.I. Joe, Tom and Jerry was a staple of my animated diet. And as much as I love watching old episodes of Scooby-Doo and The Flintstones, we owe it all to this wily rodent and conniving feline. If Tom and Jerry hadn’t been a hit for MGM, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera would have been cinematic footnotes. But these shorts were hits, earning a dedicated fanbase with numerous accolades along their incredible run.

But then I grew out of Saturday-morning cartoons. I’d gone years without seeing a short. Even though they’d come out on DVD, I just didn’t feel the need to pick them up and rewatch them; the happy memories were enough. Then, right around the time The Golden Era Anthology came to disc, my young son happened upon a collection of Tom and Jerry shorts on YouTube, and all of a sudden, I found myself on the couch alongside my delighted five-year-old, enjoying the hijinks of the quintessential cat-and-mouse cartoon. So, being the indulgent father that I am, I picked up this set, and the last couple of weeks have been a blast, picking through the discs, hour after hour, one short after another. If I had to guess, I haven’t watched this much Tom and Jerry in one sitting in over 30 years - and it was a treat to experience these alongside my spawn. 

But as it came time to stop watching and get down to reviewing, I realized I had no idea how to do that work or do these shorts justice. I certainly can’t review each of the 114 shorts individually. Well, I could, but that’d been obscene, and it’d take me months to do well. All I can say is they’re an experience, and one I loved. But as I told various friends and family that my son and I were working through these, I was amazed at some of the reactions. I guess I never knew anyone who didn’t like Tom and Jerry, but it turns out there are a few out there. What perplexes me about some of those people is I know they laugh anytime Wile E. Coyote blows himself up going after Roadrunner, but somehow Tom and Jerry are too mean-spirited? 

Obviously, I don’t agree with that sentiment. I think Hanna and Barbara brilliantly executed their shorts with high energy and an inventive, almost Rube Goldbergian level of staging creativity. Sure, I’ll accept the argument that not every short is a classic and some are genuinely better than others, but damn, I can’t remember just gleefully laughing that hard at animated chaos in a long, long time. And then to hear a little boy cackle with glee at the same time, that’s just a peak life experience right there. So, while Tom and Jerry might not be for everyone, anyone who loves this brand of animated chaotic hilarity is in for a treat with this incredible set. 

Vital Disc Stats: The Blu-ray
Thanks to the incredible technical wizards manning the Warner Archive Collection, Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology 1940-1958 comes home to 1080p Blu-ray. All 114 shorts are spread over five BD50 discs, with an additional BD50 disc for the additional bonus features. All six discs are housed in a standard multi-disc case, each disc with its own tray without being stacked. Also included is a 34-page booklet with sketches and images from some of the best shorts. A slipcover completes the package. Each disc loads to a static-image main menu letting you pick and choose which short you want, or a “Play All” function so you can just dive in and enjoy the madness uninterrupted.

On the scale of video transfers, there is a slight asterisk: these transfers are the best they could be, crafted from the best available elements, under the time constraints imposed on the archivists and restoration team. When it’s at its best, some of these shorts genuinely look incredible. When they’re at their “worst,” all I can say is they’re better than anything I’ve seen on disc (I did check out some of the old DVDs from my local library to compare). What’s great to see is that some of the “banned” shorts that never made it to disc previously were apparently handled by the WAC team, and they look fantastic, freshly restored, with a true film-like quality to line detail, color, and film grain (trapped cel dust notwithstanding). But then there are some shorts that appear to have been culled from previously issued archival masters, and there is certainly a quality shift; they just don’t pop as much as some of the fresher, more recently restored shorts. 

This also includes the masters used for some of the shorts that were issued as bonus content for other WAC titles and The Complete Cinemascope Collection. I can certainly understand the argument that those shorts could have used another run at a restoration effort, but I can’t say they look terrible or unsightly. I guess as a way to split hairs and disarm some of the rhetoric, they’re “adequate” but not perfect. But then, because of the 1978 Eastman fire, perfect just isn’t possible when the original elements for shorts produced before 1951 simply don’t exist anymore. 

I guess the way to say all this is that, while this set might have gone down “better” if the WAC team had been able to go to work from the ground up on all of the shorts, I can’t deny this set does look pretty damn good! Colors are bright and bold for most of the shorts I watched. Fine line details were sharp and clean for most of the shorts I watched. Every now and again, we might get the odd instance of telecine wobble in a short or one that just looked oddly softer than the short that preceded it, but that’s it. I guess on the scale of things to get angry about, how these shorts turned out, they’re nowhere near as bad as what was done with the Max Fleischer’s Superman set from two years ago. So yes, maybe not the greatest, but still pretty damned good. 

