Lee Majors: Still Acting

September 28, 2026February 24, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

As we wind up my blog theme “Expensive Parts,” we finish by taking a look at the career of Lee Majors, who starred in The Six Million Dollar Man.

Known then as Harvey Yeary, Majors was born in Michigan in 1939. Sadly, both his parents died in separate car accidents before he reached two years of age. He was then adopted by his aunt and uncle who moved him to Kentucky.

Majors was a big sports guy, playing football and running with the track team. He received a scholarship to Indiana University. He transferred to Eastern Kentucky University to play football. Unfortunately, a back injury left him paralyzed for two weeks, putting an end to his football career. He then turned to acting but graduated with a degree in history and physical education with plans to be a football coach.

After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles to be the recreation director for North Hollywood Park. During his time there he met Dick Clayton who had been James Dean’s agent. Clayton convinced Lee to go to acting school, and after a year, Clayton felt he was ready to look for work in the entertainment business. He took on the name Lee Majors in honor of Johnny Majors who was a player and coach at the University of Tennessee. He said many people in Hollywood had trouble pronouncing his real last name, so he took on a new one.

During this time, he took his first stab at marriage. He and Kathy Robinson were wed in 1961 but divorced in 1964. His marriages were not as successful as his career.

In 1964 he received his first big-screen offer for Strait-Jacket. A year later he showed up on the small screen on Gunsmoke. He would continue to flip back and forth between the two genres his entire career.

1965 was also the year he got his first recurring role. Chosen from more than 400 actors, including Burt Reynolds, he was given the role of Heath Barkley on The Big Valley. This was the decade of the westerns and Big Valley was a big hit. The show was on the air till 1969 at which time Majors signed with Universal Studios.

From 1971-1974, he was part of the cast of Owen Marshall Counselor at Law on ABC. In 1974, ABC decided to transfer a movie plot of The Six Million Dollar Man into a series and Majors got the job. The show was an immediate success. In 1977, Majors announced he wanted to renegotiate his contract with the show which had not ended. Some insiders said he wanted more money; Majors always claimed that he was asking that his production company, Fawcett Majors Productions, become an independent producer with Universal. The producers filed a lawsuit to report to work since his contract was still ongoing, but Majors refused and eventually the executives agreed to his demands. However, that might have put the nail in the coffin of the show. A spinoff, The Bionic Woman had slid in the ratings and was picked up by a different network and then The Six Million Dollar Man lost viewers as well, so both shows were cancelled the following year. However, the series continued in three made-for-tv movies during the eighties.

During the beginning of The Six Million Dollar Man, Majors married Farrah Fawcett; they divorced in 1979. He tried to get her the part of The Bionic Woman, but it went to Lindsay Wagner. Fawcett guest-starred on the show three times before getting her own series, Charlie’s Angels.

Majors spent the rest of the seventies primarily doing movies. In 1981 he received another starring offer for The Fall Guy. Majors played Colt Seavers, a stuntman who worked part time as a bounty hunter. This series was on the air for five seasons before ending in 1986.

In 1988, marriage three happened when he wed Karen Velez, but after six years, they too divorced. In 2002, he walked down the aisle one last time, marrying Faith Noelle Cross, and they are still together.

He did have smaller recurring roles in the 1990s and 2000s but they were on little-known shows: Tour of Duty, Raven, Too Much Sun, Son of the Beach, The Game, and Ash versus Evil Dead. He had heart bypass surgery in 2003, but it didn’t keep him down long.

He was in three episodes of the well-known show, Weeds in 2008. He made appearances on several popular shows during this time including Will and Grace, Cold Case, According to Jim, Grey’s Anatomy, and Magnum PI. He still continues to work off and on as of 2026.

It’s amazing that Majors has continued to work so long in the business. After five decades, he is still doing what he loves. He has said that he was “never into my looks. What’s important to me is my health and family.” He also was fine not being a leading man forever as he said, “A lot of guys think they can be leading men forever. And believe me, we all can’t be.”

I was surprised to learn that despite the fact that so many kids looked up to Steve Austin, Majors did not love his time on the series. He said it “was so hard and so boring for me. Ironically that was the most popular. It was total work. You’re there 16-17 hours a day.” His favorite role? Heath Barkley. He considered Barbara Stanwyck his mentor. He said it “was the most fun at the time because it was my first and I love Westerns. All the action, horseback riding. I really loved it.” Linda Evans, his sister Audra on the show, also has mentioned how much she loved doing the show and how much she respected Stanwyck.

I’m not sure if he ever regretted choosing acting over football coaching because he mentions the importance of football coaches and the inspiration he received from his often. But he had a very successful career. He was never stereotyped in his roles moving from The Big Valley to Owen Marshall Counselor at Law to The Six Million Dollar Man and ending with The Fall Guy, all very different roles and highly rated shows. He also found the perfect partner for him and his children, a blended family from several of his marriages. And at 87, is still acting when he wants to.

