TV Guide - April 25 - May 1, 1964
Danny Thomas (born Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz; January 6, 1912 – February 6, 1991) Nightclub comedian and television and film actor and producer, whose career spanned five decades. He was best known for starring in the television sitcom “Make Room for Daddy“ (also known as “The Danny Thomas Show“). He was also the founder of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He was the father of Marlo Thomas, Terre Thomas, and Tony Thomas.
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I watch The Danny Thomas Show every Saturday with my parents and every time I watch it... I can only seem to compare it to The Dick Van Dyke Show in my mind. Pretty much the same production team made both. Sheldon Leonard and Danny Thomas both produced TDVDS and TDTS. The big difference between the two was that Carl Reiner was the creator of TDVDS and I believe that Danny Thomas created TDTS and that clearly made all the difference in the world.
Today I was watching Season 11 Episode Episode 16 of The Danny Thomas Show called "Kathy, The Secretary" which aired on January 20, 1964 and I was comparing it to Season 3 Episode 22 of The Dick Van Dyke Show called "My Part Time Wife" which aired February 26, 1964. As you can see these two episodes aired within just a little over a month of each other. But the difference in these two episodes are light years away. In some ways they are very similar. Both have to do with the respective protagonist's wives going back to work for a little bit.
The Danny Thomas Show did not deal with this plotline at all well. It starts with the typical old plotline of a wife spending too much money on clothes and hats and whatever she wants and their joint account being overdrawn because the wife can't budget money and only cares about what she can get for herself. This is such an old plotline that was done in I Love Lucy and a billion times after. It's old and it's very much depicted in a sexist nature. After a fight between them she almost on a dare decides to go back into the work force as a secretary for Danny's talent agent. The rest is a typically sexist series of events where the joke is that Kathy is a ditz and bad at her job. At the end of the episode she stops working to continue to be a housewife. I have nothing against housewives, I come from a long of them. My mom was one for a long while. My sister is currently one and honestly if I had kids and my husband had a well paying job where I didn't need to work I would definitely consider being one myself. But back in the days these plotlines were depicted on TV in a very sexist nature in so many ways that I can only begin to describe. For one, women were unappreciated for the work that they did at home. And again women were always depicted as not having the ability to even do that well. Like women were always making their husbands crazy and putting them in the poor house. And raising children was shown to practically be a breeze when they were even shown raising their children.
You compare that to the Dick Van Dyke Show and the difference is huge. Firstly the reason that Laura went back to work was different. Sally was working temporarily on another show and as usual the guys in the office were lost without her. Which was actually a pretty ahead of it's time concept. Sally was a career woman and an integral part of her job. She did everything well. She was an amazing TV writer and typist. She could do everything the men could do and then some. Either way Sally was off and Laura offered to help out at least with the typing while Rob and Buddy were writing the show. Where TDVDS really sets itself apart from TDTS was unlike Kathy, Laura ended up being amazing at the job. Not just in typing but she was also coming up with hilarious jokes for the show. Laura came into her husband's job and arguably did it better. Certainly that week she was doing it better. And that was the source of the conflict was that Rob was being a bit insecure about his wife coming into his job and getting bigger laughs than him. Don't let this synopsis fool you though, as insecure as Rob could be he was never as insecure as Danny was. And Rob always appreciated Laura and appreciated what she did. Also there were episodes where Rob helped out with housework like cleaning the dishes and stuff like that. That may sound small and insignificant now but at the time that stuff was considered "women's work." Men brought home the bacon and took the garbage out but women did the housework. So to depict a man who secure enough to help his wife out and to do the housework even when he was teased by his guy friends was really ahead of it's time. Rob and Laura were depicted as a team. It was them against the world and that was so incredibly ahead of its time on TV. But getting back to the main point. Laura was always depicted as being so good at her job and also so good at being a housewife. But it also wasn't shown as being super easy. Back in the day women were shown as never really having emotional breakdowns but Laura was allowed to be messy, sometimes both emotionally and physically. Like there were times when things got difficult. Laura wasn't shown as being emotionally immature but she was also allowed to be vulnerable and messy sometimes... and that's just life.
