Jay North: 11 Not-So-Mischievous Facts About the ‘Dennis the Menace’ Star

There have been a lot of cute kids on television over the years, but one of the cutest — and most iconic — from the Golden Age of TV is undoubtedly Jay North, star of 1959 to 1963's Dennis the Menace .

Jay North brought the happy-go-lucky Dennis Mitchell to life in 146 episodes of the show based on the one-panel comic strip from Hank Ketchum, yet as it turns out, life for the youngster behind-the-scenes was anything but, the experience of it all emotionally scarring him for much of his life. As such, it turned him into a kind of statistic along with numerous other young performers ultimately ruined by show business.

Geoffrey Mark, a friend of Jay North's as well as a stage performer, an Emmy winner, author and the ultimate — our word, not his — pop culture historian, points out that his own career didn't start until he was a little older than Jay, feeling the burden to "deliver" at about 15 and that he had to work as hard as the adults did, because he was doing theater.

"There was not any kind of protection for me in the theater," he says, "so you saw everything, heard everything and grew up very quickly. I had to. Jay North didn't have to. Meaning that things didn't have to happen the way they did. Had his mother been proactive, Jay's time on the set could have been pleasant. Still work, but fun work, because you are born with this talent that wants to be used. But if the people on set are using your talent and the people at home are using you for money, your entire life is getting used and you are nobody's priority. Meaning that your happiness is no one's priority."

It's his view that unless you had the kind of parent who is intervening by being on set all the time, in the way that Ron Howard's father was on The Andy Griffith Show , to make sure the young performer gets playtime, is not talked down to, doesn't hear cursing all around him and so on, it's not going to work out too well.

"Jay didn't have anyone doing that for him," Geoffrey explains. "The child actors who I think are very successful — Ron Howard, Stan and Barry Livingston from My Three Sons — were people whose parents didn't live off their kids' incomes, didn't see themselves as celebrities because of their child. They realized the child had talent and allowed the child to take that talent and do something with it.

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"There are people," he continues, "like Elinor Donahue, who breezed through it, and on the same show, Father Knows Best , the other two kids — Bill Gray and Lauren Chapin — are scarred for life, bitter about their childhoods, not happy about how they were portrayed on camera, etc. It wasn't that Screen Gems, the studio behind Dennis , was evil; they had shows with a lot of kid actors on them, but the kids who came through with flying colors had, again, parents who were involved to their child's benefit. Jay was constantly made aware that a hundred people's incomes were relying on him hitting his marks, saying his lines and being good at it. That's a huge burden to give a child."

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1. His Early Days Were Much More Optimistic

Born August 3, 1951 in Hollywood, from childhood Jay Waverly North did not have things easy, his father being an alcoholic and his parents separating when he was only 4-years-old (and that point being the last time he ever laid his eyes on his dad). Dorothy, his mother, began working at the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists' West Coast office. She was able to use her position to get Jay on the local Cartoon Express kid's show, which resulted in a talent agent signing him up.

2. Things began to move quickly in the career of Jay North

That talent agent was able to score some commercial work for Jay, which led to guest appearances on series like The Detectives , Wanted: Dead or Alive , The George Gobel Show and 77 Sunset Strip .

3. Competition for the part of Dennis the Menace was fierce

Speaking to the media in the early 1970s, Jay North reflected of the audition process for Dennis the Menace , "There were about 500 boys at the tryouts. They had dyed blond hair and wore denim overalls. We each had a three-minute screen test and I think I was excited and happy when I found out I won."

What eluded him was the reality that winning meant that he would be spending eight hours a day surrounded by mostly adults in the studio. "It was lonely," he said in retrospect.

Adds Geoffrey Mark, "Jay was either blessed or burdened with being a beautiful young child who was smart and had talent. He beat incredible odds in getting cast as Dennis, because Screen Gems had to approve him, the character's creator, Hank Ketchum, had to approve him and there was a huge vetting set of circumstances for anyone to play the part."

