E-mails are reminding me of another duo that went by the name of Tom and Jerry…the singing pair who later reverted to their real names of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. They were "Tom and Jerry" for a couple years…and apparently, they even wrote most of their songs together then, whereas the later Simon & Garfunkel hits (the important ones, at least) were written wholly by Paul. Art was Tom and Paul was Jerry, in keeping with the obvious sense that, in any Tom and Jerry team, Tom has to be the taller of the two. They had ten or so modestly-received records, then broke up, in part because Paul decided he didn't want to be half of the new Everly Brothers. He wanted to be all of the new Elvis Presley, so he went off and recorded a song on his own. Thereafter, they recorded with others under an array of phony names before finally getting together again. Interesting that they didn't do anything all that memorable until they started being, more or less, themselves.
My pal Buzz Dixon informs me that the original, 19th century meaning of "Tom and Jerry" was to go drinking, brawling and carousing, and he directs my attention to this dictionary page on the subject.