Hanna and Barbera were first teamed together while working at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation studio in 1939. Their first directorial project was a cartoon entitled "Puss Gets the Boot" ( 1940), which served as the genesis of the popular Tom and Jerry cartoon series. Hanna and Barbera formed Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1944 while working for the studio, and used the side company to work on ancillary projects, including early television commercials and the original opening titles to I Love Lucy.

After an award-winning stint in which they won eight Oscars, MGM when their animation studio in 1957, as it felt it had acquired a reasonable backlog of shorts for re-release. Hanna and Barbera hired most of their MGM unit to work for Hanna-Barbera Productions, which became a full-fledged production company starting in 1957. The decision was made to specialize in television animation, and the studio's first series was " The Ruff & Reddy Show," which premiered on NBC in December 1957. The company never had a building of its own until 1963, when the Hanna-Barbera Studio , located at 3400 Cahuenga Blvd. in West Hollywood, California was opened.