Getting Educated by Miss June Lockhart as we Walk Safe Young America!

Increasingly, I'm finding myself avoiding like the plague Netflix and Max and Hulu and all that other streaming garbage to instead troll through YouTube for anything, anything, that smacks of pre-1990s, non-ironic content.  Content that its makers took seriously, no matter how silly they knew it was.  Content that has real people trying to be actors and failing.  Content that doesn't involve Ryan Gosling or Walton Goggins or that British girl who looks like Bugs Bunny, and that didn't cost tens of millions in laundered drug money (you think these streaming movies and series really cost that much?  You're adorable!).

 

And when I'm hitting YT, my absolute first go-to subscription is Skip Elsheimer's A/V Geeks 16mm Films (and particularly his daily grab-bag A/V Geeks 16mm Lunch compilations), where I can kick back and pretend I'm at Wayne Trail Elementary School again, and it's time for the teacher to cool out in the back of the room while we kids sit rapt, learning about proper hand washing hygiene, cabinet making in colonial America, future key punch operator careers, and a thousand other subjects that were automatically more interesting than what the teacher had to say, merely by being projected onto our silver-backed DA-LITE fold-up screen (I've written before about educational films at Drunk TV--check out this review of one of Skip's awesome compilations).

 

Already knowing the answer (any vintage media lover is a masochist at heart), I've asked some of my grown kids if they watched educational shorts like these when they were in school.  I was of course condescendingly informed that they either watched actual Hollywood movies, or newer documentaries that might have referenced an old Encyclopaedia Britannica or Coronet Films clip...before tearing it apart for gender, racial, religious, ageist, and 37 other biases.  Natch.

 

With each kid now symbiotically joined to a cell phone, it's simply impossible to convey to them how exciting it was to have your teacher suddenly give up the will to live and instead roll a 16mm movie, just so they could get 20 minutes of peace and quiet in the back of the darkened classroom (a "quick snooze" was usually the goal, but I'm not ruling out "snapping one off" when that weird art teacher with the hairy arms would substitute). 

 

After all, these kids can watch anything on their phones, instantaneously, from endless TikTok inanities to Instagram reels to illegally downloaded Hollywood blockbusters.  Why the hell would they care about something like 1976's Walk Safe Young America, from Lee Stanley Films, where hot af crossing guard host June Lockhart blithely slinks around casually warning all those clueless youths that without proper walking etiquette, they are going to get splattered all over the streets.

 

Then again, I'm betting school is just as boring as it ever was, so maybe, just maybe...they might welcome any interruption, particularly if such an interruption comes via a noisy, ridiculously outmoded form of exhibition known as the 16mm film projector (about 10 years ago, when some of my kids for the first time saw a record on a turntable, they marveled at it like those apes gaping at Kubrick's black slab).

 

Okay, so...it's 1975, and America, soon to be dazzled by its own Bicentennial, is lumbering towards a disaster known as James Earl Carter, Jr (a classic serial killer name if there ever was one).  But before the world slips into darkness, young Los Angeles suburbanite transplant Tommy (Shane Stanley), is having a nightmare, crying out for, "Sandy! Sandy!" (when I do that, I'm dreaming about Sandy Duncan, giving me that look).   And who is Sandy?  Sandy is Tommy's disobedient German Shepherd (and a dead ringer for the fleabag from Run, Joe, Run).

 

You see, Sandy, a country dog, didn't know the rules of the 'burbs:  you gotta stop and look both ways before entering the street...which you certainly don't do from between parked cars.  Before you can say, "Ladies and Gentlemen...the Flying Wallendas!" Sandy is airborne, thanks to a sweet red GMC truck (you know that just threw that poor pooch into the air).  And viola:  instant nightmare for Tommy. Mom comes in and reassures a terrified Tommy that Sandy (like Mary Richards) might just make it after all, but just to be sure that Tommy doesn't take a header as well, Mom informs Tommy that two older boys from the school's Safety Patrol are coming for him (uh oh).

 

Just when the story's getting good, though, our "hostess," LAPD Crossing Guard June Lockhart (that's what it says on her patch.  The one on her hat, I mean)  shows up to lay down on us some rules and shit, from the Man.  And just in case Tommy isn't taking things seriously, she gently admonishes him to listen up real close, because the community's real proud of their Safety Patrol, you hear?  You better hear, Tommy.

