Dennis the Menace

My wife and I watch this together and we both enjoy it. It has lots of good fun in every episode.

I was about the same age as Jay North and I remember vividly watching the 1st show in fall 1959 with my older brother on our table-top RCA-Victor black and white TV. It was on CBS TV (chan 2 in New York City where we grew up). I remember always feeling bad for "GOOD OLD MR Wilson" but I always thought the guy who played the owner of the grocery named Mr Quigley was a sour-puss. One of my favorite ones was the one when Mr Wilson accidentally gave Dennis a very rare coin and Dennis spent it. Of course, Mrs. Wilson was ready to give Mr. Wilson some of his "Nerve Medicine". A good,fun show that we loved. It was followed by other Sunday comedy shows on CBS including "My Favorite Martian" and "Mr Ed".

It was a great TV show! I watch it every chance I get. When I first discovered the show about 12 years ago on Nickelodeon, I thought it was very funny and very unique, A bright boy with a lot of energy who is always wanting to help people out, especially his next door neighbor Mr. Wilson who Dennis drove crazy and quite often got him in trouble. I just could never figure out why his parents didn't punish Dennis more often for some of the trouble he got into. Never the

less, The TV show was funny up until the end of the 3rd season

when Joseph Kearns who played the 1st Mr. Wilson passed away. Joseph Kearns was the best, he played his role as Mr. Wilson

with a real inspiration. Gale Gordon, Who played Mr. Wilson towards the end of the 3rd season and all of the 4th season was good, but he just was not the character that Joseph Kearns was. Another thing you could tell is that Herbert Anderson (Henry Mitchell) got along with and worked better with Joseph Kearns then he did with Gale Gordon. I think it's quite obvious that Herbert Anderson liked working with Joseph Kearns a lot better then he did with Gale Gordon, it comes clear throughout the last season.

Since I was born in 1955, Dennis was one of the first shows I can recall, along with Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best. I even had a few Dennis-themed toys. Whereas Beaver got into trouble for being kind of stupid, Dennis got into it with a kind of sly naiveté -- I always thought he really knew what he was doing. HellOOO Mr. Wilson!! I also used to compare my older sister to Margaret who always wanted Dennis to play dolls with her but she wasn't mean-spirited like Judy Hensler on Leave it to Beaver. I understand Margaret became a doctor as an adult. I was always sad to hear about Jay North's problems being in the entertainment industry. I also remember joining the U.S. Navy hoping to catch a glance of North since I'd heard he was a sailor too. Brings back a lot of memories.

Until it was obvious that Jay North was entering puberty the Dennis The Menace Show ran for four years. After that some of Dennis's antics might have put him in juvenile court;

The only child of the adult Mitchells Herbert Anderson and Gloria Henry, Hank Ketcham's cartoon urchin was played by Jay North who had the right peroxide blond look for the part as Ketcham drew him.

Of course the favorite foil of Dennis was neighbor Joseph Kearns who struck the right note of curmudgeonlyness. There was also Mrs. Wilson who would have been the perfect grandmother if the Wilsons had grandkids, played by Sylvia Field.

This half hour show set in suburban ideal town USA and it had like Mayberry a host of familiar character players who might pop up in recurring roles. When Wilson wasn't around, Dennis menaced the others.

Kearns died during the run so he was replaced by Gale Gordon as brother John Wilson. Another glaring look and slow burn master.

Poor Jay North, his life was truly spoiled by the show. Still he was a television icon for a while.