When Jay North Turned South or What Happens When a Child Star Doesn't Do Drugs?

Jay North was one of so many child stars who grew into an adult the likes of which no television viewer could ever have predicted. The list of drug addicts, sex maniacs, and gun toting weirdies who were once child actors is, of course, olympic and has been touched on, studied, and satirized ad nauseum. However, for every ten child actors who grow up to be a "degenerate" there is always one who grows up to be something far worse. A right wing reactionary who devotes their life to ridding society of ... "degenerates." 

Shirley Temple wasn't just the first major child star of the talkie era, she was also the first child star to grow up into a frightening right wing pro-war crusader. As is the case with many studies focusing on the film career of Ronald Reagan, it has been argued that Temple's politics may have been shaped by some of the environs she was exposed to and participated in as a child on the film set. There is not enough evidence to actually make this theory hold any weight, but who knows? As a seven year old, Temple goes down in history as the youngest actor to ever appear on celluloid in blackface (Well, the strange 1934 Lloyd Bacon/Busby Berkely musical Wonder Bar features a sequence with three babies in blackface, but they don't have any lines - or screen credit). Temple also played the youngest character in a film to own slaves - see the 1935 20th Century Fox release The Little Colonel if you truly desire to see this "family film" in action, shockingly still available in Wal-Mart's children video sections everywhere. Racism the whole family can enjoy!

Long after she had retired from movie making, Temple felt moved enough by the unrest in late sixties America to do something about it. She ran for Congress in 1967 on the Republican ticket under an unabashedly pro-Vietnam War platform. She wasn't just campaigning with slogans of supporting the war, but vocally arguing in favor of more(!) American involvement in the destruction, a point of view that was going against the tide of public sentiment to say the least. (The picture on the left is Shirley with Glenn T. Seaborg, one of the inventors of the Atom Bomb.)

She lost - defeated by Paul McCloskey, who had painted Temple as a blood thirsty hawk. His victory seemed assured when Shirley refused to accept the challenge of a televised debate about the war. Regardless she was quickly appointed United States ambassador to the United Nations by everyone's favorite villain, Richard Milhouse Nixon. She held posts, mostly symbolic, courtesy of every subsequent right(est) wing administration, including Bush the first and former co-star Reagan up until her retirement (in the ridiculous 1947 picture That Hagen Girl, a teenage Temple is the victim of a small town scandal when it is discovered that her parents gave birth to her out of wedlock. She is shunned by all of society with the exception of her much older lover ... the gipper). Like other Hollywoodites of her era, such as John Wayne, Adolphe Menjou, and Walt Disney, Temple seemed to buy into the McCarthyite scripts that were produced in the late forties. When dealing with communist countries in the nineteen seventies, Shirley's over simplified language as a diplomat often had her referring to "our" need to "take them out."

Like most shills for the war machine, Temple has enjoyed a long and close association with the corporate sector, serving on the boards of such giants as Disney, Bancal Tri-State, and the always controversial Del Monte whose business practices in Latin America fuelled anti-American anger for decades. One of her biggest supporters during her time in government was notorious neo-con George Shultz, the man credited with conceiving "the Bush Doctrine," that awful concept of "pre-emptive war,"  and a long time director/president of the sinister Bechtel, grandaddy of the war profiteers. Temple has stayed completely silent on the Iraq War, perhaps wisely, remembering the type of reaction she received from the public when she spoke in favor of destroying the country of Vietnam. Regardless, it shouldn't be much of a strain to guess where an ally of Shultz, Bush, Reagan, Nixon, and Ford would stand on the issue.

Jay North was the kid hand picked by Dennis the Menace creator Hank Ketcham to play the beloved character when it was time to turn the classic comic strip into a mediocre television sitcom. Utilizing the same laugh track as Mr. Ed, My Favorite Martian and Leave it to Beaver, the formulaic television show's episodes were interchangeable. He starred in 146 shows from 1959 to 1963 and then proceeded to take on only small roles sporadically over the next several years as his novelty wore off. In the late sixties he became a regular voice actor for Hanna Barbera, initially as one of the voices on HB's boring Arabian Knights shorts that aired as the cartoon intervals on their creepy Banana Splits Adventure Hour. Afterwards he was promoted to the voice of teenage Bamm-Bamm from 1971 to 1976!

According to Volume 8 of Whatever Became Of by Richard Lamparski  (Lamparski, inventor of the  entire "where are they now?" concept has himself become a likely candidate to be featured in such a book), Jay North grew up to be a hardline member of the right. In the late seventies, Lamparski's profile featured the following, 'He is a strong advocate of the death penalty ... not only for murder but for drug dealing as well. "I'm much more comfortable with [the older generation] than I am with my own," he explained recently. "And the younger generation ... forget it!" He refers to himself as "a real       conservative in every way." He dislikes long hair on males, rock n' roll music, drugs of any kind (although he drinks and smokes cigarettes), and young women who "do not dress and act like real ladies."  What seems to be Jay's on-the-surface sexism in this statement, again, perhaps can be traced back to showbiz influences on a child actor. Like most hit television shows of the time, a vinyl record was released in order to cash in on the show. His 1961 Look Who's Singing! Jay North LP has him singing a song titled What Good Is a Girl? I'll try to upload an MP3 later on.