In an interview with Terry Pace on http://www.leemajors.us/films/leeinterview.htm, Majors discussed his acting philosophy. He said, “Acting is a tough business, and the percentage of people who make it is very low — it’s about 1 percent. I’ve had disappointments and heartbreaks and setbacks and roles I didn’t get, but something always came along that either made me better or was an even better role.” That’s a great way to look at the ups and downs of the entertainment business. We should all learn from him.

The Six Million Dollar Man: A $37,000,000 Man in 2026

September 21, 2026February 18, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

We are right in the middle of our “Expensive Parts” blog theme, learning about The Bionic Woman, The Six Million Dollar Man, and the stars who played them. Up today is The Six Million Dollar Man.

This science fiction show debuted in 1973. Steve Austin is a former astronaut played by Lee Majors. Majors always maintained that he did 90% of his stunts on the show. After an accident, he is rebuilt with superhuman strength, speed, and vision. Austin is transferred to OSI and takes on secret missions for the government. If the show was rebooted today, it would need to be titled “The Thirty-Seven Million Dollar Man.” The show was based on a book from 1972 called Cyborg written by Martin Caidin, an expert on aviation and aerospace technology.

Monte Markham was the first choice of both Caidin and the producers, but he was committed to another show so Majors got the part. Markham did appear on the show several times though.

Rounding out the cast were Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson), director of OSI; Rudy Wells (Alan Oppenheimer/Martin E. Brooks), Austin’s doctor; and Peggy Callhan (Jennifer Darling), Goldman’s secretary.

Two weeks ago, we learned the backstory behind The Bionic Woman, a spinoff of this show. When the spinoff was created, Majors tried to get the part for his wife Farrah Fawcett, but she lost out to Lindsay Wagner. However, Fawcett appeared on the show as three different characters during the run of the series and in 1976 she became an Angel.

Oliver Nelson composed the theme music, but it was replaced with the narration about building Austin, “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, we have the technology.” The accident in the beginning was a real crash by a pilot who survived the tragedy walking away.

Majors was an accomplished musician who learned to play the piano at age 6. He also worked on It Takes A Thief, Night Gallery, Columbo, and Ironside, among other shows.

The show’s executive producer was Harve Bennett (who had recently produced The Mod Squad). Producer Kenneth Johnson created very specific limits of what Austin could and could not do right away so the show never seemed unbelievable. He was fitted with a bionic eye, a bionic arm, and bionic legs. However, these set limits seemed to expand after season two. The two producers would go on to other science fiction successes. Bennett produced Star Trek films II and III, and Johnson created several shows including The Incredible Hulk and Alien Nation.

The first season scripts included a few episodes where Austin had to kill a villain. Once the network realized kids were tuning in as fans, the violence level of the show decreased.

Austin had new contract demands in 1977 and refused to tape any episodes until they were met. At one point the producers considered hiring a new actor for the role. Gil Gerard, Bruce Jenner, and Harrison Ford were all discussed as replacements. Eventually, the demands were met, but he was still out of a job the next year. A fun fact is that Ford was rejected quickly because the producers didn’t think he was a hero type. Indiana Jones anyone?

Dorothy Fontana, a writer for the show, discussed the series in her Television Academy interview. She wrote about an air force nurse who became an astronaut. While in outer space, the woman’s partner suffers from appendicitis, she has to drive the spaceship home and Austin goes to help her. She said NASA was in an era where it wanted good publicity and she was given a lot of NASA footage to use for the show. This episode was one of the ones that featured Farrah Fawcett. Most of Fontana’s 50 writing credits were for science fiction scripts.

When the show began it was on ABC Friday nights before Kolchak. Midway through the year it was moved to Sunday nights and The Bionic Woman debuted on Wednesdays. The Six Million Dollar Man had no competition that year, but The Bionic Woman was up against Little House on the Prairie. Despite that, both shows were in the top ten. Schedules stayed the same for the next season. While The Six Million Dollar Man was still in the top ten, The Bionic Woman had slipped into the top twenty. ABC canceled the show which was then picked up by NBC who moved it to Saturday nights. Both shows had slipped out of the top thirty by that point, and they were both cancelled. However, the networks weren’t finished with the couple. They would return for three made-for-tv movies in the eighties.

Six Million Dollar Man merchandise was everywhere. There were board games, comic books, and lunch boxes. One of the most successful tie-ins were Steve Austin and friends action figures. Extra bionic limbs could be swapped out on the figures for specific activities and there were vehicles and other accessories.

The Six Million Dollar Man was very different from any shows that had appeared before and it was popular for several seasons. I’m guessing that the kids who grew up with the show got older and busy and it didn’t have the same appeal to preteens and teens that it had in the past. The producers did create a pilot for “The Bionic Boy” in 1978 to appeal to younger viewers but the screenings didn’t produce a lot of positive comments, and it was shelved, probably for the best.

For the time, the special effects were amazing, but it doesn’t hold up today with all the changes that have come along with technology. I feel the same way about Wonder Woman which was also on the schedule with these two shows. I’m guessing the thing that is most memorable about the show is the sound effects that always were heard when Steve used his bionic parts and the slow motion of Austin in action.

If this was a favorite of yours, I’d love to hear if you still enjoy it or if it lost some of its watchability over the years.