 

You better hear, Tommy, because merely walking on the sidewalk in your typical L.A. suburb is akin to taking your life into your own hands. Sexy CG June lays it out:  drivers don't have time (or frankly, the interest) to look out for your scrawny asses:  they're looking out for other psycho drivers.  So whether or not you make it home alive is up to you, kid.

 

Potential dangers covered by Miss Lockhart include sirens (the only thing missing from her emphatic, "That siren means, 'Get off the street," is a concluding, "asshole!), red lights (they mean, "Stop," stupid), and homicidal motorcyclists looking to kill kids who hang back from the group (watch him deliberately slow down and head right for that little girl, before kicking over her dolly's carriage).

 

Oddly, Miss Lockhart then checks out of the short for a little bit (I'm betting they promised 8 hours pay, and by lunchtime, someone got a call from their agent...), and little Tommy takes over, giving us a country flashback, showing some old groaner fisherman stealing a child (at least he correctly walks his victim on the side of on-coming traffic). Rainy sidewalks and night-time walking are discussed (use a flashlight and wave it, you tards), before June, having verified that her salary had indeed cleared escrow, comes back and shows a bunch of rowdies how to get off a bus ("It's a lot smarter to be careful, a lot more fun than being hurt," she smirks as she tries half-heartedly to fend off a young Paul Mavis palming her ass).

 

Next, a believably pissy mom yells at her son and daughter to get into her car through the correct door (what's the correct door?  Whichever one you didn't choose, morons), before she utterly humiliates them in front of their friends when they dare to step one foot outside of the crosswalk ("No! HOLD IT! Walk safely!" she barks, while her son, young Richard Ramirez, decides once and for all what he wants to be when he grows up).

 

Best of all, we're introduced to the neighborhood's delightfully curmudgeonly ice cream truck driver, Angelo Anthony Buono Jr., who menacingly warns a jaywalking Tommy, "Sonny, you must be new in this neighborhood--nobody gets ice cream from this wagon who doesn't walk safe."  Not content to viciously rebuke young Tommy for his walking skills, the frozen treat jockey has the nerve to yell at Tommy again, this time for laughing at the kid who drops his ice cream cone when he's almost T-boned by a passing car (the vendor isn't upset enough, though, to give the kid a replacement).

Properly reproached, and eating his frozen lolly (while the poor kid in the background is still in shock, looking at his dropped cone), Tommy recounts what he (and we!) learned about walking safely, before he finds out Sandy is gonna live!  She's gonna live, do ya hear me?  While the happy family (his old man is actually Shane's father and the director, Lee Stanley) goes inside (at least they can't get run over there), a proto-Crips gang brazenly marches down the street, chanting, "WALK SAFE! WALK SAFE!", over and over again, Warriors-style, as a sinister warning to those who either follow the rules...or get their fucking legs broken like Sandy.

 

Clearly the most interesting element of Walk Safe Young America is the sinuous presence of June Lockhart as our dishy L.A.P.D. Crossing Guard.  What is she doing in this non-existent budget educational short?  Did she know Lee Stanley?  Was she doing him a favor?  Did she know someone who was creamed in a crosswalk, and this was her way of helping?

 

It's always fun to speculate why an actor takes a certain role, but 999 times out of 1000, the answer is crushingly simply:  for the dough.  And I would imagine that was Miss Lockhart's prime motivator, too.  Looking at her career at this point, she had just come off a brief two year stint on Petticoat Junction (replacing deceased star, Bea Benaderet), with pickings a little slim after that.  Some episodic one-offs, like Love, American Style, Marcus Welby, M.D., and Adam-12, and even an ABC Afternoon Playbreak...but no real starring, important parts for the still-lovely 50-year-old.  Even the most popular actors are one role away from unemployment, so a couple of grand for a day's work on an education short that most adults and Hollywood won't see?  That's easy money. 

