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In the long years that Thomas was away playing the club circuit, his kids thought of him as almost legendary "Uncle Daddy," greeted his infrequent returns with "Make room for Daddy!" Remembers Danny: "Daddy was just a picture on the piano. The clothes I brought to them were all too small by the time I got them there." The last straw came when his daughter wrote a theme in high school ending: "What's so good about tomorrow? . . . My father is away all the time, working so that we'll be secure tomorrow, but by the time he does that we'll be grown up and gone away."
Danny called on a producer, explained his problem, begged him to find something that would keep him at home. The producer, who recognized a televisable situation when he heard one, devised the show on the spot.
Thomas is now a resolute homebody (Beverly Hills and Palm Springs), occupies himself, off-camera, in remodeling his Beverly Hills manse (cost: about $250,000 so far), or puttering with power tools. A Roman Catholic of the Maronite rite, Thomas has devoted much time in recent years to raising money for a children's hospital in Memphis, Tenn. (for incurable patients), already has pledges of $1,300,000 out of a hoped-for $2,000,000.
Danny looks like a weird blend of Napoleon and Fiorello H. LaGuardia, sings as cornily as Al Jolson did, speaks as if he forgot to gargle before keynoting a dockers' meeting. His trademark is his preposterous nose ("If you're going to have a nose, you ought to have a real one"). But the U.S.'s currently favorite tele-comedian, boasting no single towering talent, succeeds as a funnyman mostly because his humor seems to well up from a sizable heart. Or, as Danny Thomas puts it, citing his favorite philosopher, Lebanese Mystic Kahlil (The Prophet) Gibran: "Comedy and tragedy aren't very far apart. Like Gibran says, 'Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.' "