Leo the Lion is the mascot for the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and one of its predecessors, Goldwyn Pictures, featured in the studio's production logo, which was created by the Paramount Studios art director Lionel S. Reiss.
Since 1924 (when the studio was formed by the merger of Samuel Goldwyn's studio with Marcus Loew's Metro Pictures and Louis B. Mayer's company), there have been around five different lions used for the MGM logo (although two other lions were used for MGM's two-strip Technicolor films in the late 1920s and early '30s). These lions include Tanner, and Leo, the current (and officially seventh) lion. Tanner was used on all Technicolor films and MGM cartoons (including the Tom and Jerry series), and in use on the studio logo for 22 years (Leo has been in use since 1957, a total of 55 years and counting). However, when the MGM animation department, which had closed in 1958, reopened with the Chuck Jones-directed Tom and Jerry shorts in 1963, these shorts used Tanner in the opening sequence rather than Leo, who had already been adapted onto the studio logo and the Gene Deitch-directed Tom and Jerry cartoons from 1960-62.
Famous quotes containing the words leo and/or lion:
“A man in the house is worth two in the street.”
—Mae West, U.S. actor, screenwriter, and Leo McCarey. Ruby Carter (Mae West)
“Here in the centre stands the glass. Light
Is the lion that comes down to drink. There
And in that state, the glass is a pool.
Ruddy are his eyes and ruddy are his claws
When light comes down to wet his frothy jaws”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)