From "Jay North, Child Star of ‘Dennis the Menace,’ Dies at 73/He was best known for playing the towheaded Dennis Mitchell on a sitcom that ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963" (NYT).
April 7, 2025
"In a 1987 episode of the HBO satire series 'Not Necessarily the News,' he played an enraged, violent version of himself obsessed with revenge..."
"... on Hollywood executives who had ignored him, all while wearing Dennis the Menace’s signature overalls and striped shirt."
From "Jay North, Child Star of ‘Dennis the Menace,’ Dies at 73/He was best known for playing the towheaded Dennis Mitchell on a sitcom that ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963" (NYT).
From "Jay North, Child Star of ‘Dennis the Menace,’ Dies at 73/He was best known for playing the towheaded Dennis Mitchell on a sitcom that ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963" (NYT).
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36 comments:
Dennis was the poor man's Beaver.
I dunno how to feel about it. I'm often seeing "celebrities" dying and I have no idea who they are. It used to be because they before my time. But now, there were of my time, but I never knew who they were.
Anyway, early 70s seems a little early to pass on. Sad.
He was born in 1951, just like me.
RIP, Jay North. Dennis had a really enthusiastic approach to everything.
“Dennis was the poor man's Beaver”
On account of…?
Even as a kid, I disliked the show. Jay North's whiny overemoting was just too much to bear.
No wonder Mr. Wilson (Joseph Kearns, a great radio actor for many years) couldn't stand him.
Evolution. RIP
What Wilbur said.
I'm sorry the guy died; RIP and all that. But, good god, he was a terrible actor (yes, even compared to other kid actors). But then, all the acting in those early sitcoms was pretty wretched when you think about it.
I didn't even like the comic strip. I wasn't a parent and I couldn't view this destructive idiot as cute. On the TV show, the child looked much bigger and older than the Dennis in the comic strip. That was even less cute.
Unlike "Leave It to Beaver," it was not a show where kids would identify with the child character. The child's point of view was not there. It was the adults looking at the child, who was supposed to be cute and a terror. They're identifying with something parents experience and they get the exaggeration, or so it was hoped.
I wasn't a Dennis fan either but I felt sorry for how quickly he outgrew the role. It was embarrassing.
Unsustainable!
According to Grok, Jay North was financially secure throughout his life due to his mother’s wise real estate investments of his childhood earnings. Good for mom and good for him for managing his money wisely. He loved horror films so that clip was as appropriate as it was funny. RIP
There was some wordplay a kid made "Look mom it's Dennis the Menace" when he did something that I can't quite reconstruct but was very funny. No rhymes for menace to help remember.
I knew the comic book but not the show.
His career intersected with that of Angel Tompkins in The Teacher (1974), which I saw as a HS senior in the rundown theater that showed “sexploitation” (IMDB description of this flick) movies for teens who had lost their IDs. I thought his life would have to get better after that and I hope it did. (I was only there because it was raining and I needed to wait out the storm.)
Adult comics favorite, that I only saw collected in books, was Crockett Johnson's Barnaby and O'Malley, in the WWII time segment. You can still buy them. I.e. start with the earliest.
It's not my world, but from a distance and over time it looks like the Hollywood mode - which seemed completely normal then - and my now be normal too is something like this:
Children actors & actresses -completely loose your normal childhood but make flash of money. And we willltoo. NBD.
Casting couch - probably a little awkward . . .sure. but you'll make a quick flash of money. And we will too. NBD
Everything looks normal in you own world.
RIP from one Jay to another
This is bringing up all kinds of buried memories. We had the "Dennis the Menace in California" comic book when we did our cross-country vacation trip. Jay North did a movie, "Zebra in the Kitchen." It sounds familiar, and I must have seen it. I wonder if I'd remember it better if I saw it now.
Dennis the Menace was also a much more menacing character in a British comic strip. It was less suburban and grittier and from the looks of it, a bit frightening. Wikipedia says that the US and UK comic strips debuted in the same year, same month, even the same day. Is that a mistake? Was there some coordination or collusion or just an incredible coincidence? [Apparently it was a mistake about the date, though the year and month and possibly week were the same].
It reminds me of Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer, of Our Gang, who ended up in poverty and then shot to death in a business deal gone wrong.
Never saw the show, but I do remember two Dennis the Menace strips that amused me; one was because it was funny; and the other was because of an editing error/caption switch at the Dayton Daily News. The funny line - Dennis coming into his dad's den and asking "how do you get a golf ball out of a gas tank?"
The second - the Dayton Daily News ran Dennis the Menace and The Far Side next to one another on their comics page. The Far Side strip showed three snakes sitting a table eating a meal, while the Dennis the Menace strip showed Dennis and his pal Joey eating sandwiches, with Dennis's mother on the phone looking annoyed. The captions were switched, so the Far Side snakes were saying "Lucky thing I learned to make peanut butter sandwiches or we woulda starved to death by now." And the Dennis the Menace strip? "Oh brother!... Not hamsters again!"
"Dennis was the poor man's Beaver”
There were several sets of shows then - Addams Family and Munsters, Bewitched and Jeannie, Beaver and Dennis - where one was kind of a stripped down version of the other. Smaller cast, less wit and more slapstick.
"I didn't even like the comic strip. I wasn't a parent and I couldn't view this destructive idiot as cute."
I remember Archie Bunker reading the paper and muttering, "Oh, Dennis - you sure are a menace. He's such a rotten kid - I love him "
++ Mr. D
He also narrated the filmed in 1967 (released in 1969) movie The Fantastic Plastic Machine about the revolution within surfing from 10' 35lb surfboards to 7' 10lb surfboards. The Californians had no idea that there was a literal revolution going on. Back in the 1960's information travelled much more slowly. The Californians were shocked at what the witness on the Beaches of Sydney. Jay narrated that filmed shock.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fantastic_Plastic_Machine
I was born in 70, but watched and loved LITB in syndication. I never liked Dennis. I even kinda rooted for his nemisis, Mr.Wilson.
"Dennis was the poor man's Beaver."
Overheard at the Pride Parade.
Also, today that sniper scene would never happen on TV.
The real-life family story behind the comic strip is sad. Dennis's mother left his father (the cartoonist), apparently alleging abuse, and died of a drug overdose when he was 12. His father didn't tell him until after the funeral. The father remarried (supposedly only three weeks later) and moved the family overseas, but then sent Dennis to boarding school in the US. As an adult, Dennis got PTSD in Vietnam, lived a chaotic and somewhat violent life, and almost never spoke to his father. His father's comment was that he only heard from Dennis "when he needed money."
Today, April 7, is International Beaver Day.
For real..
Both the Beav and Dennis shows were pretty drecky IMO.
Love the WATN segment.
The show was about to get really popular again after 1987 when Nickelodeon started running it every day for a couple of years.
I remember the show. It is interesting that the general complaint seems to be the character was an annoying menace. I guess he got it right. However, it wasn't for me either, as I preferred Beaver.
Beaver was far superior.
I enjoyed the Dennis the Menace “Goes to” comic books (Hollywood, Mexico) as a kid.
Dennis had a higher rating than Dobie and Ed Sullivan in 1961.
But then Hazel was 4th after Wagon Train, Bonanza and Gunsmoke.
Dennis’ mom was pretty hot.
"I remember Archie Bunker reading the paper and muttering, "Oh, Dennis - you sure are a menace. He's such a rotten kid - I love him ""
I'm pretty sure that was Homer Simpson.
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