 

Languidly strolling around in those sexy slacks and that tight sweater (and don't forget that cap tilted at a jaunty angle), she's got to be the most sensuous crossing guard ever.  Watch the scene where she lazily intones, "You see...streets are for cars...and trucks...and motorcycles...and other vehicles," while her hand brushes off any urgency to her warning.  She follows this up with a full-on close-up, her beautiful, kitty-kat eyes instantly putting a hypnotic whammy on you, with this faintly dirty smirk that has no business showing up in a kid's educational short (if you watch this at night, the effect is definitely witchy).  Looking and acting like that...who the hell is listening to her paranoid ramblings about cars jumping the curbs looking to pulverize you? 9-year-old me probably listened tight to what she had to say (I always took these at face value), but what she has to say to grown Paul has nothing to do with safe walking, I can guarantee that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greatest Heroes of the Bible Volume One--Bible’s Greatest Stories: The Agony and Ecstacy of Schick Sunn Classic Productions

Easter Weekend always leaves me with a strangely nostalgic-yet-bemused feeling, certainly not surprising considering I grew up within a traditional God-fearin' midwest Methodist framework (lots of pot lucks, basketball games at the weekend MYF, Sunday school homework guiltily thrown in the wastebasket, and even more guilty prayers over every single youthful hijink)...followed, as the years passed, with the inevitable "checking out" into world-weary agnosticism.  

Despite the doubts, though...you can, to paraphrase somebody somewhere, take the boy out of church but the not the church out of the boy.  So, in lieu of actually stepping inside a house of worship, it's fun to go back and check out vintage TV programming that reminds me of that long-gone, lamented time.  A better time, undeniably, in some small ways.

And nothing says "nostalgia" to me better than Schick Sunn Classic Productions.  CBS DVD and Paramount have released Greatest Heroes of the Bible Volume One: Bible’s Greatest Stories, a rather awkwardly-monikered single-disc gathering of four episodes of the NBC…miniseries? series? special events? that aired sporadically during the 1978-1979 season. Produced by the legendary Schick Sunn Classic Productions indie (I’m about to faint…), Greatest Heroes of the Bible looked to be an effort by the studio and NBC to hopefully recreate the success of their previous joint effort, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.

As far as I can tell–and reliable info is scarce on this series/miniseries–Greatest Heroes of the Bible didn’t repeat that ratings victory. However, lovers of all things Sunn Classic (and that would most fervently include me) will absolutely not want to miss these. All the gamey qualities that you loved about that indie producer/distributor–including ridiculous scripts, ridiculous special effects, and ridiculous performances are here. It’s straight-faced hilarity, on the cheap (please, God, for my Easter wish: put the whammy on some releasing company and get all the Schick Sunn Classic movies out in a box set, pronto. Thank you and amen, big guy!)

I’ve written many times before about my childhood love affair with those insanely hyped Schick Sunn Classic Productions from the early-to-mid 1970s–that golden age of whacky pseudo-science/pseudo-history–when the nation’s pop culture was saturated with B movies and sketchy documentaries and pulp books and magazines and TV shows and toys dealing with UFOs, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, crystal power, ESP, the Loch Ness Monster, and ancient astronauts (to list just a few). Certainly in my memories Schick Sunn Classic Pictures was one of the central drivers for all that giddy, hysterical fun, during a time of my adolescence when anything supernatural seemed not only possible but completely plausible…depending, of course, on the marketing skills of whatever company was flogging a product connected with that particular phenomenon.

And nobody beat Schick Sunn Classics at marketing and promoting “must-see” family-friendly exploitation entertainment. Based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, indie Schick Sunn Classic Productions compensated for their relative inexperience in actual moviemaking, by taking a full-court press approach to pre-production marketing research (to better determine target audience and choice of subject matter: why waste money making a movie nobody wants to see?). This “scientific” approach was then followed by strictly-controlled, low, low-budget production costs for the feature, and then smacked home for maximized profits by “four-walled” releasing schemes (renting the movie theaters outright for 100% of the ticket sales), and then hyped by ballyhoo-worthy saturation promotion on television, radio and print ads.

With an almost foolproof, low-risk method of producing and/or releasing movies that were in essence “pre-sold” to a waiting public, Schick Sunn Classic Productions produced and/or released one insanely profitable family adventure/documentary/drama after another: When the Wind Blows, The Outer Space Connection, The Adventures of Frontier Fremont, The Amazing World of Psychic Phenomena, The Mysterious Monsters (that one scared me), In Search of Noah’s Ark, The Lincoln Conspiracy, Beyond and Back, The Bermuda Triangle (same), In Search of Historic Jesus, Beyond Death’s Door, Hangar 18, and perhaps their most recognizable title, the 1974 theatrical version of The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams (which by various accounts pulled in somewhere between $25-35 million in ticket sales–most going directly into Schick Sunn Classic’s pockets–on a paltry $500,000 dollar investment). I saw them all, and absolutely loved them all, and the day someone puts out a widescreen boxed set of those Sunn Classic titles, that’s the day I drop dead from the vapors.

