Who Is Still Alive From ‘Dennis the Menace?’

DENNIS THE MENACE, Gale Gordon, Jay North, (Season 4), 1959-63 — Everett Collection

Jay North, best known to TV fans around the world as Dennis Mitchell, star of the classic 1950s and ’60s family comedy Dennis the Menace, passed away on April 6, 2025, at the age of 73, after a long battle with colorectal cancer. Based on the daily comic strip that debuted in 1951 (and still runs today!), the show followed Dennis as he caused frequent good-natured havoc around the neighborhood, sometimes with his friend Tommy (Billy Booth) at his side — and always to the distress of his easily-rattled neighbor, Mr. Wilson (Joseph Kearns). Though the show was canceled in 1963, after 146 episodes, it aired continuously in reruns for nearly 30 years afterwards, and experienced a cultural renaissance in the ’80s and ’90s, when it inspired a 1986 animated children’s series and a 1993 live action film. The show still airs daily on Antenna TV.

Sadly, most of the show’s cast members have passed away in the years since the series left the airwaves. Here’s who’s still alive from the original cast of Dennis the Menace.

Jeannie Russell (74)

Margaret Wade

actress Jeannie Russell on 'Dennis the Menace' with Jay North; on her own in 2004

Everett Collection/ Frazer Harrison; Getty Images

Russell played the bossy, goody-two-shoes Margaret, who had her romantic sights set on Dennis, much to his dismay (you may recall Dennis’s nickname for her: “dumb old Margaret”). Russell came from a performing family — in fact, her younger brother, who was already working as a child actor, helped Wade secure her audition for Dennis the Menace. In a 2016 interview with the Spectrum, Russell recalled that she was called in for a chat with the show’s producers, and that “Jay North was present at [the interview] and told the director ‘I like Jeannie!’ We read some scenes together and I was eventually hired.” Unlike their characters, Russell and North got along well, and remained close friends throughout their lives.

Russell appeared in over 30 episodes of Dennis the Menace, and even has a small role in Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds. But securing acting work became tough as she hit her teens, and Russell eventually decided to shift careers entirely, becoming a chiropractor. “I wanted a career that I could control and chiropractic was wide open for women at the time,” Russell said. She has operated her own successful chiropractic practice in the Los Angeles area since the late 1970s.