Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. (commonly known simply as Hanna-Barbera) was a pioneering American animation studio and production company that operated from 1957 until its full integration into Warner Bros. Animation in 2001. Founded on July 7, 1957, by William “Bill” Hanna and Joseph “Joe” Barbera—legendary creators of Tom and Jerry and former MGM Cartoons employees—along with live-action producer George Sidney, the studio revolutionized television animation. It produced an enormous catalog of beloved series, including The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, and The Smurfs. At its peak, Hanna-Barbera was one of the world’s most successful animation houses, rivaling Disney in cultural impact through TV shows, movies, specials, merchandising, and consumer products.
The company began at Kling Studios in Los Angeles (1957–1960), later moved to Cahuenga Boulevard (until 1998), and finally relocated to the Sherman Oaks Galleria (1998–2001). Though it closed as an independent entity after William Hanna’s death in 2001, the Hanna-Barbera brand lives on today for copyright, marketing, and branding of its classic properties under Warner Bros.
Early years: From Tom and Jerry to a new studio (1938–1957)
William Denby “Bill” Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) and Joseph Roland “Joe” Barbera (March 24, 1911 – December 18, 2006) first met in 1938 at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s animation department, where they formed a creative partnership that would last more than six decades. Their complementary skills proved ideal: Hanna, an animator, director, voice actor, and musician, excelled at timing, story construction, and animation supervision; Barbera, a gifted cartoonist and storyteller with a sharp eye for gags, handled pre-production, character development, and scripting.
Hanna was born in Melrose, New Mexico, and grew up in California. After dropping out of college, he worked as a structural engineer until the Great Depression cost him his job. He began in animation in 1930 at Harman-Ising Studios (home of the early Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies for Warner Bros.), where he quickly rose as an animator, story man, and director. In 1937 he joined MGM’s newly formed animation department. Barbera, born in New York City to Italian immigrants, started as a bank accountant at Irving Trust but sold his first cartoon to Collier’s magazine and switched careers. He briefly worked at Fleischer Studios, Van Beuren Corporation, and Terrytoons before joining MGM in 1937 as a sketch artist and story man.
Their breakthrough came in 1940 with Tom and Jerry, the madcap cat-and-mouse series. Hanna directed the animation and even provided the vocal effects for the title characters, while Barbera handled stories and pre-production for all 114 shorts. The duo earned seven Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (Cartoons) between 1943 and 1953 (credited to producer Fred Quimby) and five additional nominations.
After Quimby’s retirement in 1955, Hanna and Barbera took over as producers at MGM. They continued creating Tom and Jerry shorts (now in CinemaScope), oversaw the final Droopy cartoons by Tex Avery, and produced the short-lived Spike and Tyke series. They also moonlighted on commercials and title sequences, including work for I Love Lucy.
When MGM shuttered its cartoon studio in mid-1957, the pair saw an opportunity. They had already developed a concept for a cat-and-dog TV series and began making animated commercials. Live-action veteran George Sidney became their business partner and helped secure a deal with Screen Gems (Columbia Pictures’ television division). Harry Cohn, Columbia’s president, took an 18% stake in the new venture, H-B Enterprises. A coin toss gave Hanna top billing in the company name. The studio officially opened on July 7, 1957, in rented space at Kling Studios (formerly Charlie Chaplin’s lot), exactly one year after MGM’s animation unit closed.
Rise to dominance: Classic series and prime-time breakthrough (1957–1969)
The studio’s first series, The Ruff and Reddy Show, premiered on NBC in December 1957. It was quickly followed by The Huckleberry Hound Show (1958), which introduced Yogi Bear, Pixie and Dixie, and Hokey Wolf and became the first cartoon to win an Emmy Award. Key hires from MGM and Warner Bros.—including animators Carlo Vinci, Kenneth Muse, and Ed Barge, layout artist Ed Benedict, writers Michael Maltese and Warren Foster, and composer Hoyt Curtin—helped fuel rapid growth.
Reincorporated as Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc., the studio launched The Quick Draw McGraw Show and the theatrical Loopy De Loop shorts in 1959. After Disney’s Sleeping Beauty underperformed, several of its laid-off animators joined the team. In 1960 the company moved into a modest cinder-block building at 3501 Cahuenga Boulevard West.
The real game-changer arrived on September 30, 1960: The Flintstones premiered on ABC as the first animated series in prime time. Loosely inspired by The Honeymooners and set in a Stone Age world, it ran for six seasons, became a massive ratings and merchandising hit, and spawned movies, specials, and spin-offs. It held the record as the longest-running prime-time animated series until The Simpsons surpassed it in 1997. The Yogi Bear Show, Top Cat, The Jetsons, and others soon followed, along with memorable commercials (including Post Pebbles cereal spots) and animated title sequences for Bewitched.
By 1963 the studio had moved to a striking modern building at 3400 Cahuenga Boulevard West in Hollywood Hills/Studio City, designed by architect Arthur Froehlich with a sculpted lattice exterior, moat, fountains, and a futuristic tower. A string of hits followed: The Magilla Gorilla Show, Jonny Quest, Atom Ant, Secret Squirrel, Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles, Space Ghost, Shazzan, The Banana Splits, Wacky Races and its spin-offs, and Cattanooga Cats.
In 1966 Hanna-Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million after a year-long lawsuit over the Cohn family’s minority stake. Hanna and Barbera remained creative leaders, while Screen Gems retained distribution rights to earlier shows. The studio also launched Hanna-Barbera Records, releasing character-themed children’s albums.
