Fourth-season episodes are running on Antenna TV at the moment, and it's noticeable throughout the season how Eloise's character was written at times be as much of an irritant to her husband, if not more so, than Dennis. Clearly it was a huge departure from her sister-in-law Martha, which maybe is why the show wrote Eloise that way to begin with.
Has anybody else ever noticed this? I was a big fan of Martha Wilson anyway, including the interaction between Gale Gordon and Sylvia Field in those limited episodes at the end of the third season. Eloise is just one of the characters on this show I never cared for all that much.

Now that you mention it, yes. Dennis is way less annoying in this season, and Eloise has taken his place. Like when she was insisting he go into the hospital for a checkup, for no particular reason. One thing she has in common with Martha is that they're both very nice to all the kids.

Absolutely. There was less of that grandmotherly aspect with Eloise, though. There seems to be much more than a 13-year difference between Sylvia Field and Sara Seegar, born in 1901 and 1914, respectively.
Oddly enough, Gale Gordon was a year older than Joseph Kearns, yet the John Wilson character always seemed to be portrayed as younger than George (at least IMO).

Based on another thread I'm in the minority, but I liked the John Wilson character portrayal better than George.

For one thing he had funnier, more comedic reactions that Kearns' version didn't have. For another George treated the kid like dirt, IMO. There was less of that with John, and when he was nasty to Dennis (like he was in the man of the house episode), he apologized later on.

I never had a problem with Eloise's character except when she turns on her husband, which she does more often than not. That I don't like. And though I really like Gale Gordon in Great Gildersleeve as neighbor Bullard, and as Principle Conklin in Our Miss Brooks and of course in his crowning role as Mr. Mooney but as a replacement for Mr. Wilson he falls fall short. His John Wilson was too nice to Dennis, almost deferential to him at times. George Wilson would never treat Dennis as some sort of temperamental little King. John needed to take George Wilson mean pills.

Sylvia Field and Joseph Kearns were so great in their roles that no one could top them.

While Sara Seeger and Gale Gordon did a nice job, they still fell QUITE SHORT.

I never had a problem with Eloise's character except when she turns on her husband, which she does more often than not. That I don't like. And though I really like Gale Gordon in Great Gildersleeve as neighbor Bullard, and as Principle Conklin in Our Miss Brooks and of course in his crowning role as Mr. Mooney but as a replacement for Mr. Wilson he falls fall short. His John Wilson was too nice to Dennis, almost deferential to him at times. George Wilson would never treat Dennis as some sort of temperamental little King. John needed to take George Wilson mean pills.

Good analysis. Eloise wasn't written in every episode to be a pain in the behind, but she acted like one in a lot of episodes.
Dennis' relationship with either Mr. Wilson was bound to change in part as Dennis grew up, but in a handful of fourth-season episodes, Dennis came off as nothing less than a brat ("A Tax on Cats" and "The Lucky Rabbit's Foot" jump to mind immediately). I still maintain that Gale Gordon did the best he could in that situation with a character who couldn't just be a carbon copy of his brother, but one of those questions that will never be answered is how that fourth season would have transpired with Joseph Kearns still alive, whether it would be anything like the one we know.
I've always thought that dynamic would have to change simply because Dennis was maturing, and that the show was bound to end after four seasons no matter what for that reason.
George did defer to Dennis on occasion, including in "Miss Cathcart's Friend." He was truly sorry he'd hurt Dennis, even though that's a situation where George's actions were totally understandable.

Whenever John needed Eloise for some reason, she always had to run off to a dental appt. or the beauty parlor.

OT: The end of season 3 must have been a pretty chaotic time for that show. A starring regular dies. Yet they still managed to complete the season. EE Horton obviously was hastily subbed for Kearns in one episode (and Kearns was undoubtedly to be the baseball coach in the first episode after Kearns' death). And the writers hastily churned out a few new scripts, or altered old ones for Gordon. And I have to say, the first script, with John unable to find the right cushion, was a pretty good effort.

By the way, I agree with other posters that Mr. Mooney was THE role for Gale Gordon. I think I've read Lucy wanted Gale for the crabby banker role, but he was unavailable due to DTM. By the end of the season Charles Lane (who played the role in the 1962 season) was on Lucy's last nerve due to screwing up lines, so she was glad to get Gordon into the banker role for the second season.

My feeling about the end of Season 3 was that all of those scripts except "John Wilson's Cushion" and "Dennis and the Witch Doctor" were meant for Joseph Kearns and quickly altered for Gale Gordon. I think it's fairly easy to envision Joseph Kearns in those episodes.
That's what I've read about the 1962-63 season of Lucy's show as well. Once Dennis the Menace ended, Gale Gordon was free. Or maybe that was planned to be the final season all along? Always wondered about that.

