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Thread: Hank Ketchum

  1. #1
    RoRo Guest

    Hank Ketchum

    He was the creator of the comic strip "Dennis the Menace" which runs in 1,000 newspapers in 48 countries and 19 languages. The strip also inspired a TV show by the same name in the early 1960s. Before drawing his strip, he worked first for Walter Lantz creator of "Woody Woodpecker" and then for Walt Disney where he worked on "Pinocchio", "Bambi", "Fantasia" and Donald Duck shorts.
    Cause of death: Heart disease and cancer

  2. #2
    Danny62 Guest
    Son Dennis, whom he had with his first wife, was inspiration for comic strip 'Dennis the Menace'.

    Survived by, but estranged from, his real-life son Dennis, age 55, the first of Ketcham's three children. Dennis' mother--Ketcham's first wife, Alice--died of a drug overdose when he was 4 years old.

    Hank Ketcham's "Dennis the Menace" also appeared on Dairy Queen's shakes and Ice Cream containers.

    Brother in Phi Delta Theta Fraternity

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    Middle Earth
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    13,009
    Anyone who has raised boys has seen them channel A little DTM.
    Stay in Drugs. Eat your School. Don't do Vegetables.

  4. #4
    Noelle Page Guest
    Alice OD'd? Dennis estranged? Geez, is nothing as it seems? What's next--Norman Rockwell a perv?

  5. #5
    GrinReaper Guest
    I wonder what happened between father and son? He named the strip after him. Did that have anything to do with it? It's gotta be more than that. But still...

  6. #6
    Kathyf Guest
    It was a life afforded by "Dennis the Menace." He has told the story of its creation many times, but still warms to it. A freelance cartoonist, he was sitting at his drawing board in his Carmel, Calif., home when his wife stormed into his studio with the words, "Your son is a menace." "You mean Dennis?" he asked. A light bulb lit up in his head, and a star was born.
    Being the model for Dennis the Menace loaded the real Dennis with heavy baggage. So did the turmoil surrounding the end of his parents' marriage and his mother's death during the divorce proceedings. And today, Dennis, who lives in Ohio, and [Hank Ketcham] are estranged. "These things happen," says Ketcham, referring to both the marital breakup and his son's loss of privacy. "But this was even worse because his name was used. He was brought in unwillingly and unknowingly, and it confused him."

  7. #7
    GrinReaper Guest
    Ya mean I was right? That naming the strip did have something do to with the rift between Hank and Dennis?

  8. #8
    Kathyf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by GrinReaper View Post
    Ya mean I was right? That naming the strip did have something do to with the rift between Hank and Dennis?
    You called it.

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