As it turns out, Ketchum for his part was all aboard, telling the Petaluma Argus-Courier in 1987, "He excelled in the role of Dennis the Menace . They couldn't have found anyone better to play the part."

4. There were changes made to Dennis Mitchell and Jay North

If you were to see Jay North's portrayal of Dennis Mitchell in the pilot and compare it to the rest of the series, you'd notice quite a difference. "In the pilot," says Geoffrey, "Dennis is purposefully doing mischief. His attitude is, 'I want what I want and I'm going to get what I want, and I don't care who this hurts.'

"Hank Ketchum did not like that. Dennis had to be innocent. Dennis had to believe that everything he did was for somebody else's good. Nothing malicious there. I don't know why they gave up the idea of him having his own dog, but they gave [next door neighbor] Mr. Wilson the dog."

Physically, Jay North had to go through some changes as well. "To match the comic strip," explains Geoffrey, "they bleached Jay's hair out. He wasn't a natural blond. Jay actually had medium brown hair."

On top of all of that, the characters on the show were, in many ways, starting at ground zero in terms of fleshing them out as human beings, because, " Dennis the Menace was a one-panel comic strip; it wasn't even a series of panels that led to a punchline. It was all there in one panel, like Hazel or The Addams Family ."

5. There wasn't much protection for Jay North from The Coogan Law

Back in the 1920s, Jackie Coogan — who television viewers would later know as Uncle Fester on the 1964 to 1966 television series The Addams Family — was a tremendously successful child actor, who made a lot of money. Tragically, by the time his tenure as a kid actor was over, he discovered that he was broke, his parents having squandered his earnings. Taking them to court, the result was "The Coogan Law."

"What that meant," notes Geoffrey, "is that 20% of a child star's earnings were supposed to be held aside for them. In the case of Jay North, his mother lived on the other 80%, but didn't want to or couldn't handle being on the set with him, so it was an aunt and uncle who were there. And for some reason, many families of kid actors decided that they were now celebrities and they were now going to throw their weight around — not to help him, but to help themselves. I believe some of his salary was siphoned off to them for doing this."

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6. Child labor laws were ignored

The way child labor laws in Hollywood were set up, a young actor was only supposed to be on set four hours a day with an additional four hours allotted for schooling. That's if the laws are being enforced, otherwise the kid is being forced to work as hard as the adults around him.

The people responsible for Jay on set were Hal and Marie Hopper, the aforementioned aunt and uncle, who were nothing short of cruel to him. And while there's no question that that was true, there's a disparity on who was more at blame for the abuse Jay suffered. Listening to the actor himself in later years, it was squarely on the Hoppers, but based on conversations Geoffrey Mark had with him, the buck stops — or at the very least is split — with Dorothy North (more on her later).

Expressed a clearly emotional Jay North, "If I didn't live up to my aunt's expectations, she would physically abuse me. I used to wake up every morning wondering, 'Do I have to spend another day with this woman?' I would do a scene, come off set and everybody said, 'Hey, you did a great job.' From her I would get a slap across the face, taken into the dressing room and given a verbal tongue lashing or spanking. She made life a living hell for the whole four years."

And people around him may have suspected, but couldn't do anything. "They were careful with the abuse, because he couldn't get bruises, he couldn't have sick days and so on, because he had to be on the set five days a week for however many weeks a year his seasons lasted," Geoffrey details. "Jay was good at what he did; he played Dennis beautifully, and it's not like the adult actors around him didn't care. They did, but adult actors who are not the star of the show, don't have a whole lot of clout on the set."

Jay North himself reflected that it was obvious he wasn't happy, and that the only time he was truly outgoing was when the cameras were rolling. Otherwise, he was introverted, identifying strongly with a film titled Village of the Damned : "It's about these children," he said, "who have this power to look at people and take control of their minds and have them do horrible things to themselves. I wanted to do that. I wanted to hurt people and cause them the pain that they were causing me."

7. Dennis the Menace was canceled after four seasons

The Dennis the Menace series produced 146 episodes over the course of four seasons before it was canceled. Like Leave It to Beaver , part of that cancelation may have had something to do with the age of its leading man.

