Make Room for Daddy

When Make Room for Daddy ended its run in 1960s Danny Thomas offered to put Rusty Hamer through college but Hamer turned him down believing he had a future in acting. Sadly after the series ended acting jobs for Rusty were few and far between. Eventually in 1990 depression over being a 42 year old has been led to his suicide.

Back when Danny Thomas opted for a television series, the Danny Thomas Show or Make Room For Daddy as it was both known as, his career was at a crossroads. He was a good singer/comedian and did a few musical and acting parts on screen, but he had not reached the top rank of film stars and those people were finding less and less work on the big screen. Television was clearly the way to go.

Like Desi Arnaz over on I Love Lucy, Thomas as Danny Williams was a nightclub performer. Unlike Desi he did not have a wife just dying to get into show business. Jean Hagen was perfectly content to be raising their kids Sherry Jackson and Rusty Hamer. Hagen wanted out after three years so she was killed off and Thomas met and married Marjorie Lord who was on the remainder of the series run.

Back in those days TV had a lot of 'father is an idiot' shows and this was king of that lot. Thomas was constantly put down by his son Rusty Hamer. All I know is that talking like that to my father would have gotten me a rap across the mouth and a few licks on my behind with the hair brush.

Sadly enough Hamer proved to be the real tragedy of the show. His was a well known child star suicide after his career dissipated when the show was canceled.

The best part of the Danny Thomas Show was Danny Thomas performer with songs and stand up comedy. And that Lebanese uncle, a most demanding Uncle Tonoose played by Hans Conreid on occasion.

I think a whole generation of kids learned bad behavior from Rusty Hamer though.

Seems almost every TV series thinks that screaming and yelling is funny..Examples: Sgt Bilko, The Honeymooners, All In The Family, The Danny Thomas Show and many more. Personally, all the yelling gives me a headache and I don't find it the least bit laughable. With that said, Danny Thomas is very likeable and clearly very talented. The story plots are usually pretty good and with the screaming aside very entertaining. The supporting cast is always good and the actresses who play Danny's wife and maid usually steal the episode. Everyone has good on screen chemistry and the shows are always positive and uplifting.

I appeared on three Danny Thomas Shows; first in 1955 as part of the Little League team from the episode of the same name which aired on Sept. 20, 1955. I played drums in a band called The Dixie Small Fry and we were part of "Good Old Days" -Season 5 Episode 25 from March 24, 1958 and then Season 6 Episode 13, "When The Saints Come Marching In" - Dec. 29, 1958.

Recently, I bought the Fifth Season DVD collection and watched "Good Old Days" for the first time since it aired originally. I remember being a big fan of the show before ever being on it and watching this episode brought back not only how much fun that week at Desilu was for the guys in the band, but how well written and acted the Danny Thomas Show was week in and week out. There was nothing phony about the set ups, or the people being presented as the Danny Williams family. There was an intelligence about the situations, funny always, with an edge at times, again which made it believable. Regardless of age, The Danny Thomas Show was both real and funny, no small accomplishment. Marjorie Lord was first rate, Sherry Jackson, besides being a major babe for guys my age, was also a very good actress who might have become great and Rusty Hamer at eight years old had comedy timing most seasoned adults couldn't match.

As great as all the parts and people were, it was Danny Thomas who made The Danny Thomas Show exceptional. He was what he was portrayed to be, an entertainer,a nightclub entertainer and as sitcom fathers go, unique in his make up. This was a real guy and not a silly characterization of a father. In fact, every character in the show seemed to be from real life.

Danny Thomas was a man of remarkable character and compassion for others. To use the phrase that came into being during the Vietnam war, he "walked it like he talked it", whether heading the drive for St. Jude Hospital or as Danny Williams giving us another brilliant Danny Thomas spit take over coffee with Sid. Through all the years the Danny Thomas Show was on the air, he stressed values, truthfulness and respect and that's what we as the audience got back each week. That, and humor with a real life edge to it.

And it was clear that people working on the show LIKED working on the show. Danny and producer Sheldon Leonard were in charge, but Thomas never acted like he was the star. In the first scene of "Good Old Days", I had a line to say as our band left the Williams apartment....I was not an actor and the line got tossed to me in dress rehearsal...the show was shot in front of an audience, in sequence using the three camera film technique that Desi Arnez had dreamed up. Anyway, Danny saw that I was nervous and so he made a big deal about going over the sequence where he fed me his line, then I said mine and as soon as I got it out of my mouth, Danny nodded my way and spoke loudly enough for the crew to hear...."Do it that way in the show tonight, Kid and we'll be fine."

"Make Room For Daddy" a.k.a. "The Danny Thomas Show" stands as one of the best-written, best acted comedy shows ever. The family situations and characters were like real people with real flaws and virtues. Maybe more so than any other show of it's time. I have read many critiques of the fifth season on DVD. Just about everyone complains about the syndicated, edited episodes being used for this and several other DVD sets. Let me say this. In my opinion, there may not be any cost-effective ways to issue some series in their original, uncut versions. Sam Nelson, son of Rick Nelson is undertaking a massive restoration undertaking to redo all 435 episodes of his Grandparents "Ozzie and Harriet" show. To do so, he has mounted a massive fund-raising campaign to fund this project. The series "Bachelor Father" has just begun to be re-shown on Antenna TV. They only have 118 of the original 157 episodes to show. The vintage series "Mr. Adams and Eve" apparently has only a handful of it's original episodes still in existence. So be happy with what we can get of these series and stop whining about small details. Enjoy your "Make Room For Daddy" and be grateful for the series we can get.