With the kind of profit margin success that the mainstream studios could only dream of, it was inevitable that savvy, chintzy Schick Sunn Classic Productions would be approached to produce for television, with the studio’s most famous effort being 1977’s The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams series. According to what I’ve read, NBC approached Sunn when a televised airing in 1976 of the same-named 1974 movie won a sizeable chunk of the night’s demographics. Third-placed NBC, with nothing to lose, signed up Sunn’s one-man-band producer Charles Edward Sellier, Jr. to gather the movie’s cast together for a 13-episode mid-season replacement tryout in February, 1977 (in addition to producing the original movie, Sellier also wrote the highly-fictionalized 1972 novel from which the movie was adapted). It was a demographic (but short-lived) hit for the network, so it’s not surprising that desperate, struggling NBC would ask for more.

And that’s where Greatest Heroes of the Bible comes in. Or at least that’s what I’m assuming happened, since hard, reliable info on the show is surprisingly scant. Sellier and star Sunn house director James L. Conway are listed as executive producers here (with Conway helming some of the first episodes), while various sources list Greatest Heroes of the Bible episode counts at either 17 or 15 (two episodes are listed as two-parters in the notoriously iffy IMDB, but that may be partially incorrect, since The Story of Noah, presented in this volume, seems complete in one episode). And that’s all I could find.

Was Greatest Heroes of the Bible initially a miniseries offered in the fall of ’78, which led immediately to more episode orders for a quasi-series in the spring of ’79 (sort of like ABC’s How the West Was Won)? Or was it always an official series that got preempted and bumped around a lot? Or were these episodes “special events” for one of NBC’s umbrella titles that were just slotted in and “burned off” to fill in weak spots in the schedule (…which would have been the whole schedule on NBC)? I don’t know (and if there are any Greatest Heroes of the Bible experts out there, by all means comment below, and I’ll amend the review). Hopefully, James Conway will call me, and we’ll talk about Sunn for three days straight, and then we’ll all know.

I wracked my brain to try and remember either watching Greatest Heroes of the Bible back in ’78-’79, or seeing it listed in the TV Guide, but for the life of me I couldn’t summon it up. None of the episodes rang a bell, although they did instantly feel as if I had seen them before, owing to their unmistakable–and thoroughly delightful–Schick Sunn Classic house style: amusingly portentous narration, shaky-at-best production values (that’s being nice: they’re cheap as hell), a certain barely-contained hysteria in the dialogue, and wildly varying performances from the casts of familiar faces. What delicious crap! The dialogue is oftentimes comically overstated (in that delightfully florid, declarative, faux-Biblical style from so many earlier Hollywood religious epics); the productions are simultaneously outrageously ambitious and incredibly chintzy (who else but Sunn would attempt the entire Flood/Noah story on what looks to be a $143 budget?), and the performances range from quite thoughtful to, um…awful.

The disc opens with The Ten Commandments, where we get a credit sequence that looks like “The Wide, Wide World of Biblical Sports” (“…and the agony of self-doubt!”), while a suspiciously similar old-school Battlestar Galactica theme plays as Schick Sunn Classic god Brad Crandall enthusiastically reads the card for tonight’s fight. Greatest Heroes of the Bible pretty much got a “highly recommended” from me right then and there, but when the cast was announced, ending with, “…and Anson Williams as Nabar,” it took all my willpower not to fall to the floor and speak in tongues in a combined paroxysm of religious mania and Aaron Spelling-ish synergy. What genius decided Potsie Weber would make a believably treacherous, murderous Nabar? And yes, he is Potsie, because they even cast his Happy Days girlfriend, Lorrie Mahaffey, here, too (her orthodontia has been blessed by Jehovah).

To be fair, though…Potsie isn’t any worse than his more accomplished—but way more hammy—co-stars, including Kojak‘s Dan Frazer as Araziah, Soap‘s Richard Mulligan as Aaron (he’s so awful here, he should have pulled that finger-snapping “Burt invisibility” shtick for real), and a hilariously literal John Marley as the big man himself, Moses (whom I guarantee was cast strictly for his shock of gray hair, to save another wig from the budget). Give the moviemakers credit, though: we open right with the Red Sea parting (DeMille made you wait hours). It’s comically inept, as are the subsequent “golden calf” scene (it’s so tiny, like Stonehenge in Spinal Tap) and the orgy (the “corruption and degradation” mentioned by narrator Victor Jory looks like a few Yahtzee games spread out amidst a rather lackluster petting party). Kristoffer Tabori as Eleazar, and particularly Granville Van Dusen as Joshua, actually achieve performances: the only winners—besides the delighted viewers—here.

Next up is Samson and Delilah. There’s a different credit sequence for this and the remaining two episodes, featuring old-timer Victor Jory giving a brief rundown on the Creation (it only took seven days) before we close-in on the Bible, aaaaannnnddddd……cue Brad Crandall with tonight’s players. Samson and Delilah is another good example of Schick Sunn Classic’s chutzpah (welcome to the Old Testament). A lot of viewers know this story, at least on film, from Cecil DeMille’s insanely lavish epic with Victor Mature (“The only thing ‘mature’ means to me is ‘Victor Mature'”) and Hedy Lamar. Sunn, with nothing much more than chewing gum and bailing wire here, doesn’t flinch from the highlights, though; we get a downright righteous jaw bone of an ass ass-whompin’, some lion ‘rasslin’ (at least it’s a real one…that’s real doped up), and an entire foam block temple pushed down like a set of Lincoln Logs (instead of squishing the infidels, the lighter-than-air blocks bounce right off of them, like in a cartoon).

The cast is pretty solid, with pro James Olson as Polah working up some friction against beautiful Ann Turkel as Delilah, while Victor Jory (with a hair cut that makes him look like a cross between Ish Kabibble and Edith Head) and Holmes & Yo-Yo‘s John Schuck goofing around in the background (I love referencing that show…). As for our Samson, he of the lantern jaw John Beck, other than a rather disturbing modern-day resemblance to a post-op Bruce Jenner, he’s understated and effective as the Mr. Magoo muscle-man…even if he doesn’t look particularly big and beefy.

Scrolling down chapter and verse, we come to David and Goliath. Directed by Conway, from Brian Russell’s and S.S. Schweitzer’s script, David and Goliath is certainly the most ridiculous entry in this Greatest Heroes of the Bible volume…which is just another way of saying it’s the most entertaining of the bunch, hands down. A good cast of familiar faces—Jeff Corey, John Dehner, Hugh O’Brien, John LaZar, Lurch the Butler—all vie to strike the silliest poses when reading their outrageously broad, overripe lines, with voice-from-the-tomb Ted Cassidy winning the elocution competition, and swaggering, unintentionally humorous O’Brien nailing the pose-off (a combination of Jack Cassidy, Paul Lynde, and Charles Nelson Reilly couldn’t have pulled off a more hysterically fey stance than butch O’Brien’s cocked-hip preening when Roger Kern’s David grasps his hand in servile fealty).

Cassidy as Goliath, still looking like a heathen Lurch (did he actually wear any make-up during The Addams Family?), glowers painfully while spitting out hilarities like, “Is there not one man of courage, you vermin!?” and “You spawn of maggot-eaten carrion!” before Dehner, looking pissed-off at his agent for landing him in Page, Arizona opposite Lurch, wearily warns, “Perform well, you great hulk of flesh…or by Dagon’s blood, I’ll have you hacked up and rendered for your tallow,” (I would suggest a higher yield on the hambone…). My favorite, though, has to be obliviously bad actor Daniel J. Travanti (oh come on—he and Hill Street Blues were awful), grimacing and screeching and flailing his arms around like he’s understudying Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker. That is the kind of thing I live for in these Schick Sunn Classics—thank you, Mr. Travanti!

And finally, as we close our prayer books, we end the day’s services with The Story of Noah, a relatively straight-forward rendering of the Flood story that looks like it was padded out with a lot of stock footage from Sunn’s In Search of Noah’s Ark. IMDB says this was a two-parter, but it feels complete in just one episode, as Lew Ayres conscientiously objects to decadent despot Ed Lauter’s immoral, licentious society, and promptly drops-out with God’s help, getting his head together on a big ‘ol ark…along with two of every species of animal on earth. Lauter, one of my favorite ’70s psychos, is strangely ineffectual here (maybe it’s that stupid crown of black antler horns), but the comically undernourished representation of his morally debased city at least gets right to it: we only get a shot of some kids chained up, while buyers cackle and poke at them (when typically disgusting Robert Emhardt licks his chops over a poor, expressionless cipher Jan Brady Eve Plumb, we don’t know whether to question his morals, or his taste in women).

Fletcher from Guiding Light shows up as Ham (ask Grammy), while Ayres staggers around in a dirty nightshirt, saying things like, “I am but a voice, crying in the wilderness!” (wasn’t that Charlton Heston’s line?). All the animals of the world are represented by some goats and deer, a tiger, two monkeys and a parrot (watch a clearly terrified Plumb look off-camera at the tiger’s trainer, a smile frozen to her face, as she dutifully waits for the beast to devour her). However, the best part is when the toy ark bobs on the completely sea-covered earth…and we briefly see the shore of a lake appear at the top of the screen (nice “Psych!”, God). I wouldn’t expect anything less–or more–from a Schick Sunn Classic.

 

Soooo loooooooong, Jay North. Classic TV's Dennis the Menace Passes Away.

I was sad to see that Dennis the Menace's Jay North passed away yesterday at the (relatively young) age of 73.  Jay, a true vintage TV icon was, according to his and others' recollections, one of the real victims of the television industry, suffering physical abuse at the hands of his caretaker aunt and uncle, and just as debilitating emotional stress, being a little boy tasked with the enormous burden of "carrying" his own television show.  In many interviews, Jay would disparage the quality of Dennis the Menace (honestly...who could blame him?).  As a viewer, though, I strongly disagree, so check out my defense and celebration of the series here, one of hundreds of similar reviews I have up at Drunk TV.

 

Awhile ago, Shout! Factory, that little dickens of a DVD releasing company, came up with one of many of their “must-have” sets for the vintage TV fan: Dennis the Menace: Season One, a five-disc, 32 (!) episode set featuring the complete episodes from the series’ 1959-1960 premiere. Based on the internationally popular comic strip, Dennis the Menace is a beautifully written and constructed sitcom, featuring witty scripting and inventive direction. The laughs come with a consistency matched by the perfectly-drawn performances—particularly Jay North’s intensely funny, insistent turn as the well-intentioned but mischievous devil, Dennis.

Suburban Hillsdale, America (no rioting yet), circa 1959. If you round the bend on Mississippi Street, you won’t have to get too close to 627 Elm to hear a strident, “Helloooooooooooo, Mr. Wilson!” called out by little Dennis Mitchell (Jay North). A rambunctious, inquisitive, tow-headed walking disaster zone in striped shirt and overalls, Dennis means well, but this red-blooded, all-American boy (look it up on the internet under “endangered species”) simply can’t help but lay down a path of destruction wherever he goes…particularly when he visits “good ol’ Mr. Wilson” (Joseph Kearns), the Mitchell’s next-door neighbor.

Retired to the good life of 1950s suburban America, George Wilson wants nothing more than to putter around his house with his various hobbies, including astronomy, coin collecting and especially his garden, before settling down every afternoon for a quiet snooze on the couch. Unfortunately, Mr. Wilson is driven to gulping straight out of his nerve tonic bottle, such is the ruckus caused by hero-worshiping Dennis, who likes Mr. Wilson so much, that he’s very probably going to kill George with hyper-kindness. George’s saintly wife, Martha (Sylvia Field), thinks Dennis a dear, sweet little boy, but even she knows there are times when Dennis shouldn’t be around grouchy George…and those are precisely the times that Dennis strikes with completely innocent mayhem.

The parents of such a child could rightly apply for sainthood, too. However, engineer Henry Mitchell (Herbert Anderson) and lovely housewife Alice (Gloria Henry), get exasperated with Dennis, as well, until they realize he’s just a boy with good intentions…and zero impulse control skills. Rounding out the gang are Dennis’ good-natured, willing best friend Tommy (Billy Booth), and that “dumb ol’ Margaret” Wade (Jeannie Russell), who is forever trying to wrangle a horrified Dennis into playing house as her “husband.”

A syndicated staple on afternoon TV when I was growing up in the early 70s, the first season of Dennis the Menace holds up remarkably well over 60 years (!) after its first season premiere. A “kiddie” show that plays as well with adults as it does with the small fry, Dennis the Menace is yet another example of beautifully-crafted entertainment that was the norm in television’s golden past, a fact that shouldn’t, but does, continually surprise me the more I re-visit these often-maligned treasures.