On the audio side of the coin, each short is treated to a DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono track, which, like the video, mileage may vary slightly from one short to the next. Overall, I was quite pleased with most of these shorts as the sound effects and limited dialog sounded relatively clean without serious issues. And like a number of the video transfers, the audio was sourced from the best elements. While some stereo tracks did exist at one point for some of the shorts, it’s my understanding that for a number of them, the stereo audio no longer exists and only the mono remains. (Not 100% sure how accurate that is; it's difficult to find legit info on some of these without getting lost in the weeds.) My biggest issue, I’d say, is that one short to the next, you might be in for a pitch swing. Those levels can really peak for some shorts, and you may have to lower your volume a bit, but then the following short could be a bit low and feel the need to pop those notches up a little to compensate. To that point, though, I don’t think that swing is all that severe in terms of restoration effort or the like, but more to do with the approach for each short being different. Some are just louder and more chaotic than others, and that shift echoes in the audio mixing. 

While some may hem and haw about the A/V quality of the set, I gotta give kudos to WAC for assembling a terrific collection of new and archival extras to enjoy! My son wasn’t too keen on the extras, so I had to delve into them on my own time, but I found them quite insightful. At the top of the pack, I really enjoyed the archival commentaries from Jerry Beck, Michael Mallory, Earl Kress, among others. As I mentioned, I never picked up the old DVDs, so they were new to me, and I enjoyed what they brought. For new materials, we get two excellent featurettes totalling about an hour of content discussing Mammy Two Shoes and the various other animal characters that made appearances in the shorts. We’re then treated to nine vintage featurettes covering various aspects of the history of Tom and Jerry and three side-related shorts featuring some T&J supporting characters on their own. All in all, a fine selection of extras. 

Audio Commentaries Disc One

• Puss Gets the Boot
• Mark Kausler
• Nicole Parker and Earl Kress
• The Night Before Christmas
• Michael Mallory
• Nicole Parker and Earl Kress
• The Yankee Doodle Mouse
• Michael Mallory
• The Zoot Cat
• Jerry Beck
• Mouse Trouble 
• Michael Mallory
• Quiet Please
• Mark Kausler

Audio Commentaries Disc Two

• The Cat Concerto 
• Eric Goldberg
• Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Mouse
• Michael Mallory
• Nicole Parker and Earl Kress
• Kitty Foiled
• Jerry Beck
• The Little Orphan
• Michael Mallory
• Hatch Up Your Troubles
• Michael Mallory
• Heavenly Puss
• Jerry Beck

Audio Commentaries Disc Three

• Saturday Evening Puss
• Nicole Parker and Earl Kress
• Jerry’s Cousin 
• Jerry Beck
• The Two Mouseketeers
• Jerry Beck
• Push-Button Kitty
• Mark Kausler

Audio Commentaries Disc Four

• Johann Mouse
• Mark Kausler

Bonus Blu-ray Disc

• NEW Lady of the House: The Story of Mammy Two Shoes (HD 27:41) 
• NEW Animal Hijinks: The Friends and Foes of Tom (HD 30:58)
• The Midnight Snack Pencil Test - Side by Side (HD 9:01)
• Cat and Mouse: The Tale of Tom and Jerry (HD 31:39)
• Tom and Jerry: Behind the Tunes (HD 17:09)
• Animators as Actors (HD 7:15)
• 1953 Excerpt from "Dangerous When Wet" (HD 7:50) 
• How Bill and Joe Met Tom and Jerry (HD 27:12)
• Vaudeville, Slapstick, and Tom and Jerry (HD 22:47)
• The Comedy Stylings of Tom and Jerry (HD 5:30)
• "The Worry Song" from "Anchors Aweigh" (HD 9:08)
• Additional Shorts:
• Good Will to Men (HD 8:30)
• Give and Tyke (HD 6:39) 
• Scat Cats (HD 6:30)

Initially, I had no real intention of delving into this Tom and Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology collection. I love old cartoons; I have many happy memories of watching their antics, but it wasn’t something I was nostalgic about reliving. There was no personal motivation for me to go into this set beyond mild curiosity. Leave it to a random twist in the YouTube algorithm to feed my little boy a collection of Tom and Jerry shorts to change my mind. Enjoying several hours of Cat vs Mouse hilarity wasn’t on my to-do list right before the holidays, but I’m glad things worked out the way they did. I got to relive that edge-of-your-seat excitement and hilarity of some of my favorite cartoon memories while also seeingmy little boy go absolutely nuts, cackling away at every short. His happiness alone was worth revisiting these cartoons; my enjoyment was just a bonus. 

Now, thanks to Warner Archive Collection, we can enjoy The Golden Era Anthology of shorts from 1940 to 1958 anytime we want in 1080p. The A/V presentations may be contentious for some die-hard fans out there, and it's certainly understandable, but I also have to give credit where due to the WAC team for working their magic when and where they could apply it. Overall, I thought that even through some of the quality shifts from one short to the next, the experience was satisfying. The collection of bonus features is certainly robust and worth the time. There’s certainly an argument to be made that this set might not be the best we could have gotten under more ideal circumstances, but for what we got, it’s still pretty damn good. Splitting some hairs for this or that, I still have to call this set Recommended