Lindsay Wagner: An Expensive Lady

September 14, 2026September 8, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

As we continue with our “Expensive Parts” blog theme, today we are learning about the career of Lindsay Wagner, the person behind The Bionic Woman which we learned about last week.

Wagner was born in Los Angeles in 1949. Her parents divorced when she was seven, and later her mother and stepfather moved to Oregon where she attended high school and got involved in school plays.

After high school, Wagner spent some time in France before enrolling at the University of Oregon. She later transferred to Mt. Hood Community College but soon dropped out. School was difficult for her, and she was eventually diagnosed with dyslexia.

Wagner returned to Los Angeles where she tried acting. During that time, she was a contestant on The Dating Game in 1969. In 1971, she was offered a contract with Universal Studios.

Her first television appearance was in 1971 on Adam-12. During the seventies, she continued to take television roles on a variety of shows including Owen Marshall Counselor at Law, The FBI, The Rockford Files, and Marcus Welby MD. I loved her role on Rockford. As Sara Butler, she was one of the few women who spoke her mind to Jim Rockford . . . and he listened! However, their relationship began in the pilot with her giving him a NSF check. I’m guessing if she hadn’t gotten the call for The Bionic Woman, she might have been on Rockford as his romantic interest for more episodes. It would have been fun to see where that might have taken the show from where it ended up.

Through her Universal contract, she was given the role of Jaime Sommers on an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man in 1975. The creator, Ken Johnson, hired her after watching her Rockford episode. As we learned last week, this was supposed to be a one-time appearance. Sommers was a high-school sweetheart of Steve Austin, The Six Million Dollar Man character. After she has an accident, he convinces his government bosses to save her in the same way he had been saved, using bionic parts. They agree if she will work as a government operative. At the end of the episode, Sommers’ body is rejecting the bionic parts and Steve learns of her death.

However, the character was so popular that they decided to spin off a show, and The Bionic Woman was created by Johnson. The show was popular during its first two seasons, but ABC cancelled it and NBC took it over for a final third season. Both The Bionic Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man were cancelled in 1978.

After the show ended, most of Wagner’s roles were in television miniseries or made-for-tv movies. Her only series work was on an episode of The Fall Guy in 1983. The following year, she received another recurring role on a new show called Jessie where she played a psychologist who helped the California Police solve murders. However, this one only lasted for 11 episodes.

In 1989 she was offered another cast role in A Peaceable Kingdom. This was about a Rebecca Cafferty, a recent widow from New York with three young children who accepts a job as the managing director of a large California zoo where her brother Dr. Jed McFadden, also works. This one made it to twelve episodes before being cancelled.

She continued to act through the nineties and 2000s, appearing in movies and television movies and a few more obscure series. In 2018 she was cast on Grey’s Anatomy as Alex Karev’s mother. For the next two years, she was in four episodes. In June of that year, she costarred in a video game being developed by Sony.

Though she continued doing some acting, most of her time since then has been spent working on books and taping commercials. Her first book was about using acupressure to achieve results formerly available only with a surgical facelift. In 1994, she was one of the first celebrities to come out with a cookbook, High Road to Health filled with vegetarian options.

Off screen Lindsay is passionate about the study and sharing of holistic health, the healing of body, mind and spirit. From 2003-2006, in collaboration with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, Lindsay co-facilitated a support group for families reuniting who were struggling with domestic violence. In addition, she has taught acting and camera technique.

I would consider Wagner’s career successful, but I’m not sure if her acting career was successful for her. I could not find out what her goals were and what type of acting career would have been satisfying for her specifically. However, she has helped thousands of people with her off-screen roles and is to be applauded for using her life to help others.

Her website states that “Lindsay Wagner makes little distinction between her life as an actress, advocate, mother, or author. What unites these various parts is a commitment through her work and her personal life to exploring and advancing human potential.” I love that, what more can I say?

The Bionic Woman: Serving Up a New Career

September 7, 2026February 18, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month our blog theme is “Expensive Parts.” We are taking a look at The Bionic Woman and The Six Milion Dollar Man and the stars who were behind the characters.

We are beginning with The Bionic Woman. This show was a science fiction adventure series that debuted in 1976. Created by Kenneth Johnson, it was based on a 1972 novel, Cyborg by Martin Caldin.

Lindsay Wagner starred in the show as Jaime Sommers. Sommers has superhuman bionic powers and uses them to help the government on secret missions. Both Sally Field and Stefanie Powers were considered for the role. Field was bypassed because she was too identified with Gidget and The Flying Nun. I have a hard time picturing Field in the role, but I can see Powers.

The backstory was that Sommers was a tennis player who was injured while sky diving. Two doctors manage to save her life with bionic surgical implants. After the surgery, Sommers had a bionic ear that allowed her to hear low volumes over long distances. She also has extraordinary strength in her right arm and both legs which allow her to jump great distances and run at high speed (60 mph).

The Bionic Woman was a spinoff of The Six Million Dollar Man. Steve Austin (Lee Majors) travels to his hometown and reconnects with Sommers, his high school sweetheart. When she has her accident, he advocates for her with his boss who agrees to save her life if she also becomes a government operative. Steve tries to talk them out of using her in high-risk missions after her surgery; however, she agrees to do it and during her first mission, she gets sick when her body rejects her parts and Steve thinks she is dead.

