5. Tom and Jerry.
Choices 5 through 1 not only highlight 5 of the greatest cartoons ever made. For each of the remaining choices you can make a great argument that we’re discussing some of the greatest comedy teams ever.
It couldn’t get much simpler than Tom and Jerry. Cat versus mouse. Battle of wits. David versus Goliath. Good versus evil.
Scrap that last one. Maybe it wasn’t quite that simple at all. If you watched Tom and Jerry religiously, as I did and still do on occasion, you noticed that nasty old Tom wasn’t always the heavy. From time to time little Jerry—quite a shrewd rodent when he had to be—turned the tables and seemed to take great pleasure in abusing poor old Tom.
But most of the time the pattern was simple. Cat succumbs to his nature and chases mouse. Cat gets nailed on the head with a frying pan. More of the same. Somehow the mouse prevails—and through it all a nation keels over laughing.
4. Porky and Daffy.
Although each of these Warner Bros. characters was memorable in his own right, these two did their best work while sharing the spotlight. Daffy was the narcissistic busybody who didn’t hesitate to impose on anyone, and Porky was the mild-mannered Everyman who wasn’t quite sure how to shake the annoying Daffy loose. One of my all-time favorite classic cartoons is the one in which Daffy, looking for an easy way to travel south for the winter, decides to hitchhike. He forces poor motorist Porky to pick him up and proceeds to make Porky’s life a nightmare. In that episode Porky eventually manages to get rid of his unwanted rider, but not before putting on the performance of a lifetime.
3. Tweety and Sylvester.
Clearly another all-time great comedy team. (Sometimes I have to remind myself that these aren’t real comedians I’m writing about.) The premise seems simple—cat craves bird—but plenty of unexpected twists are thrown in. My favorite episode is a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde take-off in which Tweety drinks a scientist’s potion and turns into huge monster … of course, unbeknownst to poor Sylvester, who thinks he’s in pursuit of a tasty little bird when he follows Tweety into the laboratory. One of the most unforgettable animation images ever—one that’s flashed through my mind many times over the years—is of a hideous Tweety cackling with glee as Sylvester’s tail hangs out of the giant Tweety’s mouth.
Which brings us to the final two: