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:
“Leo: What was she, a TV groupie? A hooker?
Rob: No, she was not a TV groupie, or a hooker. She’s a cellist. A very funny, pretty, interesting, intelligent, fabulous, vivacious cellist.
Leo: Oh yeah, well, you’d better not see her again.”
—Jonathan Reynolds, screenwriter. Leo (Richard Mulligan)
“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.”
—Bible: Hebrew Isaiah, 11:6.