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| Sitcom legend Danny Thomas (right) stops by Happy Days. Tom Bosley greets him. |
Danny Thomas is so rightfully renowned for his philanthropic work, founding St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in 1962, that his incredible impact on American television may sometimes be overlooked. It shouldn't be. After years as a successful nightclub comic, with humor often built around his proud Lebanese heritage, Danny starred in the long-running family sitcom Make Room for Daddy aka The Danny Thomas Show (1953-1964), then produced such other classic series as The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show.
When Happy Days finally brought Danny Thomas on as a guest star in January 1977, it was honoring an important ancestor. The founder of the feast, as it were. Garry Marshall, Jerry Paris, and Ron Howard all owe a sincere debt of gratitude to Danny Thomas. The resulting episode, Season's 5's "Grandpa's Visit," might as well have been called "Roots."
Make Room for Daddy has curiously disappeared from the airwaves in recent years, but I remember watching it on Nick at Nite back in the '90s. I think the appeal of the show was best summarized by TV critics Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik in their 1989 book Harry and Wally's Favorite TV Shows. Here's how they describe Danny Thomas' TV character, a comedian and family man named Danny Williams:
Now here's a situation comedy with a truly admirable and believable father figure. Hardworking. Intelligent. Dedicated to his wife and children. And he yells.
That makes him an obvious predecessor to blustery Happy Days patriarch Howard Cunningham (Tom Bosley). Other 1950s TV dads -- think Ward Cleaver, Ozzie Nelson, or Jim Anderson -- tend to be more even-tempered and reasonable. But Danny Williams yelled. Apparently, Danny Thomas was a lot like his sitcom character in real life, so there was a fair amount of hollering on the set of Make Room for Daddy. And it almost carried over to the set of The Andy Griffith Show as well. In an archival interview, Andy talked about his first day of filming:
That day, I didn't have much to say at all. [Writer] Artie Stander, Danny Thomas, and [producer] Sheldon Leonard yelled at one another all day. And I asked Sheldon if I could talk to him at the end of the day, and he walked me to the gate. I said, 'If this is what television is, I don't think I can handle it.' He said, 'Andy, the star dictates what the attitude will be on the set.' He said, 'Danny likes to yell, so we all yell. If you don't wanna yell, nobody'll yell.' That's the way it was.
So The Andy Griffith Show became a peaceful set with a calm, even-tempered dad character, while Danny Williams kept yelling. Besides Howard Cunningham, some of TV's great "yelling dad" characters include Fred Flintstone, Frank Costanza, Archie Bunker, and Homer Simpson. My own dad was a yeller, so I can relate. This American Life once did a whole story about the importance of yelling at your kids.
This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we review "Grandpa's Visit." Is this episode worthy of its iconic guest star? Listen and find out!