Both Jay North and Billy Booth (who was in practically every season 4 episode) would have been too old for a fifth season. They probably told Gale G. it was a single season contract.

If the show had had extremely high ratings, maybe they could have figured out a bigger role for that kid who played Seymour. They wrote some really funny lines for him, and he had great delivery.

Sylvia Field and Joseph Kearns were so great in their roles that no one could top them.

While Sara Seeger and Gale Gordon did a nice job, they still fell QUITE SHORT.


I totally agree!! ;) My favorite characters in Dennis the menace are George & Martha Wilson! :)Esp. George!! Joseph Kearns was awesome !! :eek::cool:To me he made the show !! ;)

Of course I like Dennis and his parents! Even John and Eloise, I mean I didn't dislike them , but they really couldn't hold a candle to George and Martha! The show lost a lot without them IMO! ! :(

Since the Dennis character was reaching middle school age, I think that the producers wanted to move the show in a slightly different direction with different story lines. The show still had life in it even after the untimely passing of Joseph Kearns. The John Wilson character was still employed and his career as a writer was used in the story lines throughout the 4th season. Maybe those episodes helped to offset the earlier episodes of the series that centered on the adventures of a seven-year-old Dennis who, in the 4th season, was now at an age were those ideas didn't fit any longer. Joseph Kearns and Gale Gordon were about the same age, but in the show one was retired and one was still working.

As for the Eloise character, she was meant to be different than Martha much like John was different than George. She was her own character. I agree with the OP that she was a little bit hard on her husband. I think she was meant to be a little tougher than Martha. Sara Seegar was a wonderful actress and I thought that she did the best that she could under the circumstances of the series. I remember watching the show as child about twenty-five years ago and thought it was very odd that she was suddenly there and Sylvia Field suddenly gone. That was the case in reruns. In real life, three months had passed moving into the 1962-63 season. The show needed a Mr. Wilson and the producers decided to keep Gale Gordon for the 4th season. So, the decision was made to give him a wife and let Sylvia Field go from the series. In one interview, Gloria Henry said that there was some tension with this transition and weren't very nice to Sara Seegar early on. However, the animosity eventually went away.

All that said, the 4th season was very interesting, but I thought that the magic was gone. Joseph Kearns and Sylvia Field were missed even though they were hardly mentioned in that season. I still commend the series for moving on with episodes tailored to John and Eloise. It is hard to even imagine Kearns and Field in the 4th season because of many of the story lines that wouldn't have fit their characters well.

Great post Jon. I started a thread some time back about fourth-season episodes that would have worked with either John or George, and the consensus was that about half would have, maybe a bit less.
One thing I missed for ages in the third-season episode "The Club Initiation" was the line where John says to Fred Ferguson about thinking of "bringing my wife and moving into this wonderful town of yours." So right there, with three episodes (including that one) left in Season 3, the idea of Eloise was planted, if not the actual character. I think by then, the show was going to come back for a fourth season and that was a slight hint to viewers that the show would transition to a new Mr. and Mrs. Wilson by the next fall.
By the time of "Dennis and the Witch Doctor," that was plainly obvious.

Another thing they did in the fourth season was to make more use of the Seymour character. The zingers he threw at John were really funny, and I think they had used him minimally with George. I think his first appearance was in the camping episode where George kept tying his shoe, but at that point I don't think he was identified as Seymour yet.

Like Billy Booth, I think I read someplace that Robert Pittman had died.

It was either that episode or the one where Dennis and Mr. Wilson learn to whistle. In that episode, Seymour was walking down the street whistling (obviously dubbed) and Dennis marveled that a kid who was little more than a toddler could whistle so well. He wasn't credited as Seymour but that's how I think of him whenever I see him.
[ETA: That scene is airing at this moment on Antenna TV.]
Just looked it up and Robert John Pittman died in 1990. He was only 34, which means he was just four when he first appeared in DTM. And IMDB does indicate the whistling episode was his first.

Yeah, it was the whistling episode (I noticed I was wrong). The camping episode is later, and right, the whistling is obviously dubbed. I don't recall him having any lines in the camping episode, either.

The whistling episode is probably Pittman's first. This is early in the second season, and I'm sure he wasn't in the first season at all.

He was even in the allowance/dog washing episode, and had a couple of lines and a cry. (Funniest line (from Tommy): Nothin' smells like a wet dog, does it?)