I really respect how TDVDS strove to push the envelope. How they strove to depict women, black people, and marriages differently and better than it had been in TV. It seems like every show was just trying to be like every other show that had succeeded in the past 10 years just trying to be another I Love Lucy. But even I Love Lucy pushed the envelope in some ways. So they weren't really trying for the spirit of I Love Lucy they just made a bunch of generic watered down versions of I Love Lucy. Carl Reiner went into TDVDS wanting to make something different, wanting to depict marriage in a more realistic way. To depict everything in a more realistic way but also to push the envelope of what was acceptable in some ways. I'm not saying that TDVDS always did things perfectly but I love how they strove for it. How they depicted a married couple (Jerry and Millie) going to couples counseling/therapy. How they depicted the main couple as being sexually attracted to each and depicted them as a team. It really blows my mind that a show like TDVDS existed in the year 1964.
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Four Color #1249 November 1961
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RIP PAT CARROLL
1927-2022
Patricia Ann Carroll was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. She was an actress and comedian best known for voicing Ursula in The Little Mermaid as well as having a long acting career on stage and screen.
Her first brush with Lucille Ball was through appearing in an episode of the Desilu sitcom “The Ann Sothern Show” titled “Pandora”. Lucille Ball had made a guest appearance on the series to kick off its transition from Sothern’s “Private Secretary.”
From 1961 to 1964 she played Bunny Halper on “The Danny Thomas Show” (originally titled “Make Room for Daddy”). Her husband Charley was played by frequent Lucy featured actor Sid Melton. While Carroll and Lucille Ball never acted together on screen, they did know each other. In an interview, Carroll remembered Lucy:
I don't think we had many [female comedians] in the professional field until Lucy came along and made the whole career of ‘comedienne' okay. You no longer had to be an ugly girl to be a comic. She made it possible for any young woman to do comedy anywhere. You know, when I was doing “The Danny Thomas Show” we were on the same lot where she and Desi did the Lucy show.
Lucille Ball used to come to my dressing room out of sentiment and I got to talk to her. We talked about her early days at MGM. She said, "I am doing work today that I was taught to do by Rags Ragland and Buster Keaton." MGM kept them under contract and they taught comedy classes to the young contract players, Lucy being one.
She said, "They used to give us a prop to take home with us and study every part of it, get so familiar with it, we could throw it in the air, catch it and do anything we want. That has helped me so much." I keep thinking of her using stilts in her show and how adept she was with any kind of prop. How wonderful of her to give the credit was due. She was a very generous woman that way.
In addition to “The Danny Thomas Show,” Carroll also made a few appearances on Desilu’s game show “You Don’t Say”. From 1963 to 1969 she was a regular panelist on the show, playing doing more episodes than anyone except host Tom Kennedy. She played the game with Marty Allen, Richard Deacon, Sebastian Cabot, Marty Ingels, Bill Cullen, Brian Keith, Ken Berry, Mel Torme, Leonard Nimoy, Monty Hall, Rod Serling, and her TV husband Sid Melton, among others.
Carroll was an Emmy, Drama Desk and Grammy Award winner and a Tony Award nominee. She died at her home in Cape Cod at the age of 95. She is survived by her three children.
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The (Not) Normal One...
So
I LOVE the stories where Danny is deaged and later found by one of the bats and taken in as a son or he's Bruce's bio son and is either Damian's twin or half brother or little/big brother BUT I don't see a lot of reborn/reincarnated Danny into the batfamily (I can think of two but one of them he is Dick's son?clone?somewhat clone? And the other is an amazing story where Danny is reborn as Jazz and Jason's kid and I love it to bits)
So let's change that a bit and have some fun.
Here's the idea
Danny, either from finally aging to his death (it was slow and long aging but he is still partly human too don't forget that) or dying at the hands of GIW (or by his parents if we go the Bad!Fentons route), is reborn into the batfamily.
He could either be Bruce and Selina's kid after they finally tie the knot, or be a one more attempt by Ra's or Talia to get the heir they want but is immediately found out when Tim notices certain labs active and they find baby Danny. OR Danny can be an oops baby to Bruce's one night stands OR one of the batboys baby. EITHER WAY, Danny is reborn into the family from the start.
And he has his memories. (He has little hints of his powers btw, they dont fully come in until his 14th bday)
And his new family all swear to give him a proper and happy childhood (as best as they can seeing how it's Gotham)
Only I want Danny milking being a baby then toddler/kid and later a teen for all its worth. He's going to enjoy this new life with everything he gots.
