Former magazine cartoonist who joined MGM in 1937 after an application to the Disney studios was unsuccessful. With fellow MGM employee William Hanna, Barbera earned a place in animation history by creating the ever-popular, ever-violent, but everlasting "Tom and Jerry" characters in 1940 and producing more than one hundred of the often delightful cat-and-mouse shorts over the next two decades, seven of which earned Oscars for Best Animated Short.

Hanna and Barbera were appointed heads of the MGM cartoon department in 1955 and, when the department was cut two years later, left in order to set up Hanna-Barbera productions. The company was a huge success, turning out limited-animation series such as "The Flintstones" and "Yogi Bear" directly for TV.

After enjoyed a highly prolific period of producing animated series for TV (mostly the Saturday morning children's audience), the team re-entered the feature film market in 1990 with the release of the full-length animated film, "The Jetsons", which they co-directed as well.