Tuesday's my Dennis Day. Today I saw the 3rd season episode about Mr. Wilson giving Dennis his good luck charm instead of paying Dennis 50 cents to do a needless job of cutting the lawn Wilson had just done the day before but Mrs. Wilson hired Dennis to do nevertheless. Wow, that was a long sentence. OK, so my point here is that this is an episode where Martha first acts like the deceitful and dirty trick stab in the back wife that Eloise loved being. Here Martha not only boldfacely lies to her trusting loving husband George she steals from his wallet and even involves Mrs. Mitchel to participate in the deceitful dirty tricks played on Mr. Wilson. This is the first episode where Martha was NOT the supportive wife she always was to Mr. Wilson (George) and instead went out of her way to lie, steal and betray her husband's blind trust. I found her actions here to be reprehensible and far worse than the "crime" of Mr. Wilson lovingly giving Dennis his good luck charm. I would have liked to have seen George call Mooney to come and arrest his wife for stealing money and a frog out of the public pond and have her put in the hoose gow for 6 months. Now that would have been a laugh.:lol:

Now I have a different take on this one. George treated the kid like dirt as he does 90% of the time, with the so-called good luck charm this time, and Martha gave him a deserved dose of his own medicine. Alice and later Henry even helped. Dennis idol-worshipped George and usually in return he got the door slammed in his face. Maybe if George had treated him better he wouldn't have wreaked so much havoc. Anyway, George got his just desserts and to me this was one of the better episodes.

I forget what I said about Eloise above but I agree with you about her. She NEVER supported John in any way. If he needed her to do something she always had a dental appointment or had to go to the beauty parlor. She was always cutting him down. I can't think of one positive thing she said to him. Some wife.

I agree with stevea on this one. It was the first time that I can remember where Martha really put it to George, not for just one scene but for the entire episode.
I can see why Eloise was written different than Martha. They wanted a different feel to those episodes, and on a cultural level things were moving closer to the mid-60s by then and women's lib was becoming a bigger thing. Maybe that figured in.

They showed this episode again today on Antenna TV. I really reveled in how Martha (and Alice) nailed George.

I noticed something I hadn't seen before--particularly at the beginning, it looked like Jay North had a real sunburned face. You could even notice it in black and white. Did anyone else notice that? It must have hurt, especially with that constant smile of his.

Sorry, but lying, stealing and deceiving your husband aren't traits I consider worthy of praise. A six month jail term, yes, applause, no. Mrs. Wilson behaved abominably to her trusting husband. And George was right to object to Martha paying Dennis to do a job that Mr. Wilson had just done the day before. If I could remember further details I'm sure I could come up with other ways George was justified in his treatment of scheming and deceitful Dennis too. Dennis many many times is not the sweet innocent character he pretends to the adults to be. He schemes and plots to get his way. Even though most people with a brain could see thru it, apparently Henry & Alice were fooled every time, George was the only one to treat Dennis the way he deserved. I'm only sorry Mr. Wilson wasn't stricter with Dennis. Banning him from the property would have been a good and justifiable start.

The early Dennis was horrible. The kid deserved a trip to the woodshed. He plots to go to the movies and substitutes Joey in his bed, and the sitter Mrs. Mondello thinks it's Dennis. In another one he switches a street sign, resulting in a pool company putting a pool in at Wilson's (which mysteriously isn't in subsequent episodes). In that same episode I think he decides to use some red paint Wilson gives him, to paint the curb. Even a kid that age should know better than that. I really disike these episodes.

The writers tamed him later, but in one episode probably from the second season Dennis and Wilson can't whistle. Both are in Quigley's store but not together, and George relates to Quigley that he can't whistle, which leads Quigley into a laughing fit. This ticks Dennis off, and he pulls a can from a display, toppling the whole thing. Quigley should have either called the cops or Dennis's parents. That should have also resulted in a trip to the woodshed.

The only thing that stopped George from banning Dennis from the property was Martha. I did mention in a previous post that Dennis idolized Mr. Wilson. It's an odd reaction from anyone, when another person obviously can't stand you. Even a young kid can sense when he's not liked. But idolize him Dennis did, and George did treat him like dirt.

Dennis is constantly scheming to get his way all thru the series, not just in the first episode. Whenever he wants to do something he gets real sneaky and starts asking questions that never reveal what he's really aiming for. They're always roundabout misdirection type moves and actions. Just look at the questions he asks his foolish parents whenever he wants something that he knows they'll turn down if he were to be straightforward. He's a constant schemer and plotter to get his way. Mr. Wilson treated Dennis just how he deserved and if it was like dirt it was always justified. Seems Mr. Wilson was the only one in the whole show aside from the old Nursery guy who had any sense and could see thru all of Dennis' plans to get his way.

You have a point. He wants a pony--50 zillion questions, in the format of If I did this then what about that, etc. He wants a bike, same thing. His whole life is scheming and plotting. Then he turns on the sweet act--"Don't you like me, Mr. Wilson?"

Same thing if he screws something up. He does something to make the fish tank spring a leak. "That pitcher doesn't look good in the centerpiece, mom."