The character was so popular that The Bionic Woman became a series of its own. Eventually Steve finds out she is alive and realizes she has lost her memories of their relationship and her accident, so they start over as friends. In the series, Jaime quits tennis and teaches at an Air Force base in Ojai, living in an apartment on the ranch owned by Steve’s parents who are clued in to the fact that Steve and Jaime have bionic parts and do special work for the government. On this show, Jaime comes into contact with a bionic dog named Max and when he survives, he becomes her pet and helps her with some of her adventures. The original plot was to spin Max off on his own series which seems a bit too over the top for me.

It was important to creator Ken Johnson that limits be set on what Jaime could do. He said, “When you’re dealing with the area of fantasy, if you say ‘Well, they’re bionic so they can do whatever they want,’ then it gets out of hand, so you’ve got to have really, really tight rules. . . . They can jump three stories, but they can’t jump four . . . Jaime can’t turn over a truck, but she can turn over a car.”

The types of missions she was involved with were less realistic than Scorpion episodes and more science fiction. She fights Fembots, powerful female robots in several episodes. She also stymies a scientist’s plan to destroy all life on Earth with a nuclear weapon. Some of them remind me of plots that could have been on The Wild Wild West.

The series began in January of 1976 with fourteen episodes airing that season. It was the number five show that year, ahead of The Six Million Dollar Man. The second season, it was down to fourteenth. Even though it was still very popular and Wagner won an Emmy for her work on the show, ABC decided not to renew it because it felt it wasn’t getting the demographics that the network was hoping for. NBC picked it up for a third season. Because it could no longer “work” with The Six Million Dollar Man, a new character named Chris (Christopher Stone) was developed as a love interest for Jaime.

In 1978 both The Bionic Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man were cancelled. However, that was not the end of the characters. Three made-for-tv movies were produced between 1989 and 1994, and in the final one, the couple marries.

Jaime Sommers’ stunts were performed by Rita Egleston. She also performed as a stunt double for Connie Sellecca and Farrah Fawcett, as well as performing in Tron and Blade Runner.

Jerry Fielding was the composer for the series. He wrote the opening and closing themes as well. During season two, his friend Joe Harnell took over the regular music duties and wrote a new opening and closing. When Field mentioned he felt bad his music was no longer being used, the network compromised by using Fielding’s opening and Harnell’s closing.

As you might imagine, this show produced a lot of merchandise during the three years it was on the air. Kenner produced a Bionic Woman doll as well as stickers and tattoos. A lunchbox was available as was a board game by Parker Brothers. In addition, several comic books were published some featuring a partnership between The Bionic Woman and Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman and one with Charlie’s Angels.

Like so many older shows, a reboot for this one was planned for 2002 that never got off the ground. It was released in 2006 starring Michelle Ryan but was a much darker version of the character and only lasted for nine episodes.

I admit, I never got into this show or The Six Million Dollar Man, perhaps because I was in high school at the time and busy with a lot of other things. Many people remember it fondly and it was notable for the first time that a woman was the science fiction star of a television series.

Joseph Kearns: He Truly Enjoyed a Menace

August 31, 2026February 17, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Today’s blog is the last in our theme “They Are a Menace.” We are getting to know the cast from Dennis the Menace. Joseph Kearns is our subject today.

Kearns was born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1907, an only child. His father was a wool buyer, and his mother was a concert pianist. When Kearns was 9, he joined a vaudeville troupe, The Rising Generation, and toured with them for fourteen months.

After high school, he attended the University of Utah, teaching a course in theatrical makeup to pay his education expenses. He joined his father in the wool buying business for a year. However, while traveling as a representative of Howell, Jones, and Donnell of Boston, he bought five boxcars of black wool for $8,000. Since black wool could not be dyed, no one knew what to do with it, and this error in his judgement ended his career.

Kearns then tried his hand at radio on KSL in Salt Lake City beginning in 1930. He was there for six years. After his father died, Kearns who was 29, decided to take his mother and move to California. He continued his radio career in Los Angeles, appearing on many shows including “Burns and Allen,” “The Whistler,” and “Suspense.”

Joseph’s mother taught him to play the pipe organ, and Kearns played for a Los Angeles theater. From that time on, Kearns always had an organ in his residence. In the forties, he acquired one that had been designed for Warner Brothers in 1929 that was headed for the scrap pile and often played it for his guests. He built the organ pipes into his living room walls. In 1985 new owners of the home decided to part with the organ and sold it to a Renaissance Theater in Mansfield, Ohio.

In 1951 he was offered a chance to be on the big screen. He was the voice of the doorknob in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.

That same year, Kearns appeared on television when Burns and Allen shifted from radio to television. Throughout the fifties, he showed up on many popular shows including The Jack Benny Program, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, I Love Lucy, Perry Mason, December Bride, Leave It to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, and Gunsmoke.