Based of course on cartoonist Hank Ketcham’s phenomenally popular comic strip of the same name, Dennis the Menace was an immediate hit with the public (a great time slot helped, no doubt—more about that below), and it’s easy to see why, even after all these years. An interviewer in the 1980s once asked Jackie Gleason why the “classic 39” Honeymooners were still revered by audiences after 30 years, and he said quite plainly, “Because they’re funny,” a deceptively simplistic statement that actually sums up their intangible appeal quite nicely.

When Jay North starts rattling off a machine gun-fire line of questions at some exasperated adult, it’s still funny…and it’s going to be funny for as long as people recognize the humor in a peripatetic kid who can’t help but say the wrong thing at the wrong time, or whose actions cause bigger calamities than he was trying to avert. “Funny” is funny, as the saying goes, and deeper meaning is fine if you can find it…but it’s not necessary. It’s enough to laugh at Dennis’ well-intentioned sincerity, marred by his incredibly bad judgment of his actions’ consequences, along with the surrounding adults’ mortification as they watch this well-meaning train wreck in action.

With crack lead writers William Cowley (Hazel, The Eve Arden Show) and Peggy Chantler (apparently every sitcom ever made, from Bewitched to Leave it to Beaver) penning many of the 32 episodes here, and with solid support from most-often used directors William D. Russell and Charles Barton (one of my favorite studio comedy directors), Dennis the Menace is simply and cleanly constructed, episode after episode…and invariably funny. In the brilliantly-realized pilot episode, Dennis Goes to the Movies, the premise is simplicity itself: Dennis’ parents want to see a movie without him…and he’s having none of it. The situation is set, so Cowley and Chantler expertly build complication upon complication, until Dennis uses his friend Joey (Gil Smith) as a Dennis-substitute for an unwitting babysitter, so he can sneak out of the house and sneak into the movie house.

There, he causes havoc, firing his six guns (they’re watching Cowboy, with Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon), asking the projectionist to play back a good part, eating out of a guy’s popcorn, and even shushing his (literally and figuratively) in-the-dark parents. The evening culminates with Alice and Henry, looking down on their adorable child…who’s faking sleep (Buehler, anyone?). It’s a hilarious episode, expertly built and timed and performed, and even though the Dennis character would never be quite this conniving or scheming again, Dennis Goes to the Movies sets the bar high for the series, a standard it maintains remarkably well throughout this first season (apparently, too-cautious CBS and some no-good do-gooder groups complained about this Dennis, and his character was immediately softened in subsequently-produced episodes).

Unlike similar sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver or The Donna Reed Show, Dennis the Menace usually avoids scenes of overt sentiment (or sentimentality) to concentrate on the basics of the genre: situational comedy. Of course there are sweet, tender moments, such as Dennis singing Silent Night in The Christmas Story, or Mr. Wilson feeling guilty about possibly destroying the neighborhood kids’ world of fantasy in Innocents in Space. Dennis’ actions, no matter how destructive, always come from impeccable motivations; his Mom is the “best Mom in the whole world!”, and “good ol’ Mr. Wilson” is always sought out for renewed friendship after their last disastrous encounter.

But by and large, the show sticks with carefully-designed slapstick (which is never overt or crude), and surprisingly witty scripting for what is often dismissed as merely a “kiddie” show. A great example of the two in action comes in the opening teaser sequence (where Dennis is ready to—or has already—done something terrible) for Grandpa and Miss Cathcart. As Alice, distracted by her housework, absentmindedly tells Dennis, “no clothes,” when he asks to run through the sprinkler, the camera then fades to Alice coming downstairs, picking up one article of Dennis’ clothing after another…until she grabs his crumpled-up underwear on the floor. Racing outside, she screams his name in horror as we imagine the sight of (off-screen) naked Dennis running through the water.

While Dennis’ problems with his parents balance as much screen time as his pesterings of Mr. Wilson, I would imagine most people, when they think back on this comedy, remember best the conflicts between Dennis and his crotchety next-door neighbor. Of course, chemistry is everything, and luckily, Kearns and North are an inspired pairing. No matter how funny the lines and the situations are from Cowley and Chantler (and also frequent contributor George Tibbles), they wouldn’t work if we didn’t buy Dennis and Mr. Wilson, and North and Kearns are letter-perfect from episode one.