And poor Mr. Wilson's brand new homburg hat got the worst of it with that fish tank cover-up of innocent sweet Dennis.:rolleyes:

The show is still enjoyable for me, I guess I mainly just like the whole early '60's atmosphere and esp. all the characters that surround Dennis' world, more so than Dennis himself. Going outside to play and meeting neighborhood kids there and thinking of things to do really remind me of my kidhood. Guess that's the secret that keeps me coming back to watch.

A Dennis The Menace bonus magazine comic book from the 1960's titled Television Special contains stories based on episodes from the TV show. If I recall, one of the stories in the comic book is based on the TV episode Paint Up & Clean Up Week. I believe the story in the comic book showed Dennis and his pal painting the curb red like on the TV show.

http://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/554871.jpg

The writers never put in consequences for that whole fish tank thing, either (on Beaver there were always consequences). I'd forgotten about Wilson's hat. I think it ended with him yelling his trademark, Martha!

I particularly like the Miss Cathcart character. Any episode she's in is hilarious--there are probably 4 or 5 of them.

The nursery guy nailed Dennis, but so did the drug store guy, played by Charles Lane, another great curmudgeon character.

I used to buy comic books as a kid. And I bought many Dennis comic books amongst the many others. That issue shown here though, I'd love to see. Yeah, all the real old guys in the show were great, including Gildersleeve (Willard Waterman) as the grocer, he saw thru Dennis too. That was one show filled with great characters, Miss Cathcart, Miss Elkins were 2 of the best lady characters.

Yeah, Elkins was another good one (probably the funniest with her was in the fourth season when she fell into a pit dug by John Wilson to catch a supposed monster). Actually, a few episodes with Alice Pierce as Miss Tarbell, and Miss Cathcart plotting to catch the same man, were memorable also.

Wow! You're not going to believe this but I found the comic and ALL of it's page by page contents online!! When you see the cover of the comic book on Dennis's TV Special, just click on the cover and each page to turn the pages as you read. First you'll see the cover like shown above then you click on the page and the page turns so you can read the whole comic. I AM EXCITED!!:crazy:
Here it is:
https://archive.org/details/fawcett_Dennis_the_Menace_Television_Special_022/mode/2up

Wow! You're not going to believe this but I found the comic and ALL of it's page by page contents online!! When you see the cover of the comic book on Dennis's TV Special, just click on the cover and each page to turn the pages as you read. First you'll see the cover like shown above then you click on the page and the page turns so you can read the whole comic. I AM EXCITED!!:crazy:
Here it is:
https://archive.org/details/fawcett_Dennis_the_Menace_Television_Special_022/mode/2up

Yep that's the book, I know because I have a copy of it. Sometimes I think the Dennis comics are funnier than the TV show. This Television Special comic book is from 1964, during the era when the Dennis comics had real sharp looking artwork. This continued until around 1967 or 68 when a different artist started working on the comic books and the artwork took on a cheaper looking/less appealing appearance.

I'm reading it now, I feel as excited as Mr. Wilson when he finds a new rare stamp. This comic even has the TV characters, so far I've seen Mr. Quigley the grocer, Johnny Brady and his obnoxious father. Great comic, I never had this issue but it looks like the Dennis's I had, except I don't remember seeing the TV characters in the other Dennis comics. It's been over 50 years since I read these but at least I don't think I ever saw TV characters in them before. Mr Wilson, Tommy & Margaret, but not all the TV adult characters. This issue is great.

I'm reading it now, I feel as excited as Mr. Wilson when he finds a new rare stamp. This comic even has the TV characters, so far I've seen Mr. Quigley the grocer, Johnny Brady and his obnoxious father. Great comic, I never had this issue but it looks like the Dennis's I had, except I don't remember seeing the TV characters in the other Dennis comics. It's been over 50 years since I read these but at least I don't think I ever saw TV characters in them before. Mr Wilson, Tommy & Margaret, but not all the TV adult characters. This issue is great.

Yes it is awesome. I have a collection of the bonus magazines and they are great until around 1967 or 68 when a different artist took over working on the books and the art work started looking cheap.

Wow, I'm still reading, they're re-creating the TV plots. The picnic show where they all have contests, the clean up show, and now I'm reading one with Uncle Ned in it and the joyful living plan of exercise for everyone. So far I've also seen Sgt. Mooney & even Mrs. Schooner as a judge in the cleanest house on the block re-creation comic version. I feel like I'm watching the show, I can hear the voices of the characters when they speak.

Mooney, another great character. One of Cisar's best roles. Finch and Maryvale, also, the names I always seem to forget. Finch couldn't stand Dennis either.

Neat find, thanks!
I find it hilarious that George is featured in the Community Picnic comic, although I love it. That's a bittersweet episode seeing as it's Sylvia Field's last.