In 1959 he was offered the recurring role of George Wilson in Dennis the Menace. George had the perfect blend of annoyance with Dennis and his antics while also letting us realize how much he cared about his young neighbor. During the third season, Kearns passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage. Gale Gordon was brought in as his brother who bought the house from George and his wife and became Dennis’s mentor and the target of his mishaps. One of the last episodes airing before his death was George making out his will and telling Dennis he would inherit his gold watch when he died.

Kearns did an interview with TV Guide in July of 1961. He said that “he lived in mortal fear that the inmates of a nursery school will find out that Mr. Wilson lives right across the street.”

He also discussed his contract for Dennis the Menace. He said he was signed to a five-year deal, and his character was guaranteed to work in seven of every thirteen episodes. However, he was left out of three episodes in season one and the producers “discovered there was nobody else in the cast for Dennis to menace. As a result, Mr. Wilson has been in every episode filmed since.” Kearns didn’t get a new contract however, and said, “Yes, and if I’d known it, I could have got more money. Every time I think about that contract, I feel as if I’d bought five more carloads of black wool.”

Kearns always described himself as a night owl. He enjoyed cooking, reading, writing, traveling, going to the movies, and playing cards.

With fifty credits amassed before his death, you have to wonder how much more work he would have accomplished if he had lived another two or three decades. I have to say Mr. Wilson is my favorite character on the television show. Kearns managed to be a cantankerous, grumpy old man who we all would like to spend time with. That is not an easy feat to accomplish.

Herbert Anderson: A Menacing Situation

August 24, 2026February 17, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are learning about the careers of the cast of Dennis the Menace in our theme “They Are a Menace.” Today it’s Herbert Anderson’s turn; he played Dennis’s father Henry on the show.

Anderson was born in California in 1917. His parents immigrated to Oakland from Norway, and his father was the city treasurer while he was growing up. After high school, Anderson attended the University of California, Berkeley.

Anderson was focused on being an actor and began working for Warner Brothers; his first role was in 1939 as a reporter. In 1941 he was cast in Navy Blues with Martha Raye and Ann Sheriden followed by The Male Animal with Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland. In Navy Blues, he replaced Eddie Albert who was no longer available. Anderson had done some national defense shots in uniform and seeing those photos is what got him the job. According to the Oakland Tribune, he sent for his grandmother who traveled by train to see her grandson in action in Hollywood.

He continued acting throughout the forties and after he established himself in television, he would occasionally take on a big-screen offer including My Man Godfrey, The Caine Mutiny, and The Benny Goodman Story.

During these years he met and married Mary Palmer and they were together until his death.

In 1949, he jumped to the small screen to appear on Your Show Time. By the mid-fifties, he was working primarily on television, appearing in many popular shows in the fifties and sixties, including Father Knows Best and Perry Mason.

In 1959 he was offered the role of Henry Mitchell on Dennis the Menace. For the next four years, he was busy trying to stay a step ahead of Dennis and the situations he got the entire neighborhood into. During the third season, Joseph Kearns, George Wilson on the show, passed away and the show declined in ratings and was cancelled the next year.

Anderson kept busy in television and didn’t seem to be pigeonholed into father roles the way his onscreen wife, Gloria Henry, was. He would appear on another 34 shows during the decade after Dennis ended. You can catch him on episodes of Gunsmoke, Petticoat Junction, I Dream of Jeannie, Batman, My Three Sons, Bewitched, Green Acres, The Brady Bunch, and his last appearance in 1975 was on The Waltons.

I always enjoyed his Brady Bunch role. When the kids get sick, their parents decide they should call the doctor, back when doctors still made house calls. They are both surprised when two doctors show up. Of course, Carol called the girls pediatrician played by Marion Ross and Mike called the boys’ doctor played by Anderson. Both doctors assure them that whichever one they choose to be the family doctor is fine with them, but when all is said and done, they retain both doctors.

In 1982, Anderson underwent heart surgery and decided to retire. He passed away in 1994 from complications after a stroke.

Like so many of these actors it was hard to find much information on the private life of Anderson. I couldn’t find out if he was happy with his career or if he had wanted to stay in films longer. I appreciate getting to know him as Henry Mitchell in the Dennis the Menace episodes.

Gloria Henry: Her Job Was a Menace

August 17, 2026February 17, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month’s blog theme is “They Are a Menace” about the cast of Dennis the Menace. Today we are going to learn more about Dennis’s mom Alice, played by Gloria Henry.

Gloria was born in 1923 in New Orleans. She was sent to the Worcester Art Museum School in Massachusetts for her high school years. In her late teens she moved to Los Angeles, working on radio shows, appearing in theater productions, and taping commercials.

She married Robert Lamb in 1943, but they divorced in 1948.

In 1946, she was signed by Columbia Studios and made her big-screen debut in Sport of Kings in 1947.

She was in 23 films before 1950. During the fifties, she bounced back and forth between films and television series. Her first television role was on Fireside Theater in 1952.

The same year she received her first recurring role on 16 episodes of The Files of Jeffrey Jones. This little-remembered show was about a law school student working as a private investigator. He gets a lot of his life and professional advice from a local bartender named Joe. Henry played his girlfriend Michelle.

