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Readers can create their own best-sellers at The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator.

[TotH to the wonderful Pop Loser]

As we decide what to do with our royalties, we might recall that it was on this date in 1940 that MGM’s first Tom and Jerry cartoon, “Puss Gets the Boot,” premiered; the inter-species couple would go on to “star” in over 100 more cartoons.  It was the first collaboration between William Hanna and Joseph Barbera (founding a partnership that would last over 50 years and yield such treasures as The Flintstones, Huckleberry Hound, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, Top Cat, and Yogi Bear); at over nine minutes in length, it’s the longest T&J ever produced– and the first of three T&J essays (with “Puss n’ Toots” and “Puss ‘n’ Boats”) to pun it’s title on the fairy tale “Puss in Boots.”  “Puss Gets the Boot” was nominated for an Academy Award– the first of Hanna and Barbera’s many Oscar nominations.

The cat in “Puss Gets the Boot” was actually named “Jasper”; the mouse, “Jinx.”  But when the pilot got the go-ahead to become a series, animator John Carr won a studio-wide naming contest with his suggestion: “Tom and Jerry.”  Jasper’s owner, “Mammy Two-Shoes,” was voiced by June Foray— who later earned immortality as the voice of Rocky J. Squirrel.

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