NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
The first people to notice that Joseph Barbera (born March 24, 1911) had a knack for drawing were the Catholic sisters who taught him in his New York City grade school. When they needed artwork for the classroom or illustrated teaching aids, the sisters turned to him. Unfortunately for them, they turned to Barbera so often that his mother eventually asked them to stop, explaining that his other studies were suffering. Barbera, however, never did stop.
After graduating from high school, he worked at a bank by day while focusing on his artistic pursuits at night. In 1932, his persistence was rewarded with a job as a cartoonist at Van Beuren Studios. Five years later, he made the move to Hollywood for a job with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). There, he found himself sharing office space with another illustrator, William Hanna, and a partnership that would last more than 60 years began.
Over the next six decades, first at MGM and later through their own studio, Hanna–Barbera, the pair produced some of the most successful cartoon series of the 20th century: Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, The Huckleberry Hound Show, Scooby Doo, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, and many more.
Surprisingly, despite winning seven Academy Awards and eight Emmys for his work, Barbera claimed that the work of which he was most proud was his series of animated Bible stories.
“It took me 17 years to get it done,” he said in a 1993 interview with Catholic News Service, explaining that the studios were convinced cartoons about salvation history would “cause too many problems.”
Nevertheless, every year without fail, Barbera pled his case. Finally, in 1985, with the help of Taft Broadcasting, Barbera’s The Greatest Adventure: Stories of the Bible was made for direct–to–home–video release. Within seven years, it had brought in more than $20 million. Barbera died in 2006. He was 95.