She tried marriage again in 1949 with Craig Ellwood. They were married for almost thirty years. During her time on the show, she became pregnant and was written out of the series.

She continued working after the birth of her son and accepted roles on television shows throughout the fifties including Mr. and Mrs. North, Father Knows Best, Perry Mason, The Life of Riley, and The Thin Man.

In 1959, she got her big break, earning the role of Alice Mitchell in Dennis the Menace. No one was more surprised than Henry that she got the role. During an interview in 2011 with KTLA-TV, Gloria said that she clashed with Harry Cohn who ran Columbia. Cohn once told Henry, “You may get somewhere at this studio, but it’ll be over my dead body.” He was absolutely right. Columbia Pictures produced Dennis the Menace, so even though Henry auditioned, she assumed Cohn would never approve her getting the part. However, in February, Cohn died from a heart attack, and two days later she was offered the role of Alice.

For four seasons, she guided Dennis through his mishaps. Henry brought the right amount of patience and frustration while raising Dennis. During season three, Joseph Kearns, who played George Wilson, passed away. The writers wrote his brother and wife who bought the Wilson house into the scripts, but it was too hard to overcome the loss of Kearns. Also, Jay North was now 12 and the antics of an eight-year-old are very different than a preteen boy, and he was ready to move on.

When the show was canceled in 1963, Gloria had a hard time finding roles she wanted to do. She felt she was being typecast as a mother. After appearing on Hazel and The Farmer’s Daughter in the sixties, she didn’t work again until the mid-eighties. While she never had another cast role, you can catch her in episodes of Simon and Simon, Newhart, Our House, Dallas, and Doogie Howser MD, among others. Her only roles after 1992 were a movie in 2005 and an episode of Parks and Recreation in 2012.

She retired and passed away at home in 2021.

I’m not sure how Henry felt about her acting career from the sixties to the nineties. Being typecast is never easy to work around in the entertainment business, but we have seen actresses like Jane Wyatt from Father Knows Best and Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver go on to have longer careers, although not the careers they had hoped for. Alice Mitchell is a memorable character but probably not what Henry wanted her entire legacy to be. Jay North considered her a friend for life and always named her as his acting mentor. I wish I knew more about her life off the screen. Ninety percent of the articles I could find were obituaries.

I hope she appreciated her time as Alice Mitchell, was proud of her film work, and enjoyed her private life.

Jay North: No Longer a Menace

August 10, 2026August 18, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

As we continue our theme of “They Are a Menace,” today we get to know Jay North, who played Dennis on Dennis the Menace.

North was born in 1951 in Hollywood. His father was an alcoholic, and when he was four, his parents divorced. His mother worked for the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. She arranged for Dennis to appear on his favorite program, Cartoon Express. A talent agent noticed him and asked his mother if she could represent him. In 1958 and 1959, he appeared in eight television series and three movies, including The Donna Reed Show and 77 Sunset Strip.

A nationwide search was being held in 1958 for the casting of Dennis the Menace for a new show. Hundreds of boys auditioned, and North was asked to come in to test with Herbert Anderson and Gloria Henry who would play his parents and Joseph Kearns, who would become George Wilson.

The show debuted in fall of 1959 on CBS on Sunday nights. North received about $500 an episode (equivalent today to about $4600). His aunt, who was his guardian on the set, often was abusive. North was not allowed to socialize with the other kids on the set and had to eat his lunch alone in his dressing room. By season three, North was earning $2500 per episode ($23,000 today). His aunt physically abused him when he messed up his lines. He kept this from his mother and coworkers.

Jay played Dennis for four seasons. During season three, Joseph Kearns passed away and he and his wife were written out of the show, with this brother and sister-in-law buying his house and moving next door to Dennis.

North was relieved when the series was cancelled. He was getting exhausted filming the show, doing commercials, and going to school on the set every day. He said in an interview with Filmfax that “between the pressures of the business and Joe’s dying, I became very serious, very morbid, and very withdrawn from the world. I was the antithesis of the little kid that I played on the television show.”

Jay was typecast as Dennis and had a hard time finding roles after the show was done. He took roles on several series, starring in another show, Maya which was canceled after a season. At that point he began providing voices for animation characters. He was married and divorced within a year in the mid-seventies.

Jay became disillusioned with the acting profession and joined the Navy. He was assigned to the USS Iwo Jima, stationed in Virginia in 1977. He received an honorable discharge in 1979.

He received a few roles when he returned, including some time on General Hospital. Luckily his mother had invested his money in real estate, so he was in a good financial situation. For several years he worked in the food industry.

When Paul Petersen, who had played Jeff Stone on The Donna Reed Show, phoned him to say a former childhood star, Rusty Hamer who was the son on The Danny Thomas Show, had committed suicide. North was given the name of a therapist Stan W. Ziegler who helped former childhood stars. Petersen started a new organization, A Minor Consideration, that North helped get running. This nonprofit, still around today, helps minors deal with the stress of show business.