"The show was on Sunday nights," says Geoffrey. "It's on right after Lassie and right before The Ed Sullivan Show . I mean, what a protected place to have your show be, but it did get get canceled, largely because Jay was going through puberty. As one person on the show quipped, 'We're going to have to start calling him Mr. Dennis the Menace.'"

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8. Life beyond Dennis Mitchell

There was a certain relief in the show coming to an end, but now Jay was saddled with the challenge of finding additional work. He did so, making a number of guest appearances on television shows in the 1960s, Then, in 1966, he was cast in the film Maya , described by its writer, Stirling Silliphant, as being "about the love of a boy for a father who is missing, and the love of an Indian boy for an elephant which authorities are trying to take away. Maya is told through the eyes of two teenagers as they travel around on a search.”

Shot in India, a year later it was turned into a single-season television series with Jay North reprising his role of Terry Bowen. As with so much else, there was disappointment with this project as well for the actor, and not just due to the premature cancelation.

Says Geoffrey, "He landed on his feet with Maya , and that blew up in his face. Think about it: here you are, a known child star with a track record, and now you're a good looking, well-built teenage young man and you get on a show, you turn on the TV set to watch the first episode on the air only to discover that your voice has been dubbed over by somebody else. That hurt Jay terribly and the show didn't have a long run. It's barely remembered today."

9. Jay North was feeling lost

For all intents and purposes, Jay North's career came to a halt. There was some voice over work in animation, most notably as Bamm-Bamm Rubble in the animated series The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show , but not a lot else. He detailed that in his early 20s the problem was obvious: "People took a look at me as a grown young man with lean features and only saw the 7-year-old tow-headed kid with a cowlick. Even though I was grown and looking different, people in the TV and movie industry still saw me as a kid. It was very frustrating to deal with.”

He turned away from his past and joined the U.S. Navy, but found no solace there as others would abuse him for his child actor background, ultimately driving him out of the service.

Which is when, Geoffrey says, the impact of his mother continued to wear on him from his childhood and teenage years. "Jay was so frightened of his mother, of her response to any sort of reportage of behavior she would not approve of, he paid for it daily. And that constant disapproval led to mental illness. I think he just couldn't reconcile being an adult male who should have his own things to do and his own thoughts and his own tastes and his own life. He never really had that, because if it wasn't his mother, it was the women in his life, because that's what he knew."

10. He eventually moved to Florida to work in the penal system

Crushed by the way he's been treated by Hollywood and his family, Jay North relocated to Florida and began working in the prison system, which may have tapped into those fantasies he had regarding Village of the Damned .

"One year, for my birthday or for Christmas, he sent me a gift by mail: The Book of Executions ," Geoffrey shakes his head. "So he's had this fantasy that he could go backwards in time and punish the people who did him wrong. I think all of us have those fantasies — we'd love to go back and say something, kick them in the knees, slap them across the face ... something. But it's why the prison mentality attracted Jay, because he could at least be around people who were getting punished. And in some way, he felt vindicated."

11. Jay North was close to suicide

In a sense, the thing that saved Jay North's life is the fact that fellow child actor, Rusty Hammer — one of the kids on the 1953 to 1964 series Make Room for Daddy — committed suicide in 1990, this a decade later after the death of 18-year-old Anissa Jones, who played Buffy on Family Affair . Fearing the same thing could happen, Paul Peterson, of The Donna Reed Show , who had begun the organization A Minor Consideration as a means of support for child actors, reached out to him.

Admitted Jay, "I was in the same depressed state that Rusty was. I figured if it could happen to him, then it could to me. I mean, I had been contemplating suicide, too. If I'd kept guns in the house, I probably wouldn't be here now."

In his later years, Jay North managed to find some level of peace through therapy, getting married and becoming a stepfather to three. Unfortunately, now at 72, he is battling cancer, which moves Geoffrey Mark to ask readers of this article to "pray for him. Just keep good, healthy thoughts for him."

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