Jay North has died of colon cancer at age 73. He played Dennis the Menace on TV from 1959 to 1963. He was abused by his horrible aunt who for some reason acted as his guardian on the set. Some years ago, he gave some very angry interviews about his time as a child actor. Made me feel guilty for having ever watched it.
There was an episode of Dennis the Menace I remember seeing, but now I wonder if I really did. My memory was that Dennis had befriended a kid who had recently moved to the United States, perhaps from Latin America. You know how Dennis would say "Jeepers" all the time? The kid asks him in his foreign accent, What is this 'jeepers'? Dennis says, well, it means Jiminy Crickets, or Gee Whiz, and I think he named a couple of other such expressions. And it dawned on me that each one he named was a euphemism for "Jesus" or "Jesus Christ". It seems like the writers must have known this. I had never thought about it before, but they exposed Dennis's constant barely disguised blasphemy.
I had seen him on Dennis the Menace, watched Maya on Canadian TV in the middle of the night, saw Zebra in the Kitchen on TV one afternoon and his R-rated exploitation film, The Teacher. I even saw him on The Dating Game in the episode's original broadcast premiere.
And there was the time, on the Fourth of July---my grandmother was living with us and couldn't go to see fireworks so we set off fireworks in the driveway. I bought some discarded educational films on eBay and showed a patriotic film aimed at kindergarteners or first graders. There were shots of American flags in various public places while Jay North and maybe Margaret O'Brien recited the Pledge of Allegiance several times. I used an extension cord and projected the film on the side of the house to set start things off.
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