Hanna-Barbera gave Jack Nicholson his start in Hollywood

The Everett Collection

Before he was starring in classic films like The Shining, Batman, and A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson was a young man trying to find his big break in Hollywood, and he started in the most unlikely of places - the MGM Animation department.

In 1955, Nicholson joined MGM as an office assistant. It was an exciting time to join the team; Hanna and Barbera fearlessly led the cartoon unit, producing classic Tom and Jerry cartoons. He was 18 years old, and he just kept submitting applications until they gave him a job. He made $30 a week ($362 today) as the "office pinky" or errand boy. Nicholson delivered mail, sandwiches, coffee, and basically whatever the animators needed. Joe Barbera recalled, "He used to bring us Cokes. He’d wheel in the cart, go into the offices, and ask, 'What do you want today?'"

One friend Jack Nicholson made during his time at MGM was Irven Spence,  a veteran animator from Warner Bros. and MGM, who later joined the Hanna-Barbera crew in 1961 and worked with them for over 30 years. Spence was significantly older, and the young Nicholson thoroughly enjoyed messing with the old man and pestering him while on runs. Still, Spence was more than game to get back at Nicholson by drawing overly exaggerated caricatures of the young office runner. Spence later remembered Nicholson having had "a fun attitude".

The cartoonists loved having Nicholson around, and he stayed in touch with many of them for years to come. Being around the all-stars of the cartoon world, Nicholson naturally started sketching, and Hanna-Barbera took notice. They offered him an entry-level job in the animation department, but he turned it down.

While working at MGM, Nicholson had joined the Players Ring Theatre group and had caught the acting bug. He continued to work at MGM by day while taking acting classes at night until the cartoon department was shut down. Nicholson recalled, "I tried to keep my day job during this period, but they closed the MGM cartoon department on me. Along with George Bannon, I was its last employee."

Bill Hanna fondly remembered Nicholson in his memoir A Cast of Friends, "I can recall occasional chats with one particularly ebullient office boy, which eventually led me to make a pointed suggestion. 'Jack,' I remarked to him one morning, 'maybe it's about time you quit running around in these halls as a gofer bringing coffee. You'd be a lot better off pushing your career on the sound stages.' His name was Jack Nicholson, and I guess he took my advice!"

Our friends over at Cartoon Research have a sketch of the MGM team, and young Jack Nicholson can be seen on the far right!