📷extratv.com North with Jeannie Russell and Gloria Henry

North tried marriage again in 1991, but the couple separated after three months. In 1992, he met Cindy Hackney, a caterer. They were married a year later, and the couple moved to Cindy’s hometown of Lake Butler, Florida. He gained three daughters in the marriage. North made a break with Hollywood and worked as a correctional officer in Florida and helped troubled youth through the justice department.

He did keep a foot in the acting door appearing on talk shows, at memorabilia conventions, and he had a cameo on The Simpsons. In 1999, in an interview with E! he said that “I am so happy that I was able to have such a positive impact on people’s lives. I’m going to write my autobiography and then I’m just going to live a contented, happy life here in Lake Butler with the people I love, and kind of just vanish into the mists of time.”

North continued his friendship with Jeannie Russell who played Margaret on Dennis the Menace. She became a chiropractor, and he was one of her clients. He also was close to Gloria Henry after the show and always credited her as being his mentor.

Unfortunately, I could not find the book North wanted to write, but there is a book about his life and the inspiration he became to others. It’s by Richard Mayday and titled “Jay North: Beyond Dennis the Menace: The Life, Legacy, and Untold Struggles from Child Star to Advocate and Survivor of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Sadly, he passed away from colorectal cancer in 2025.The book was published the year North passed away, so I’m not sure if he contributed to the book or not.

North’s career started off out of his control, and once he was able to make his own decisions about his roles, he found himself typecast and unable to get the roles he wanted. However, he continued in the business, finding new ways to contribute with his talents. Luckily, his mother invested all his earnings. North said despite the large amounts of money he was making, she never lived off any of his proceeds. That enabled him to find happiness in Florida with a family he loved and a career that he found satisfaction in helping others. You can’t ask for a more rewarding life than that.

Dennis the Menace: A Well-Meaning Kid

August 3, 2026August 2, 2026 / thewritelife61 / Leave a comment

This month our blog theme is “They Are a Menace,” and we are spending time with some of the cast of the Dennis the Menace show. But, today, we are going to learn a bit about the show itself.

Dennis the Menace debuted in the fall of 1959. It was based on the comic strip by Hank Ketcham that began in 1951. Produced by Dariell Productions and Screen Gems, it was about a young boy and the trouble he mistakenly causes for his family and neighbors. Dennis (Jay North) lives with his parents Henry (Herbert Anderson) and Alice (Gloria Henry). He often causes difficulties for his neighbor George Wilson (Joseph Kearns), but Martha Wilson (Sylvia Field) is much more sympathetic to Dennis’s heartfelt attempts to “help” them. Dennis often refers to his neighbor as “Good Old Mr. Wilson.” George, despite his agitation with the mischief Dennis causes, does care about him.

Also seen on the show were Dennis’s friend Tommy (Billy Booth) and Margaret (Jeannie Russell), who has a crush on Dennis. We also get to know a lot of the community residents Dennis encounters on a regular basis. In six of these episodes, Ron Howard plays Stewart, one of Dennis’s friends before he moved to Mayberry.

Howard discussed his time on the show during his Television Academy interview. He said the thing he remembered most about this show was that the agony North had to endure with his hair style. The producers were trying to force North’s hair into the tuft that the comic strip Dennis the Menace had. They put him in hair nets off to the side of the set when he wasn’t working and kept using gels and sprays to make it work. Howard said he looked miserable, and the second season, they just let his hair do its natural thing.

CBS placed the show on Sunday nights following Lassie. However, after reviewing the first three episodes, the network asked the “antics” to be toned down because they were afraid that children watching the show might try to imitate Dennis’s hijinks.

Sadly in 1962, Kearns passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage. After two episodes without the Wilsons, Gale Gordon moved in as George’s brother John. In the fourth season, John buys the house from George and Martha. Field was let go, and John’s wife Eloise (Sara Seegar) lives in the house and interacts with Dennis.

The show was canceled after that year. The series was #16 in season one, moved up to #11 in season two, stayed in the top twenty in season three at #17 but then fell out of the top thirty shows during the final season. Part of the loss of viewers probably had to do with Kearns and Field leaving the show. However, North was now 12 years old and no longer “fit” the well-meaning boy who causes trouble for everyone.

After the show was cancelled, North got into voice acting, playing the teenage Bamm Bamm on The Flintstones. He also voiced Prince Turhan on The Banana Splits Hour. In 1960 North released his first album, “Look Who’s Singing!”

North left the acting profession about 1990. He teamed up with Paul Petersen (Jeff on The Donna Reed Show) to start A Minor Consideration, dedicated to helping kids in the entertainment industry. North revealed that because his mom worked full time, he needed a guardian on the set, and his Aunt Marie took on that role, but she was often physically and verbally abusive, and he never told his mother or any of his coworkers. A Minor Consideration is still doing good work today. Later North worked with troubled youths in Florida’s juvenile justice system and as a correctional officer.

The other two kids on the show also left the acting profession. Booth became an attorney and taught business law at Cuesta College and Cal Poly, while Russell became a chiropractor, although she did take on a handful of acting jobs now and then.

