The Art Of Tom And Jerry Laserdisc Archive Today

This "Volume III" is the rarest of the three. As of 2023, it became "extremely scarce and very difficult to find," solidifying its status as a final MGM/UA video artifact before Warner Bros. purchased the rights to the MGM library.

The sound of Scott Bradley's groundbreaking musical scores—which matched the onscreen action perfectly—was preserved in superior quality, often featuring the original, unedited soundtracks.

Collectors who maintain the "Tom and Jerry Laserdisc Archive" (a loose global collective on obscure forums) don't just watch the discs. They service them. They unbind the rotting glue of 1990s Japanese pressings. They rip the DTS audio to share with purists who refuse to listen to the DVD mixes. They argue for hours over whether the MGM 70th Anniversary pressing has better black levels than the LaserDisc Corporation of America release.

Owning this archive is a ritual of inconvenience. You need a 30-pound player, a CRT or a scaler, and the willingness to flip the disc halfway through The Night Before Christmas . The side breaks occur right at the peak of the action—a forced intermission that feels almost cinematic, like a reel change at a grindhouse theater.

Just tell me which direction you'd like to go! the art of tom and jerry laserdisc archive

This three-disc CLV set collects all produced by Jones between 1963 and 1967. It is a striking departure from the earlier volumes. Jones, fresh off his work on Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner , redefined Tom and Jerry's personalities. The dynamic shifted from equal-opportunity slapstick to a more wry, calculated form of pursuit. In these shorts, Tom and Jerry became "more mischievous, with careful plotting taking the place of a quick and painful revenge".

While later DVD and Blu-ray sets (like the Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection ) have made these cartoons more accessible, the LaserDisc Archive remains legendary for several reasons:

What makes The Art of Tom and Jerry laserdisc a true artifact is the .

Part 1: “Tom & Jerry: The Golden Era Anthology 1940-1958” This "Volume III" is the rarest of the three

continues the archive into the mid-1950s, a transitional period for the duo. Released in 1993, this three-disc set contains 49 cartoon gems . While the core slapstick remained, the series began experimenting with new formats, including the widescreen CinemaScope shorts. "Volume II" captured these shifts faithfully, preserving the original aspect ratios so crucial to the comedic framing of gags in shorts like Tom and Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl (which appears on Volume I).

If you’d like to see more about the specific cartoons included or want to compare this release to modern DVD/Blu-ray sets, I can help find more details. The Art Of Tom And Jerry: Volume One - Animated Views

Although this series is rarely seen today, Volume III preserves it in its entirety, complete with Scott Bradley's unmistakable theme music (though actual scoring duties on these shorts were taken over by Eugene Poddany).

To the average viewer, a Tom and Jerry cartoon is a chaotic ballet of anvils, explosions, and screaming. To an archivist, it is a symphony of inked cels, painted backgrounds, and optical soundtracks. The LaserDisc format, specifically the CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) standard, offered two things that VHS and even early DVDs could not: They unbind the rotting glue of 1990s Japanese pressings

The Chuck Jones era represents a fascinating and often misunderstood chapter in the franchise's history. After William Hanna and Joseph Barbera left MGM to begin their prolific television output, the studio experimented with contracting the characters to Czech animator Gene Deitch—a series of shorts so lackluster that they were "all but disowned by the company". In contrast, Jones—who had recently set up his own Tower 12 Productions after the closure of the Warner Bros. cartoon outfit—was hired to redesign the famous cat and mouse duo for a revamped series.

Unlike standard "Best of" collections, The Art of Tom and Jerry (often cataloged as ML102359 in LDDB) was a box set designed for the connoisseur. The archive typically spans four to six double-sided discs (CAV format), containing nearly every classic theatrical short from the Hanna-Barbera era (1940–1958), plus the lesser-known Gene Deitch and Chuck Jones eras.

The character of Mammy Two-Shoes, the maid/homeowner voiced originally by Lillian Randolph, has been a focal point of censorship in modern broadcasts. In later TV airings and DVD releases, her character was either completely redubbed with an Irish accent or digitally replaced entirely with a white woman. The Laserdisc archive retained Lillian Randolph’s original vocal performances and the character's original animation, preserving the controversial history rather than erasing it. 3. Scott Bradley's Audio in Pristine Quality