With North bright and chirpy to the point of metallic screechiness, and Kearns—hands flapping ineffectually and eyes goggling out past his lens-less glass—in dyspeptic despair of mythological proportions, their teaming is comparable to other great TV sitcom teams, like Denver and Hale, Jr., Griffith and Knotts, and Nabors and Sutton. North in particular is an accomplished little comedian. There’s something very strange and almost otherworldly to his overly-emphatic delivery. It’s sometimes insanely direct and intense…and always hysterically funny in contrast to everyone’s barely-sustained horror at his irrationally insistent tone. Watch North’s eyes when he really starts up; if ever a kid had the devil in his eyes, it’s North.

Uniquely, though, he can switch right back to a sweet little boy with his delivery—a realistic, naturalistic, curious kid who looks believably happy when he’s interacting with his screen parents or the sometimes-kindly Mr. Wilson (I love the moment in The Christmas Story where Dennis and Tommy pile on-top of napping Henry, bouncing up and down on him unself-consciously). It’s a testament as well to the acting skills of lovely Gloria Henry and gentle Herbert Anderson (who looks exactly like his cartoon inspiration) that they come across as well as they do here; they could have easily been lost amid the gags and set pieces.

There isn’t a single misfire in the bunch here for this first season of Dennis the Menace, but memorable episodes include Grandpa and Miss Cathcart, where the magical Mary Wickes introduces her husband-hungry down-the-street neighbor to great effect (the scripters do a brilliant job of mirroring Dennis’ and Grandpa Mitchell’s flight from Margaret’s and Miss Cathcart’s attentions). Innocents in Space is a sweet, funny story about the wonder of children’s imagination, as amplified by an afternoon kiddie show starring Parley Baer’s “Captain Blast.” Dennis’ Garden is perfectly constructed in its back-and-forth gags about dahlia bulbs being removed and reburied constantly. Exquisitely-built episodes of mounting comedic misunderstandings—some of them of Seinfeldian proportions…just another indication of how much that “groundbreaking” show owed its hipness to mining long-since forgotten TV comedy conventions—appear with regularity, including Mr. Wilson’s Award (when Mr. Wilson learns Dennis may be moving to New York, he giddily exclaims, “I feel exactly the way I did the day the war ended.”).

Dennis and the Cowboy is a funny spoof of TV cowboys of the day (Brad Johnson is hilarious as the cowboy with “sensitive feet,” and Isabel Rudolph is simply marvelous as the drama matron who passionately implores, “Realism! Realism!” to Dennis and his gang as they rehearse a town pageant), while Dennis and the Open House is an expertly-staged “comedy of attrition” that finds every freeloader in town showing up at the Mitchell’s business “open house,” courtesy of Dennis’ unwelcome help (Dub Taylor is great as the unpretentious fix-it man, Opie Swanson). Director Charles Barton contributes some of the season’s best, too, particularly Alice’s Birthday, where the boys hassle Charles Lane as the owner of a five-and-dime that has the misfortune of Dennis as a customer, and certainly my favorite episode this season, Dennis and the Swing, written by George Tibbles, Paul West and David Schwartz, where Dennis sets into motion multiple comic misunderstandings that result in a series of beautifully simple-yet-hilariously staged set pieces.

Snug in its permanent 7:30pm Sunday night slot it would occupy during its four-year run, Dennis the Menace proved to be a monster hit right out of the gate this 1959-1960 season, landing at an impressive 16th for the year in the Nielsen ratings (impressive because of the implication that it was merely a “kiddie” show). Following strong lead-in Lassie at 7:00pm (a combination that must have pleased families, considering it brought Lassie back into the Nielsen Top Thirty), Dennis‘ direct competition over on NBC, Darren McGavin’s Riverboat, didn’t stand a chance, while over on ABC, the previous year’s massive hit, the comedic Western Maverick, took a direct hit from the precocious little monster Dennis, dropping from 6th overall for the 1958-1959 season, to 18th this year—two notches lower than its “kiddie” competition. With The Ed Sullivan Show as its lead-out (roaring back into the Nielsen Top Fifteen, at 12th for the year), and other big hits later in the night (Alfred Hitchcock Presents at 25th for the year; What’s My Line? at 27th), Dennis the Menace was set up for an even better showing in next year’s Nielsens.