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 and later Gale Gordon. Herbert Anderson played Dennis’s father, and Gloria Henry played his mother.
Dennis winds up causing lots of trouble, usually by accident. In one episode, a truck knocks over a street sign, and Dennis and a friend stand it up — incorrectly. Workmen then dig a gigantic hole, meant to be a pool for a different address, in Mr. Wilson’s yard.
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” (also titled “Make Room for Daddy”) in the 1950s and ’60s, to help him re-evaluate his life.
“I’m finally starting a new life and burying Dennis Mitchell,” Mr. North said in the Daily News interview. “I need very badly again to be Jay North.”
Jay Waverly North Jr. was born on Aug. 3, 1951, in Los Angeles, and grew up there.
He began acting at about age 5 after begging his mother to help him get on “The Engineer Bill Show,” a popular children’s program during the 1950s, also known as “Cartoon Express.”
“The kids were used as a participating stage audience, and I asked her to help me get on the show,” Mr. North told The New York Times in 1993.
He appeared on several episodes of the show, and he also began endorsing products, including Post cereals.
After “Dennis the Menace” ended, Mr. North appeared on the television shows “Wagon Train,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Lucy Show,” “My Three Sons” and “Jericho.”
He had a lead role in the feature film “Maya” (1966), which followed two teenagers who go on an adventure through India astride an elephant. He went on to star in the film’s brief spinoff television series, also titled “Maya.”
Mr. North did voice work as well. He was the voice of Prince Turhan in “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour” and of the teenage Bamm-Bamm Rubble in “The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.” But his acting career fizzled.
Mr. North said he was often typecast and found it challenging to re-establish himself after “Dennis the Menace.” He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1977 and was honorably discharged in 1979.
Moving to Lake Butler, he worked as an officer with the Florida Department of Corrections. In 1993, he married Cindy Hackney, his third wife, who survives him.
Although Mr. North said he came to terms with the role that defined his career, one performance may have been especially cathartic.