"What good is a girl?
A silly old girl!
I can't see where they're any good at all! 
What good is a girl?
They wear the dumbest clothes you ever saw!"

Perhaps the childlike innocence on the record formulated his disdain for women who "don't dress like ladies." However, the album features no song titled "What Good is a Longhair?"

After abandoning the acting profession North joined the Navy briefly before finding work in 1982 as a prison guard, a job he has had on and off for the past twenty years. Strangely enough, despite his advocacy for killing someone who once sold him a reefer, North went through, unspecified, "anguish" from "drug experimentation." Whatever the drugs were, they didn't change his perspective to anything hipper. As the years went on Jay North started down the avenue that most child stars tend to follow. His right wing notions remained intact, but according to Paul Peterson, the founder of "A Minor Consideration," a religious charity that devotes itself to helping former child stars(!), by 1990 North "was on a course to commit violence" and "a killer waiting to erupt. Jimmy Hawkins and I heard him issue the threat. We saw his hit list." This revelation is all the more shocking knowing North's employment in a night stick wielding power position as a prison guard, not to mention his blood lust to see drug peddlers dead. Peterson was a child star on The Donna Reed Show, and also released an LP around 1962 called "My Dad," featuring his renditions of songs like Making Whoopee. North recently retired and lives in Florida, by all accounts is recovered, and is part of A Minor Consideration's inspirational-former-child-star-speaking-circuit.Temple and North, two child stars turned reactionaries. How many more are there?

Comments

[Rich]

To answer the question, "How many more are there?" was the same question McCarthy wanted answers to with regards to communists in our State Department in the 50's.
Maybe it's time for the "Now Generation" to have Congress form a "House Commitee on AMERICAN Activities" and see who shows up!
Considering where most of the Hollywood crowd stand with American Politics, one shouldn't worry about, "how many more are there?".

[Listener Kliph]

That question wasn't meant to sound so ominous, it was more in the vein of "who else has a weird child-star-turned-crusader story to share?"

[bartelby]

yeah stop picking on those people who run the most powerful nation on Earth you big bully.

[Pete]

If you'd lived under the tyrannical watchful eye of Mr. Wilson all those years, you might be a little more sensitive to the need for a strong defense, hippy.

[James]

""who else has a weird child-star-turned-crusader story to share?""

Mickey Rooney wrote an open letter of protest when the movie Silent Night, Deadly Night (the infamous Santa-as-ax-murderer movie) was released in 1984. A decade later, he acted in Silent Night, Deadly Night 5. Go figure.

[Norton Zenger]

Does Kirk Cameron count? Because man, the stories about him could fill a book.

[DefChef]

Add Willie Ames (Tommy from Eight Is Enough) to the list. He's in the midwest, doing a low-budget Powerman ripoff called Bibleman. He and Jay (and Kirk, and Shirley) would have plenty to talk about!

[lee]

i saw a manhatten public access show in the early 90s [?] with Jay north as a guest interviewee. it all started nicely enough with the host's glee at his guests presence. then Jay let forth with all the tales of his beatings and starvation tactics on the set of D T M. alleged: his parents gave the director permission to hit Jay when he wasn't perfect. [anyone know of whereabouts in re this clip? ?] . therefore, have some understanding. he's gotta get SOME one. drugs are bad, mmkay? and a shout out to Buffy from family affair, and mike lookinland- often seen at Gr. dead concerts in a nod. he did the loose booty.

[lee]

also- have a look at the DJ cover of shirl's auto bio. '' child star'' . it shows a photo ,on the front, of her at about 4-5 yrs old looking quite glum. amazon link: http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/9c/cc/d016d250fca077b2b6c47010._AA240_.L.jpg

[Grant]

In re: Mike Lookinland mention.
I just saw this recently, so I thought it might get you up to date with how Bobby Brady ended up, (though I always think of him as the voice of Oblio in "The Point".)
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/lookinlandmug1.html

[listenerz]

a shame jay north turned out kind of goofy.
but, to the author of this entry--calling dennis the manace a 'mediocre show'???
i loved watching that show in all its rerun glory in the 80s. it was my favorite.

[Listener Kliph]

I watched it when it was rerun in the nineties. I remember it being mediocre. Maybe if I watched it in the eighties tho, it would have been better ...

[Rory Murray]

What may have shaped Jay Norths somewhat extreme attitudes is the fact that on the set of Dennis The Menace, once the director yells cut, Jay was routinely praised by his cast members and then severely beaten by family members.
This has just got to fuck a kids head up, even to the extent that he becomes a Republican Prison Guard.
What I want to know are his views on Illegal Immigration.

[Jay's shipmate]

Regarding Jay North in the US Navy.

I was in boot camp with Jay at RTC Orlando Florida in 1977. We were the only guys from California in the company and how we ended up in Florida instead of San Diego is still an enigma.

He was a regular guy, just like the rest of us. A little older, and more out of shape. But he hardened up and everything worked out in the end.

