THE HISTORY OF DENNIS THE MENACE

 

Hank Ketcham's autobiography featuring him drawing his greatest creation, Dennis.

Hank Ketcham grew up with a fascination for cartoons; beginning with the comic strips in newspapers and extending to theatrical shorts. Wanting to draw professionally, he headed for Los Angeles in 1938 and attempted to join Walt Disney Studios. Denied, former classmate and animator Vernon Witt got him a job as an animator for Walter Lantz Productions. After 14 months, he was finally able to get a job with Disney and worked on such notable projects as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad and shorts starring Donald Duck. During World War II, Ketcham was drafted and became a photographic specialist in the U.S. Navy Reserve tasked with creating sales and training materials for the War Bond program. He created the character Seaman Hook, which became the subject of four cartoons (one made by Lantz). With spare time in the evenings for cartooning, he began a camp newspaper strip called Half Hitch, which followed a short, lecherous sailor and his friends in pantomime single-panel gags. The strip ran in The Saturday Evening Post from 1943-45.

The first strip.

After the war, Ketcham settled in Carmel, California with his family and worked as a freelance cartoonist. He first attempted to create a newspaper strip called Little Joe, which would have been a multi-panel gag strip about a mischievous little boy. It ultimately ended up being rejected. He revisited the idea, however, when his first wife, Alice, burst into his studio declaring “Your son is a menace!” after he trashed his bedroom instead of taking a nap. He hastily whipped up 12 cartoons based on his son and Dennis the Menace was born. Ketcham submitted his new strip to New York-based Post-Hall Syndicate (later Publishers-Hall Syndicate) and they accepted. The strip made its debut on March 12, 1951, coincidentally the very same day that a similar yet unrelated strip debuted in the United Kingdom, also called Dennis the Menace (however, the UK Dennis was more of a vicious prankster). While Ketcham drew the daily strip through his entire run, he did employ gag ghost writers including Bob Harmon, Al Batt, Norman Maurer, Jerry Bendsen, Carson Demmans, Steve Dickenson, Bob Saylor and Dana Snow. A full-color Sunday strip debuted that January by request of his editors, done by artist Al Wiseman and writer Fred Toole. The strip initially appeared in only 16 newspapers, but by 1953 that had grown to 193 in the United States and 52 internationally and seen by over 30 million readers.

The Mitchells: Dennis, Alice and Henry.

Dennis lived in a middle-class suburb of Wichita, Kansas (which earned Ketcham the title of honorary Mayor of Wichita) with his father, aeronautical engineer Henry, stay-at-home mother, Alice, and dog, Ruff. Ketcham used his family’s names in the strip, giving them the surname Mitchell, and modeled the parents on his wife and himself. Dennis was full of youthful energy and enthusiasm and had a good heart—it’s just that he tended to cause more trouble than he realized with his antics. The frequent victim these antics was their next-door neighbor, cranky and cantankerous retired mail carrier George Wilson, whom he considered his adult best friend. George was driven crazy by Dennis often, although he was secretly fond of the boy. His wife, Martha, was more openly fond of Dennis and was often oblivious to the suffering her husband sometime endured.

Mock-up of a strip featuring Dennis and Mr. Wilson.

Dennis had friends his own age as well. Tommy Anderson was his best friend until he stopped appearing in the strip. Joey McDonald was Dennis’ timid, loyal, younger friend who was often an accomplice in Dennis’ schemes. Margaret Wade was a glasses-wearing redhead who had a self-important demeanor and was certain she would marry Dennis when they were old enough; much to Dennis’ chagrin. Gina Gillotti was a fiercely independent tomboy with whom Dennis is unaware he had a crush on; he just knew he enjoyed her company more than Margaret’s. Jackson was Ketcham’s attempt at introducing a Black character to the cast in the 1960s; however, because his design verged on racial caricature, the character was not received well and resulted in protests in several cities before he eventually disappeared from the strip.

Dennis delivering a burn to Margaret.

Because the strip was inspired by Dennis Ketcham, it remained largely grounded and focused on slightly embellished slice of life stories. The only real deviation was during the country’s bicentennial where the Dennis characters were depicted as living in New England in the days leading up to the American Revolution. Ketcham eventually retired from the strip in 1994, with his former assistants Marcus Hamilton and Ron Ferdinand taking over its production. They were eventually joined by Scott Ketcham, his son by his third wife. Ketcham, while exploring other creative endeavors like painting, remained a consultant on the strip until his death in 2001.

Dennis imparting his wisdom on girls to Tommy.

The strip won Ketcham a Reuben Award in 1953. That year, Dennis made the transition into supplemental original comic books and collections published by Standard Comics/Pines Comics, Halden-Fawcett, CBS Consumer Publishing and Marvel Comics through the 1980s. A special Bible-focused comic series was commissioned by World Books Inc. (now HarperCollins) in 1977. Ketcham and sculptor Arch Garner designed The Dennis the Menace Playground that opened in 1956 in El Estero Park in Monterey, California. In 1958, Ketcham established Dennis Play Products, Inc. to distribute toys based on the strip. Dennis was used in advertising campaigns for A&W Restaurants in the 1960s, and then for Dairy Queen from 1971-2001. But, most notably, Dennis made the transition to television and later film beginning in 1959 that would lead him to Saturday mornings…