By 1955, Ketcham moved from his Carmel cottage to upper Carmel Valley, where he purchased the former Fred Wolferman ranch, only 40 minutes from the Monterey Peninsula. The Spanish adobe home on the Carmel Valley property was designed by architect Hugh W. Comstock with bitudobe brick. On the edge of the orchard was a Victorian ranch house for the foreman and his family, designed by architect Wilson Mizner.

In 1958, Dennis Play Products, Inc., was created by Ketcham to distribute toys, which included the Dennis the Menace Doll, Ruff Dog, and Banshee Ball. Between 1959 and 1964 Dennis the Menace was broadcast on CBS television, based on the Ketcham comic strip. The show was a great success.

In 1970, King Features Syndicate revived Ketcham's wartime strip Half Hitch as a newspaper comic. The strip was published under Ketcham's name, although it was drawn and written by others. The new version of Half Hitch ran until 1975.

Family

thumb|left|Ketcham self-portrait in a cartoon for the program for the 1968 Bing Crosby Pro-Am Golf Tournament

Ketcham's first wife, Alice Louise Mahar Ketcham, died on June 22, 1959.

Later life and retirement

right|thumb|290px|Hank Ketcham's Half Hitch (December 19, 1971)

When his Dennis the Menace cartoon added a Sunday strip, Ketcham hired artist Al Wiseman and writer Fred Toole to produce the Sunday strips and the many Dennis the Menace comic books that were published. People from around the country sent captions to him, and he would find one that he liked and illustrate the gag.

In 1990, Ketcham published a memoir titled The Merchant of Dennis the Menace chronicling his career. He retired from drawing the daily panel in 1994, when his former assistants, Marcus Hamilton and Ron Ferdinand, took over. At the time of Ketcham's death, Dennis the Menace was distributed to more than 1,000 newspapers in 48 countries and 19 languages, by King Features Syndicate. his third wife, Rolande; and their two children, Dania and Scott.

In 2005, Fantagraphics Books started publishing what was to be a complete Dennis by Ketcham from the start of the strip, collecting two years per volume, but the publishing ceased in 2009 with the 1961–1962 volume.

Legacy

The Dennis the Menace Playground was designed by Ketcham and with the help of sculptor Arch Garner in 1954. The playground opened on November 17, 1956, with children's play areas including a 1924 locomotive steam engine, donated by the Southern Pacific Railroad. A life-sized, , bronze statue of cartoon strip character Dennis the Menace was displayed at the entrance to the playground. In recent years it has been stolen twice. The statue was sculpted by Wah Ming Chang, another Disney man who resided in Carmel Valley.

References

Further reading

  • Ketcham, Hank. The Merchant of Dennis. New York: Abbeville Press, 1990.
  • Hank Ketcham Tribute
  • Hank Ketcham obituary