DVD extra: First season of 'Dennis the Menace'

By Steve Jones, USA TODAY

All Dennis Mitchell ever wanted to do was help people. All that he ever seemed to do was cause trouble. The compulsive tornado of a child that the late Hank Ketchum introduced in the comic strips in 1951 was brought to life on TV eight years later by Jay North.

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  Shout! Factory/Hank Ketcham Enterprises

  Jay North played Dennis the Menace for four seasons on TV, then outgrew the role.

Shout! Factory/Hank Ketcham Enterprises

Jay North played Dennis the Menace for four seasons on TV, then outgrew the role.

The new five-disc Dennis the Menace: Season One (2011, Shout! Factory, not rated, $30) presents, for the first time on DVD, all 32 uncut episodes. They chronicle the misadventures of the rascally tyke who constantly exasperates his kindly neighbor, "Good Ol' Mr. Wilson" (Joseph Kearns) and tries the patience of loving parents Henry (Herbert Anderson) and Alice Mitchell (Gloria Henry). Dennis brought his brand of chaos to an otherwise orderly '50s suburban setting with tree-lined streets, white picket fences and mothers who did the vacuuming in dresses and pearls.

Dennis' antics had effects that he never intended or even realized that they had. When he sneaked out to go to the movies after his parents had left him home with a sitter, Mr. Wilson investigates a prowler, who is actually Dennis slipping back in.

In another episode, he and his friend Tommy (Billy Booth) cause confusion when they re-erect a fallen signpost with the street names in the wrong direction.

A recurring theme is Dennis finding a way to inadvertently ruin Mr. Wilson's beloved flower garden.

There are times, though, when Dennis actually does learn a lesson. In one episode, he tries to fix his grandpa up with perennial spinster Miss Cathcart (Mary Wickes). Grandpa wants no part of her and makes himself scarce around the house. When Dennis's playmate, Margaret (Jeannie Russell), looks for him to play dolls with her, he's surprised to find that he's not the only one ducking an amorous female by hiding out in the closet.

Henry and Alice were hardly disciplinarians, even though all of the adults who had mishaps with Dennis probably wished they had been. Most times, his interpretations of their lectures were encapsulated in a furrowed brow, a shrug of the shoulders, and his signature expression, "Jeepers."

In the movie episode, they burn up the phone lines trying to find someone to watch Dennis so they can have a night out. But Dennis has such a reputation, no sitter ever comes back.

Jay North outgrew the role of the angel boy who kept a slingshot in the back pocket of his coveralls after four seasons, and the show was canceled. He tried to stick with acting, but he had been typecast as Dennis. He starred in Maya, a short-lived TV series set in India in the late 1960s, and in the early 1970s, he was the voice a teenage Bamm-Bamm Rubble on The Flintstonesspinoff, The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.

The DVD bonus features include new conversations with Gloria Henry and Jeannie Russell, original promos and The Donna Reed Show episode "Donna Decorates" from 1960, in which North and Kearns appear in character as Dennis and Mr. Wilson.

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