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Jay North, who as a child actor played the cowlicked star of the sitcom "Dennis the Menace" in the late 1950s and early '60s, the peak of an entertainment career that endeared him to millions of TV viewers but by his account left him with the scars of a miserable youth, died April 6 at his home in Lake Butler, Florida. He was 73.
His death was confirmed by Jeannie Russell, an actress who played Mr. North's on-screen playmate Margaret Wade, and who remained his friend for decades. The cause was colon cancer, she said.
Mr. North was 8 when he burst to fame in 1959 as the titular protagonist of "Dennis the Menace," a CBS comedy based on the comic strip by Hank Ketcham. Dressed in a striped shirt and overalls, with tousled golden hair, the young actor earned an enduring place in TV history as the ultimate mischief-maker.
In nearly 150 episodes over four seasons, little Dennis Mitchell brought unending vexation - but also amusement - to his parents (played by Gloria Henry and Herbert Anderson) and their neighbor, George Wilson (Joseph Kearns).
"Jeepers, Mr. Wilson!" Dennis would often exclaim, one of his signature lines.
The good-natured fun of "Dennis the Menace" was revived for later generations in a 1993 movie version starring Mason Gamble as Dennis, Walter Matthau as Mr. Wilson and Joan Plowright as his wife, Martha.
When the sitcom ended in 1963, Mr. North was just shy of 12. But any semblance of a regular childhood, in his telling, had for him ended long before.
Mr. North's mother, Dorothy, a secretary for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, told The Washington Post in 1978 that she did not "push" her son to work in entertainment and that he asked her to help him land a role on television.
Because she was a single parent, busy during the daytime with her job, an aunt and uncle served as Mr. North's custodians on the set of "Dennis the Menace."
In a 1993 interview with the Los Angeles Daily News, Mr. North alleged that his aunt abused him, physically as well as emotionally. If a scene took more than a take or two, he said, he would be "threatened and then whacked." His aunt took care "never to hit me in front of anyone else, and in places on my body where it wouldn't show."
According to Mr. North, "everyone was aware of what was going on." But "no one knew how much pain and fear I was hiding inside," he continued. "I was great at covering it up."
Mr. North appeared in a handful of movies, including "Maya" (1966), about an American boy who escapes into the jungle of India after a conflict with his father, and also starred in a TV spin-off. He did voice work for the shows "Arabian Knights," "Here Comes the Grump," "The Banana Splits Adventure Hour" and "The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show" in the late 1960s and early 1970s. But after "Dennis the Menace," he became, in his description, a "professional has-been."
Mr. North's star turn on the show had severely set back his academic formation - he told the New York Times in 1993 that he sometimes received no more than 20 minutes of schooling per day - though Russell recalled him as an insightful, articulate person despite his lack of formal education.
Mr. North served in the Navy in the 1970s and worked over the years as a corrections officer and in a health-food store.
He credited his mother with setting aside for him his earnings from "Dennis the Menace," which started at $500 and peaked at $3,500 per episode, a reserve that allowed him to forge a degree of independence in adulthood.
"I'm finally starting a new life and burying Dennis Mitchell," he told the Daily News. "I need very badly to again be Jay North - whoever that is."
Jay Waverly North, an only child, was born in Los Angeles on Aug. 3, 1951. He had naturally reddish hair, not the platinum blond locks - achieved with dye - that "Dennis the Menace" fans came to know. His father left the family when Mr. North was 4, according to the Daily News.
Mr. North told the Times that he asked his mother to help him obtain a spot on "The Engineer Bill Show," a children's program that employed kids as a stage audience. His appearances on the program led to work on TV commercials. An audition for "Dennis the Menace" followed, with Mr. North reportedly beating out 200 boys for the part.
Mr. North made appearances on "The Donna Reed Show," "The Red Skelton Hour," "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," "The Lucy Show" and "My Three Sons," among other programs in the 1960s, and was featured in one 1973 episode of "Lassie."
He lent his voice to an episode of "The Simpsons" in 1999 and had his final role in the 2003 film "Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star."
Mr. North endured profound psychological struggle later in life, isolating himself from the world. He said that the suicide in 1990 of Rusty Hamer, a child actor on "The Danny Thomas Show" in the 1950s and 1960s, persuaded him to seek therapy.
"I was in the same depressed state that Rusty was," Mr. North told the Daily News. "I figured if it could happen to him, then it could to me."
Russell credited Mr. North with helping shape the work of A Minor Consideration, a nonprofit that seeks to support current and former child actors.
Mr. North's early marriages ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife, the former Cindy Hackney, and several stepchildren.
Long after "Dennis the Menace" ended, episodes of the show continued to air in syndication. Mr. North declined to watch them, saying that the experience would be too painful.
The irony of Mr. North's rascally on-screen persona was that he was, in real life, a deeply sensitive boy, Russell said. She recalled that during the filming of one outdoor scene of "Dennis the Menace," the chirping of birds became so loud that a crew member began firing blanks to clear the trees.
When filming was set to resume, Mr. North was missing. He had run off and was hiding, probably behind one of the set's fake houses, Russell said, because he was afraid that the birds had been hurt.
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