Mystery-solving boom and expansion (1969–1979)
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! debuted on CBS in September 1969 and became one of the studio’s biggest successes. The mix of comedy, mystery, and a goofy Great Dane spawned dozens of spin-offs that continued into the 1990s. Hanna-Barbera earned the nickname “the General Motors of animation,” producing nearly two-thirds of all Saturday-morning cartoons in peak years.
Spin-offs from established franchises flourished: The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, Yogi’s Gang, Laff-A-Lympics, and revivals of The Flintstones and Tom and Jerry. The studio partnered with Avco Broadcasting for syndicated holiday specials and opened an Australian animation facility in 1972 (later Southern Star Group, now Endemol Shine Australia). In 1973 it launched Super Friends, the first of many DC Comics-based series that ran on ABC for over a decade.
Hanna-Barbera also ventured into feature films, releasing Charlotte’s Web (1973) and later C.H.O.M.P.S., Heidi’s Song, and Once Upon a Forest. It experimented with live-action and hybrid programming and, in the late 1970s, began outsourcing more production overseas while shifting toward limited animation to control costs.
Changing market and Smurfs era (1980–1991)
As Saturday-morning cartoons declined and syndicated programming grew, Hanna-Barbera faced stiffer competition from Filmation, DIC, Marvel Productions, and others. Yet it still delivered hits. The Smurfs premiered on NBC in 1981, ran for nine seasons, and became the longest-running Saturday-morning cartoon in broadcast history at the time, dominating ratings.
Other 1980s series included The Flintstone Comedy Show, Pac-Man, Snorks, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, The Flintstone Kids, and revivals of The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, and Yogi Bear. After a 1982 strike, much animation was outsourced to studios in Australia, Asia, and the Philippines (including the company’s own Fil-Cartoons subsidiary). Taft acquired Ruby-Spears Productions in 1981, making it a sister studio, and later sold Worldvision Enterprises while keeping Hanna-Barbera’s library.
In 1987 Great American Broadcasting acquired Taft. Hanna-Barbera launched its own home-video division in 1989. Veteran animator Tom Ruegger and key staff left to help revive Warner Bros. Animation, while David Kirschner was named CEO. By 1991 the studio was put up for sale.
Turner acquisition and final chapter (1991–2001)
In late 1991, Turner Broadcasting System—under the leadership of Ted Turner—outbid major competitors including MCA (then-parent of Universal Pictures), Hallmark Cards, and several other media companies to acquire Hanna-Barbera Productions and its sister studio Ruby-Spears. The $320 million deal was structured as a 50-50 joint venture between Turner and the Apollo Investment Fund, giving Turner immediate access to one of the largest and most valuable animation libraries in the world. Turner’s explicit goal was to use Hanna-Barbera’s vast catalog of classic characters and episodes as the cornerstone for a new 24-hour animated cable network aimed at children and families.
The acquisition was finalized in 1992. Cartoon Network launched on October 1 of that year and quickly became the first all-animation channel, with Hanna-Barbera classics filling much of its early schedule. Fred Seibert was hired to head the newly renamed H-B Production Co., and he rapidly rebuilt the creative team by bringing in a new generation of talent, including Craig McCracken, Genndy Tartakovsky, David Feiss, Seth MacFarlane, Van Partible, and Butch Hartman. In 1993 Turner purchased Apollo Investment Fund’s remaining stake for an additional $255 million, gaining full ownership and refocusing the studio exclusively on producing original programming for Turner’s networks. The company was renamed Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. that same year (while the older “Hanna-Barbera Productions” name continued to appear on pre-1992 library titles).
Turner’s 1996 merger with Time Warner brought Hanna-Barbera under the Warner Bros. Animation umbrella. The Cahuenga Boulevard headquarters was vacated in 1997 and later demolished despite preservation efforts; the studio moved to the Sherman Oaks Galleria in 1998. William Hanna died of throat cancer on March 22, 2001, at age 90. The studio was fully absorbed into Warner Bros. Animation that year.
Legacy and production legacy
Hanna-Barbera’s greatest innovation was limited animation. Facing TV budgets far smaller than MGM’s theatrical shorts ($3,000 per five-minute episode versus $35,000 for a seven-minute Tom and Jerry), the studio simplified character designs, reused backgrounds and cycles, and animated only essential movements. Dialogue, music, and sound effects carried the storytelling—leading critic Chuck Jones to famously call the results “illustrated radio.” While some saw it as a cost-cutting compromise, the approach made weekly TV animation economically viable and allowed the studio to produce an unprecedented volume of content.
The studio was also an early adopter of digital tools. In the 1970s it experimented with the Scanimate video synthesizer; by 1979 it pioneered digital ink-and-paint systems that scanned drawings and colored them electronically, using the technology on roughly a third of its output from 1982 to 1996. Hanna-Barbera also built one of the most extensive and instantly recognizable libraries of sound effects in animation history.
After Joseph Barbera’s death in 2006 at age 95, Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network Studios continued creating new content based on Hanna-Barbera characters. The brand remains active for licensing, merchandising, and occasional revivals. In 2021 Cartoon Network Studios Europe was renamed Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe in tribute, and Warner Bros. Animation later re-acquired Cartoon Network Studios.
Hanna-Barbera’s characters still entertain generations worldwide, proving that two animators with a coin toss, a small budget, and big ideas could change television forever.
