Families looking for some good, clean fun from an era often referred to as "the Golden Age of Televison" need look no further than Dennis the Menace: Season Two, in this five-disc set from Shout! Factory. Based on the long-running comic strip, the rambunctious 10-year old (Jay North) who just wants to play with his next door neighbor Mr. Wilson (Joseph Kearns) ends up inadvertently causing problems wherever he goes, driving Mr. Wilson up the wall. It's a simple set up that is well-executed and still holds up after all this time. Picture quality is above average, but the sound isn't as good as it could be.
Dennis the Menace: Season Two
Studio: Shout! Factory (Originally produced by Screen Gems)
Year: 1960-1961
Rated: NR
Length: 988 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Languages: English
Subtitles: None
MSRP: $29.99
Film Release Date: October 2, 1960
Disc Release Date: July 27, 2011
Review Date: September 5, 2011
“Hellooooooo Mr Wilson!”
The Movie:
4/5
Hank Ketcham’s Dennis The Menace has been around for six decades; in that time this tow-headed preteen tornado has appeared in almost as many different media as Peanuts, Garfield, Archie, and Little Orphan Annie. His multimedia misadventures have appeared not only in hundreds of newspapers across America and this live-action TV series, two animated TV shows, one theatrical film, three made-for-TV-or-video movies, video games, and three decades of Dairy Queen commercials and memorabilia, not to mention his own playground in Monterey, California. All he needs is a Broadway musical and a commemorative postage stamp. However, for many baby boomers, or even their kids who saw it during its Nickelodeon reruns in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it is the 1959-1963 CBS-TV sitcom that is their earliest exposure to the characters. The pop cultural archaeologists at Shout! Factory, whose excavations of our TV history have ranged from Police Story to Punky Brewster to Peyton Place to The Patty Duke Show, have unearthed the show’s sophomore season for this five-disc DVD set.
Dennis Mitchell (Jay North) is a 10-year-old all-American boy who loves the things every all-American boy supposedly loved in the post-WWII era: Mom (Gloria Henry) and Dad (Herbert Anderson), ice cream cones, playing Cowboys and Indians with his friend Tommy (Billy Booth), and fighting with girls, particularly one Margaret Wade (Jeannie Russell). But he can most often be found with his elderly next-door neighbor, George Wilson (Joseph Kearns). Dennis considers Mr. Wilson his best friend, but Mr. Wilson considers Dennis—surprise, surprise—a menace. Mr. Wilson simply wants some peace and quiet in his golden years, yet Dennis just wants to play with him just as he would with anyone his own age. He seems genuinely remorseful when his actions—and the equal and opposite comic reactions—provoke Mr. Wilson’s temper. However, his wife Martha (Sylvia Field) adores him; when he overreacts to one of Dennis’s latest mishaps, she is the one to bring him back down to Earth.
It often seems that every review of every sitcom from 1954 to 1971 turns into a treatise in the author’s views on the era itself. But while Dennis the Menace is unmistakably 1950s in its appearance and its outlook, the situations are timeless, endearing, and highly amusing. The cast plays their parts well; Jay North is perfectly cast as the impossibly chipper yet endlessly destructive title character. As the long-suffering Mr. Wilson, he has an equally perfect co-star in Joseph Kearns, who brings a distinctive voice (a veteran of radio shows like The Jack Benny Program, he was also the doorknob in Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland), a keen sense of comic timing with his reactions, and exceptional chemistry to the part; Sylvia Field brings just the right touch of warmth and sensibility to the part of his wife Martha. The cast was chosen for how well it could play the parts rather than their resemblance to Hank Ketcham’s drawings, but Herbert Anderson looks almost exactly like the comic strip’s Henry Mitchell. Although the show resembles most of the other family sitcoms of the era, shot on sets that would house many more Screen Gems sitcoms to come—Major Nelson and Jeannie later occupied the Wilsons’ house—it stands out for its absence of “life lessons.” There are occasional heartfelt moments, but there are no scenes of Mom and Dad sitting down with Dennis to make him think about what he did; this is pure comedy with no morality play chaser.
The Video:
3.5/5
The episodes are presented in their original aspect ratio of 1.33:1 in glorious black and white. While these are not recent remasters, they still exhibit strong contrast levels, dark blacks that aren’t crushed, and bright whites that never seem blown out. Grain is at a tolerable level, and while there are some occasional specks of dirt and dust, the anomalies are not seriously distracting. The only caveat is that there is some occasional color video noire that reveals the age of the telecine transfers. I would guess these are the same tapes Nickelodeon had for years, and there wasn’t enough of a budget for the remastering similar to the one Leave it to Beaver received.
The Audio:
2.5/5
The audio is 2.0 mono and is a bit on the shrill side, suffering from distortion on sibilant sounds and high frequencies, as if someone tried to boost them. The dialogue and music are easy to hear, and broadband noise is minimal. TV was about 30 years behind movies when it came to audio technology.
The Extras:
1/5
While the first season had a considerable supplemental section, there is nothing here but some original promos. Still, that's more than a lot of shows get.
Final Score:
3.5/5
Sometimes it’s hard to explain why something works when it just does, and that’s the case with Dennis the Menace. Good, clean fun for kids and adults alike, There are parts of the technical presentation that could be better, but this is the best we’re going to see for quite some time, and all things considered, Shout! Factory has done a pretty decent job with this set.
