Sara Seegar; Had Regular Role in ‘Dennis the Menace’

Actress Sara Seegar, who portrayed Mrs. Wilson on the television series “Dennis the Menace” and characters created by Oscar Wilde and Richard Sheridan on and off Broadway, has died in a hospital in Langhorne, Pa.

She was 76, lived in nearby Newtown and died Sunday of a cerebral hemorrhage, said her husband, actor Ezra Stone.

Miss Seegar appeared as a character actress on Broadway and in London, on radio and television and as one of the town ladies in the movie version of “The Music Man.”

“Dennis the Menace” was broadcast from 1959 to 1963. Miss Seegar played the second Mrs. Wilson from 1962 to 1963 after the actor playing the first Mr. Wilson, a curmudgeonly neighbor, died and was replaced by Gale Gordon.

In 1963 she was seen in Sheridan’s “School for Scandal” and in the musical “Earnest in Love,” based on the characters Oscar Wilde created in “The Importance of Being Earnest.” She also appeared for many seasons at the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pa., and co-produced with her husband a 1983 tricentennial salute to Newtown, “Sweet Land.”

Since 1967, she had been active in training young actors through the American College Theater Festival, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the music and theater department of the Army.

Earlier, she had been heard often on radio, particularly on her husband’s popular series “The Aldrich Family.”