16:34 PDT 4/4/2021
per
Mike Barnes
She made a living with ‘B’ films before starring alongside Jay North on the popular sitcom.
Gloria Henry, who appeared in films with Gene Autry, Lucille Ball and George Raft before playing the mother of a chaos-causing boy in the 1960s CBS comedy Dennis the Menace, he died. She was 98 years old.
Henry died on Saturday, the day after his birthday, at his home in Los Angeles, said his daughter Erin The Hollywood Reporter.
For four seasons, starting in October 1959 – and then repeated for years – Henry played the lovely Alice Mitchell alongside Herbert Anderson as her unfortunate husband, Henry, and Jay North as Dennis on the Screen Gems show based on Hank’s comic book character. Ketcham.
“A lot of fans say, ‘Oh, I always wished you were my mom’ and ‘My mom was jealous of you, because I wanted you as a mom,'” she said in an interview in 2011. “Which is really funny, because I don’t think my own children felt that way. “
Henry starred alongside Singing Cowboy Autry – and his horse, Champion – in The Strawberry Roan (1948) and Knights in the sky (1949), and she played one of William Bendix’s daughters in Kill the Referee (1950).
She also appeared with Ball and William Holden in Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949), with Raft and Nina Foch in Johnny Allegro (1949) and with Arthur Kennedy and Marlene Dietrich in the film directed by Fritz Lang Rancho Notorious (1952).
Gloria Eileen McEniry was born in New Orleans on April 2, 1923. She worked on the radio and signed with Columbia Pictures, where she starred in 1947 Sport of Kings, Guardian of the Bees and Bulldog Drummond strikes back. She then made six films in 1948 and then seven in 1949, most of them ‘B’ films.
In the 1950s, Henry played a sexy woman who tries to seduce his naive neighbor, Lou, The Abbott and Costello Show and appeared in other series like My little margie, The father knows best, Perry Mason and Riley’s life before landing in Dennis the Menace.
After years away from acting, she returned to appearing on television in Simon & Simon, Newhart, Dallas, Doogie Howser, MD and Parks and recreation.
Henry was married to architect Craig Ellwood from 1949 until the 1977 divorce, and they had three children, Jeffrey, Adam and Erin.