THE NEW YORK TIMES – Jay North, who played the well-meaning, trouble-causing protagonist of the popular CBS sitcom “Dennis the Menace” from 1959 to 1963, died on Sunday at his home in Lake Butler, Fla. He was 73.
His death was confirmed by Laurie Jacobson, a friend of Mr. North’s for 30 years. The cause was colorectal cancer, she said.
Mr. North played the mischievous, towheaded Dennis Mitchell, who roamed his neighborhood, usually clad in a striped shirt and overalls, with his friends, often exasperating a neighbor, a retiree named George Wilson, who was played by Joseph Kearns.
Herbert Anderson played Dennis’s father, and Gloria Henry played his mother.
The show, which was adapted from a comic strip by Hank Ketcham, presented an idyllic vision of suburban America as the 1950s gave way to the tumultuous ’60s.
But things were not easy for Mr. North behind the scenes. Many years after “Dennis the Menace” ended, Mr. North said that his acting success had come at the cost of a happy childhood.
In 1993, he told The Los Angeles Daily News that his aunt and uncle had been his caretakers on set because his single mother was working full time. He said his aunt and uncle, who had died by the time of the 1993 interview, had abused him physically and emotionally.
“If it took me more than one or two takes, I would be threatened and then whacked,” he said.
Mr. North said it took the death by suicide at age 42 of Rusty Hamer, who was a child star on “The Danny Thomas Show” in the 1950s and ’60s, to help him re-evaluate his life …
