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Hanna and Barbera weren't allowed to receive their Tom and Jerry Oscars.
An awards season game of cat and mouse!
As a cartoon series, Tom and Jerry won seven Oscars, but their creators, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, were not allowed to receive their statues or attend the Academy Awards ceremony. While this was arguably unfair, the official Academy rules at the time said that only producers could receive the trophy for Best Animated Short Film. This meant that Fred Quimby received the award, despite having very limited involvement in the actual cartoons.
According to Joe Barbera's memoir, My Life in Toons, Hanna and Barbera tried to appease Quimby.
"We implored, we cajoled, we begged him to give us at least co-producer credit so that we would be eligible for an Oscar. 'No,' he replied. His hands were tied."
Quimby's reasons were hardly palpable to Barbera, who said, "Well, I would be lying if I did not admit that, for me, such injustices were bitter pills that went down very, very hard." While Quimby always credited and thanked Hanna and Barbera in his acceptance speeches, it was still unfair that the cartoon's creators did not get their moment of recognition.
Here they were, two creators of an Academy Award-winning series and receiving no Academy Awards for it. Meanwhile, their supervisor, who had never been involved in the production of these cartoons, kept all seven Oscar statues on his desk.
Instead of sulking, Bill Hanna had an idea. One afternoon, Bill Hanna recalled, while Quimby was out at meetings, Hanna and Barbera "marshaled our little group of animators... A few minutes later, a half dozen of us assembled around Fred's desk, grinning in conspiratorial pride as a photograph was snapped with seven little Oscars all in a row before us."
While Fred Quimby may have had their Oscars, Hanna and Barbera had a partnership, and eventually earned eight Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
