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.