If you’ve read my blog about the Warners Ranch lot, this show was part of it. The Mitchell house was the same house the Stones resided in on The Donna Reed Show. The Wilson home was the previous home of the Andersons on Father Knows Best and would later be where Jeannie caused mischief for Tony on I Dream of Jeannie.

Not surprisingly, this family show was sponsored by Kellogg’s and Skippy Peanut Butter. The sponsors wanted Dennis to do commercials for them, so he was in ads for Kellogg’s cereals, Skippy, Best Foods mayonnaise, and Bosco chocolate milk. They even talked Kearns into doing some peanut butter commercials with North.

One of the sad things I learned about the show was the unhappy life of the real Dennis Mitchell. Ketcham based the show on his son Dennis. His mother died from a drug overdose when he was 12. His parents had just divorced and three weeks after her death, his dad remarried. Ketcham moved his son to Switzerland, but he had trouble adjusting, so his father sent him to a boarding school in the states. Ketcham stayed in Switzerland with his second family until a divorce in 1968. Hank later remarried and returned to the United States. Dennis joined the military and fought in Vietnam. However, when he returned home, he suffered from PTSD. Even though he turned his life around before he joined the military, he had no relationship with his father. A New York Times reporter who interviewed the cartoonist in 1994 asked about this, and Ketcham said, “He’s living in the East somewhere doing his own thing. That’s just a chapter that was a short one that closed, which unfortunately happens in some families.” Very sad.

Dennis the Menace was popular in the fifties and early sixties. I understand the show lost viewers with the loss of Kearns and Field, but because of Dennis’ age and the change that was taking place in sitcoms in the mid-to-late sixties, the show would not have lasted much longer. It’s hard to learn that both Dennis Ketchum and Jay North suffered mental health issues and abuse during their youth. I’m glad they both were able to go on to live happier lives as adults.

McKeever and the Colonel: I Tried To Like It

July 27, 2026January 22, 2026 / thewritelife61 / Leave a comment

As we wind up our Military Upended posts, we take a look at a show that debuted in fall of 1962 and was canceled after one season. This was a different concept of a military show. McKeever and the Colonel is the kid version of McHale’s Navy. Instead of the crew causing problems for Captain Binghamton, this one is set in a school where cadet Gary McKeever causes headaches for Colonel Blackwell.

McKeever (Scott Lane), the son of an Air Force officer, is a mischievous kid, but we often root for him because Colonel Blackwell (Allyn Joslyn) is an arrogant guy. Other characters included Sergeant Barnes (Jackie Coogan) who sympathized with the cadet, Nurse Warner (Elisabeth Fraser), and fellow cadets Monk (John Eimen) and Tubby (Keith Taylor).

While they make life difficult for the Colonel, he is fond of the boys and most of their pranks are innocent enough.

The show was on ABC on Sunday nights, which tended to be a family viewing night. It was on at 6 pm before another new military sitcom, Ensign O’Toole. Ensign O’Toole was up against Lassie, which was in the top twenty that year.

I think there were two main issues working against this show. Harvey Bullock talked about his time working on this show during his Television Academy interview. He said that he was one of the creators who developed the show. When NBC picked it up, they said they didn’t need the original writers because they had their own. After ten episodes, they called Bullock and the other writers and asked them to please come back because the show was failing miserably. Bullock said they did return, but things had gone too far, and the ratings were too bad to come back from.

In combination with the writing problems, on Sunday nights most families tended to tune in to watch Lassie, Dennis the Menace, and The Ed Sullivan Show, another top twenty series. Considering that and the fact that this show was not in the prime-time lineup may have kept it from finding the viewership it needed. Ensign O’Toole was also canceled, but ABC replayed the episodes a year later to replace another canceled show. When the fall of 1963 schedule appeared, 49 shows had been canceled from the previous year, so McKeever had plenty of company.

I wanted to like this show, but it didn’t do much for me. The episode I watched was “The Celestial Bells.” The cadets weren’t happy because a new course was added, and it was ballroom dancing. They get the idea that they can go to the infirmary and try to catch a disease from an older boy but then learn that he has a sprained ankle. When that fails, they go to the malt shop to gorge themselves on ice cream treats until they get caught by the colonel. The jokes seemed a bit flat. For example, one guy asked another cadet if he knew anything about girls, and he replied he had three sisters and they were all girls. Sergeant Barnes comes in to give the guys a pep talk about girls just as they are thinking about going AWOL. The colonel then arrives with a asst colonel who is there to make sure they change and show up at class. Of course, McKeever tries to escape into the equipment locker at the dance, but when he opens it, all the equipment falls out. Just as he’s ready to be punished, Miss Dixon, the instructor, says he will stay and dance with her and after a few minutes of dancing, he falls in love. Like I said, I really tried to like it, but given the shows on the air in 1965, this is not one I would have watched a second episode of.

The show inspired merchandise during its short time on the air. Three Dell comic books were published; Milton Bradley introduced a board game, Bamboozle; and Halco Toys issued a set that consisted of a belt with a canteen, pistol, holster, and hand grenade.

It’s not a show you hear about often anymore. The series occasionally shows up a streaming service but is not part of Netflix or Hulu. Your best bet is to watch a few episodes on YouTube.