Cartoonist. Born Seattle, Washington, March 14, 1920.
Died Carmel, California, May 31, 2001.
It was Hank Ketcham's own son who inspired one of the most
famous youngsters in the history of comics. Ketcham's first
wife, Alice, burst into his studio one day, furious that
their 4-year-old son, Dennis, had wrecked his bedroom when
he was meant to be taking a nap. "Your son Dennis is
a menace!" she yelled.
Months later, in March 1951, "Dennis the Menace"
was first syndicated. Within three years, it was appearing
in 250 newspapers, read by 30 million people worldwide.
(Coincidentally, a British brat of the same name and title
debuted in the "Beano" comic only a few days after
Ketcham's creation was unleashed. He would also go on to
long-running, if less global, success.)
Ketcham's Dennis was a wide-eyed trouble-maker, whose innocent
one-liners -- delivered whether at the dinner table with
his long-suffering parents ("Steak again? Can't we
afford hot dogs once in a while?") or buying scarey
Hallowe'en masks with his precocious neighbour ("Not
that one, Margaret! You want one that'll make ya look WORSE!")
-- proved more endless than expected. "I don't see
how it can last," one editor had predicted. "There's
only so much you can say about a five-year old kid."
Fifty years later, Dennis's misadventures could be seen
in 48 countries and 19 languages. Ketcham would draw a new
strip 365 times a year without repeating himself (though
he admitted that he might have inadvertently re-used a few
joke). "It's a joyful pursuit realising that you're
trying to ease the pain of front-page news or television,"
he said.
Always an aspiring cartoonist, Ketcham dropped out of university
in 1938 to begin a career in animation. At Walt Disney Productions,
he would work on such films as "Pinocchio" (1940),
"Fantasia" (1941) and "Bambi" (1942).
During World War II, he worked as a photographic specialist
with the US Naval Reserve, drawing his first comic strip,
"Half Hitch", for a service newspaper. (He would
revive this strip for a few years in the 1970s.)
After the war, he moved to California to focus on freelance
cartooning. The success of Dennis would prove both immediate
and unprepared. As popular comic strips tend to do, Dennis's
adventures had numerous spin-offs: books, a musical play,
even a Dennis the Menace Playground in Monterey, California.
It led to a 1959 TV show (starring Joy North as Dennis)
and a 1993 feature film (with Walter Matthau as his unfortunate
neighbour, Mr Wilson).
Yet while Dennis the cartoon character remained unchanged,
constantly five years old, the real Dennis grew up embarrassed
by his claim to fame. His mother died of a drug overdose
when he was 12, and he moved to Switzerland with his father,
where he experienced schooling difficulties. He later served
in Vietnam, suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, and
lost contact with the elder Ketcham -- though his room was
reportedly filled with "Dennis the Menace" merchandise.
In the 1980s, Ketcham hired Ron Ferdinand and Marcus Hamilton
as his assistants on "Dennis the Menace". By 1995,
he had officially retired, and the daily strip has since
been produced by Hamilton (under Ketcham's signature).
Even for Ketcham, it was time to give "Dennis"
a rest. "This little slave driver has kept my nose
to the drawing board continuously," he once said, "while
doing nothing himself but annoy the neighbours, startle
his parents, confound his teachers and in general have himself
a rousing good time."
After the death of his first wife, Ketcham's second marriage
ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife Rolande
and three children, Dennis, Scott and Dania.
