Tom and Jerry is a Academy-Award winning animated cartoon series of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer short films . They were created , written and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera . Tom and Jerry is an American animated series of theatrical shorts , television shows and specials , feature film , home films created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that centered on a never-ending rivalry between a cat ( Tom ) and a mouse ( Jerry ) whose chases and battles often involved comic violence .