Like imagine the chaos and shenanigans he gets into as a toddler. He's the king of hide-and-seek. He uses his tears to get away from whoever annoys him. He's mastered the puppy dog look to get away with things (it holds no effect on Alfred though, man is immune to all tricks).
But then of course there's the... odd things that happen around him. Sometimes they catch him talking to no one. Sometimes they spot a ball or a toy rolling to Danny despite him not touching it. Sometimes they think they see or hear someone in the room with Danny only to go busting in to find nothing. (One time someone busted his nursery door down they heard on his baby/toddler monitor the distorted voice of a woman singing him a lullaby (it was Martha who was soothing him to sleep after a tiny nightmare, boy was Bruce not ready for one of his kids to hum the tune in the morning)).
Danny asking for an extra drink and the newspaper after Bruce is done before he runs off to one of the many sitting rooms the manor has. There he leaves the drink and the newspaper near a chair, hops into another chair nearby and chats to someone (they all think its his imaginary friend but that honestly doesn't explain why the drink seems to slowly disappear without anyone touching it. (btw its Thomas, Danny is talking to they like chatting in the morning)
OR when Danny gives hints to cases his family is working on, how he knows? No one knows. Sometimes they chalk it up to a kid randomly saying stuff or seeing it from a different simple outlook but sometimes it seems a little too on the nose and they think Danny might know about their night jobs... (He does know, but he gets some info from Lady Gotham who visits him and gives him little hints to pass onto her fav Knights)
Basically what I want is a reborn Danny trying to get a decent childhood/teenage years before his powers kick in full swing, his family trying the same but they got no idea about the powers (maybe), and ghosts like to visit Danny. The shenanigans that follow will be amazing.
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special thanks to these pez dispensers for accompanying me during my stay at the hospital. glory to canada
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little preview of the first dc x dp fic i ever started writing and still haven't finished lol. duke and danny interactions are so fun, i love my silly little not-quite-fully-human boys ❤️
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Slow Horses
Season 3: Real Tigers, “Hard Lessons”
Director: Saul Metzstein
DoP: Danny Cohen
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Character Actress
Sherry D. Jackson (born February 15, 1942) Retired actress and former child star.
Jackson may be best remembered for her five-season run as older daughter Terry Williams on The Danny Thomas Show (known as Make Room for Daddy during the first three seasons) from 1953 to 1958. During the course of her five years on the series, she established a strong bond with her on-screen mother, Jean Hagen, but Hagen left the series after the third season in 1956.
Over the next few years, Jackson broadened her range of acting roles by guest starring in dozens of television series, appearing as a hit woman on 77 Sunset Strip, a freed Apache captive who yearns to return to the reservation on The Tall Man, an alcoholic on Mr. Novak, a woman accused of murder on Perry Mason, and an unstable mother-to-be on Wagon Train. Sherry also appeared as a first season guest on The Rifleman episode “The Sister” playing the part of a horse riding sibling of two doting brothers. She played a gunslinger's promiscuous young bride in the Western series Maverick episode entitled "Red Dog" with Roger Moore, Lee Van Cleef and John Carradine. After a 1965 appearance on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., she then made guest appearances on Lost in Space ("The Space Croppers", reuniting with her Danny Thomas co-star, Angela Cartwright), My Three Sons, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, The Wild Wild West ("The Night of the Vicious Valentine" and "The Night of the Gruesome Games", as two different characters), Batman, and the original Star Trek series. On the latter program, she made one of her more memorable portrayals as the android Andrea in the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?".
In 1966, Jackson was cast as Katherine "Kate" Turner, a young woman from Boston who takes over a wagon train after the death of the trailmaster, in the episode "Lady of the Plains" of the syndicated series Death Valley Days. DeForest Kelley plays a gambler, Elliott Webster, who falls in love with her though she is engaged to marry once the wagon train reaches Salt Lake City.
In the 1970s through early 1980s she made guest appearances on such TV shows as Love, American Style, The Rockford Files, Starsky & Hutch, The Blue Knight, Switch, The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, The Incredible Hulk, Fantasy Island, Vega$, Alice, Charlie's Angels and CHiPs. (Wikipedia)
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The Stylized Danny Thomas Show
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GVF as:
That ‘70s Show Characters
Daniel: Donna Pinciotti
Sam: Jackie Burkheart
Josh: Michael Kelso
Jake: Eric Foreman
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i think one only needs to listen to "which way did my heart go" to understand my crush on dean
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