The Friendly Home Wrecker

Cartoonist Hank Ketcham, 32, has realized a father's dream: he converted his troubles with his squirmy, spring-legged, 4 1/2-year-old son into a $40,000-a-year net asset. Ketcham's Dennis the Menace is syndicated in 112 U.S. newspapers and in 52 others all over the world. Dennis, who is not intimidated by his view of the world between a clutter of long adult legs, is the constant winner in his never-ending war with the exasperated adults who surround him. For example, he can easily undo both his mother and her tea guest by standing between them with a fur coat draped over his arms and blurting out: "I showed Mrs. Taylor your new fur coat, Mom, but she didn't turn green like you said she would."

By last week Dennis' antics had become so popular and struck such familiar chords that a $1 collection of his cartoons (Holt) had sold close to 121,000 copies in less than six months; Cartoonist Ketcham was readying Dennis for a 30-minute TV show; his freckled face was being printed on cocktail napkins, towels, glasses and cookie jars; and many a parent had already begun to warn a misbehaving child: "Don't be like Dennis."

"Try & Make Me." Ketcham started cartooning as a Hollywood animator, got a job with Disney at $25 a week. In the Navy during the war, he did cartoons for service publications, later began a regular panel in the Satevepost called Half-Hitch. Dennis was born almost two years ago, when the Ketchams were sighing over their own Dennis, aged 4 1/2, and Mrs. Ketcham remarked, "Dennis is a menace." Father Ketcham, who looks like Dennis' cartoon father, had little trouble taking it from there. There was Dennis standing at a police sergeant's elbow, a slingshot sticking out of his pocket, while the sergeant barked into the phone: "That's right. Blond hair. Blue eyes, about 50 lbs. And is his favorite expression 'Try and make me'?" There was Dennis bellowing at his mother, his hand planted on his six-shooter, "Hey gal, I'm ahankerin' for a cookie!" or defiantly answering her, "Don't shout at me! I'm not your husband!"

Aggressive & Unchanged. Many of Ketcham's ideas for the cartoon no longer come from his son, who has begun to outgrow the caricature. Instead, Ketcham depends on his friend Bob Harmon, 34, a victim of muscular dystrophy, who keeps a steady stream of Dennis cartoon suggestions and captions flowing from his West Coast home, gets a large share of Dennis income. Dennis the Menace will never grow older, never acquire any brothers or sisters, or change in any way. Says Cartoonist Ketcham: "He'll be 4 1/2 and unchanged all his aggressive little life."

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