I’ve always wanted to write about the annual top ten lists that Motion Picture Herald used to have for short subjects, but somehow I never got around to it. Now I have.

As someone who grew up on countdown shows like American Top 40, I was pleasantly surprised forty years ago to learn that there used to be top-ten lists for Golden Age Cartoons — and in real time. From 1939 to 1971, Several trade magazines for exhibitors – BoxOffice, Showman’s Trade Reviews and particularly Motion Picture Herald — had an annual top-ten lists of “Money-Making” short subjects.

Some of the series making the lists each year were live-action, as in Pete Smith Specialties, but most series were animated. Some writings about Bugs Bunny note that the series Bugs Bunny Specials topped the list each year from 1945 to 1960. I looked over the lists when I was in college thirty years ago, and I noticed that exhibitors expressed preferences for series in ways that seemed detrimental to the theatrical cartoon industry — especially after the decline of the movie industry began in earnest in the 1950s.

Focusing in on Motion Picture Herald, the best year for animation in the list was 1956. Eight of the ten series were animated. Walter Lantz’s Cartunes were in 10th place. Paramount’s Popeye was at #8, Merrie Melodies-Looney Tunes at #6, MGM CinemaScope Cartoons at #5, MGM Cartoons at #4, UPA’s Mister Magoo at #3, Walt Disney Cartoons at #2, and Bugs Bunny topping the list. By then, television had helped to put live-action shorts out of business, thus leaving exhibitors with cartoons by default. Moreover, nearly every studio actively making short cartoons had a series in the list that year. Terrytoons did not, and in fact between 1940 and 1957 it did not make the list at all.

Fast-forward to 1961. MGM, Disney, and UPA no longer produced theatricals, and Paramount replaced new Popeye films with reissues. That year, seven series made the list. MGM’s rereleases of Tom and Jerry cartoons not only made the list but displaced new Bugs Bunny cartoons in the top spot. Other reissues in the list were MGM’s miscellaneous Gold Medal Reprints (#10) and old Disney cartoons (#3). Among current series, Bugs was at #2​, Melodies-Tunes at #4, Lantz Cartunes at #6, and Terrytoons at #8. The following year, there were seven cartoon series on the list. It was almost identical to the previous list, except that reissues of Popeye displaced Gold Medal Reprints.

This is where the detriment comes in. In the lists of 1961 and 1962, reissues were popular. That was good news for film distributors but not for active theatrical animation studios. Poor Paramount was still making cartoons, but they were not as popular as the Popeye series it no longer produced.

Former MGM co-directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were toiling away at Columbia with Loopy De Loop but competed with themselves via the Tom and Jerry reissues. The lists from these years prove the points of writers saying that distributors closed studios when they learned they could make nearly as much money from reruns as with new cartoons.

Perhaps the saddest list of all is from 1971 — the final list. Eight series made the list. However, at the time, only Lantz and DePatie-Freleng made new theatrical cartoons, and between them were only five series: Cartunes, Pink Panther, Roland and Rattfink, the Ant and the Aardvark, and Tijuana Toads. Of these active series, only Pink Panther made the list that year—at #2. The rest of the list consists of reissues of Melodies-Tunes at #10, DePatie-Freleng’s Inspector at #7, Magoo at #6, Bugs at #5, Tom and Jerry at #4, Disney cartoons at #3, and Warner Brothers’ Road Runner at #1. Lantz’s complete shutout meant that none of his new cartoons made as much money for exhibitors as reissues, despite his use of longtime characters like Woody Woodpecker and Chilly Willy. Small wonder that both Lantz and Terrytoons closed their doors for good the following year.

All in all, the lists are a good resource for anyone looking at the age of theatrical animation from more of a business lens.