Being from California, we would 'shoot the shit' now and then. We would mostly talk about growing up in LA. I lost track of him when we went to the fleet in April 1977.

Anchor's Aweigh

[DS]

A bit over the top about Shirley.

Yes, in the 1960s she could be quite the reactionary, but I think that it was driven by her naive "patriotism" as opposed to anything sinister. She wasn't quite the full-up right wing hawk that you portray, since she has gone on record many times for environmental causes, and--I believe--severed ties with Del Monte over some human rights disagreements. She seems to have shifted over the years to a more centerest political bent, and her silence about Iraq--where in the 60s she would have beat the drum for the administration's position--is revealing. Also, don't forget that she was one of the very first celebrities to go public about her mastectomy (and the need for cancer testing) in the early 1970s, in an era when nobody in public life would dare discuss such things. She probably saved a few lives there.

[Mark]

Does anyone know if there is a way to contact Mr. North for an autograph? PLEASE let me know what you know.

[Michael Powers]

Wow. That's a hell of an article. Dennis the Menace is a curiously unwatchable show for an adult, although it's been decades since I've seen it. There is something very ulteriorly strange about North's performance and if half the comments after your article are true about his treatment on the set, it's no wonder. You know, your joking remark about the show possibly being better in the 80s than the 90s actually has some resonance for me. The short-lived sitcom "United States" with Beau Bridges (the network kept moving it around all over the schedule from week to week) seemed like the very pinnacle of sophistication back in the 80s but when I finally got a chance to see it again in the 90s at the Museum of Television & Radio (last week renamed "The Paley Center for Media"--sort of like renaming a synagogue the "Hitler Center for Jewry," but at least they didn't name it after Sarnoff), "United States" just looked like an extremely good TV show rather than something transcendently great beyond anything else ever seen on television (except, of course, for John Frankenheimer's "The Comedian").

As for "The Little Colonel," I guess the historically accurate but shameful presence of slavery in the movie is a small price to pay to see Temple dance alongside the great Bojangles Robinson, not to mention the welcome appearance of Drew Barrymore's great-uncle Lionel. (As an aside, I never believed that Drew Barrymore was really John Barrymore's granddaughter, given the rather unfettered persona of her mother Jade, until I noticed one night on a talk show that the jawline of her profile is identical to her grandfather's. Also, many people today don't realize that John Barrymore held the same ubiquitous acknowledgement as his generation's greatest actor that subsequently went to Marlon Brando, and was infinitely more famous in his day even than Drew Barrymore is now.)

[richald]

Gee.....I guess it's OK for Hollywood folks to be liberal, but God forbid that they are CONSERVATIVE

Greetings from the midwest....I DESPISE LAZY LOSERS (IE LIBERALS)

richald@aol.com

[passing through]

"Temple also played the youngest character in a film to own slaves - see the 1935 20th Century Fox release The Little Colonel if you truly desire to see this "family film" in action, shockingly still available in Wal-Mart's children video sections everywhere. Racism the whole family can enjoy!"

Are you offended or annoyed that people have the freedom to choose to watch or not watch this film?

[Steven]

Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, were all severely abused children. If the stories are true about jay North's childhood abuse, it stands to reason he'd end up as a hardcore right-winger.

[L Evans]

Shirley Temple was raised in a conservative Republican family. Her second husband was also a conservative. So it was not her movies that influenced her, but her personal life.

[P. Esquibel]

There are far more sick stories to tell about all the degenerate hollywood liberals. But, if you are a god believing conservative in hollywood they hate it. Liberals, hate the fact that all their anti vietnam garbage only produced the killing fields of khomer rouge. All the Overdosed hollywood wierdos, wow lets write a book about that.

[What about Maya]

I always assumed that Jay North (or his parents) were liberals or even proto-hippies because of that 1966 movie (and later TV show) "Maya" he was in.

That movie was set in India, had a kind of pro-Animal "Born Free" type theme and the 15-year-old North even appeared in it buck naked.

http://www.clothesfree.com/maya.jpg

http://w1.1396.telia.com/~u139602049/north4.html

In fact, that was the first movie in which I ever remember seeing "Name" celeberty appear nude in. Of course, by the end of the 60s it was common.

[Tom Dwyer]

I was in a private drivers ed school with Jay North at age 15+. I believe it was in Eagle Rock, Ca. between Glendale and Pasadena. We sat next to each other. He was about a year older than me. He seemed like a nice guy and was VERY interested in the female students pointing them out to me like I was missing something (typical boys). Anyway, the thing that I remember the most was the people that picked him up after class. It sure wasn't the TV family that I expected (the Mitchell family). My own mother looked and dressed like June Cleaver and I suddenly appreciated that fact.

[ginger robertson]

Jay and his wife Cindy are my next door neighbors. You are so wrong. I know him very well. You couldn't ask for a better friend or a better man. He is filled with compassion, thoughfulness and certainly is a credit to everyone he knows. He still talks with Sinjy from India and stays in contact with Jeanne Russell and some other Hollywood friends. However, he is very busy with his grandson and his daughters and his family life, so he doesn't get to California often.