Loading ...Pathbreakers of Arab America—Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz—aka Danny Thomas
By: John Mason / Arab America Contributing Writer
This is the seventy-seventh of Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series includes personalities from entertainment, business, sports, science, arts, academia, journalism, and politics, among other areas. Our seventy-seventh pathbreaker, Danny Thomas, is an American actor, singer, nightclub comedian, producer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who was born to Lebanese Syrian immigrant parents. His role as a hugely popular entertainer is only matched by his lifelong dedication to his charity, St. Jude. He died in 1991.
A man for all seasons, Danny Thomas entertained us, amused us, and, from his heart, gave us an enduring charity to help sick children
Danny Thomas, one of ten children, was born Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz on January 6, 1912, in Deerfield, Michigan. His father, Charles Yaqoob Kairouz, and mother, Margaret Taouk, were Maronite Catholic immigrants from what is now Bsharri, Lebanon. Danny was raised in Toledo, Ohio, attending Woodward High School. He was an earnest Roman Catholic, confirmed in 1921 by Bishop Samuel Stritch, originally from Tennessee, which as we’ll see, later became important in Thomas’ location of St. Jude Hospital in Memphis.
Danny Thomas, one of ten children, was born Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz on January 6, 1912, in Deerfield, Michigan. His father, Charles Yaqoob Kairouz, and mother, Margaret Taouk, were Maronite Catholic immigrants from what is now Bsharri, Lebanon. Danny was raised in Toledo, Ohio, attending Woodward High School. He was an earnest Roman Catholic, confirmed in 1921 by Bishop Samuel Stritch, originally from Tennessee, which as we’ll see, later became important in Thomas’ location of St. Jude Hospital in Memphis.
According to a St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital notice, Danny “entered the world during a blizzard in Deerfield, Mich., on Jan. 6, 1912. He began to help support the family at age 10 by selling newspapers, and at 11, he became a candy maker in a burlesque theater, a job he held for seven years.” Danny began at an early age to save money from jobs as a busboy, punch-press operator’s assistant, and a lumber yard watchman.
Danny’s savings enabled him to buy clothing he would wear as he traveled to Detroit to look for a job in show business. One of his first jobs in Detroit was that of a singer on a radio show called ‘The Happy Hour Club.’ Happily for Danny, it was there that he met “a pretty, dark-haired Italian girl named Rose Marie Mantell,” whom Danny escorted home on the local streetcar for three years before he proposed. They were married in 1931 and subsequently became parents of Marlo, Terre, and Tony.
In 1932, Thomas began performing on radio in Detroit at WMBC on ‘The Happy Hour Club.’ Thomas first performed under his anglicized birth name, Amos Jacobs Kairouz, but later changed it after the names of two of his brothers. Per Wikipedia series on Arab Americans, he first reached mass audiences on network radio in the 1940s playing shifty brother-in-law Amos in ‘The Bickersons,’ which began as sketches on the music-comedy show Drene Time, starring Don Ameche and Frances Langford. Thomas also portrayed himself as a ‘scatterbrained Lothario’ on this show. Then he had his radio program, ‘The Danny Thomas Show,’ a 30-minute weekly variety show on ABC from 1942 to 1943 and on CBS from 1947 to 1948.
Following his success as a TV entertainer, Thomas began his film career in 1947, playing opposite child actress Margaret O’Brien in ‘The Unfinished Dance’ and ‘Big City.’ He then starred in the long-running television sitcom ‘Make Room for Daddy,’ which later became the aforementioned, ‘Danny Thomas Show.’ Following his films with Margaret O’Brien, Thomas appeared with Betty Grable in the musical ‘Call Me Mister’ in 1951, with Doris Day in the 1951 film biography ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams,’ then in 1952 starring in ‘The Jazz Singer’ opposite the popular contemporary vocalist Peggy Lee.
Thomas’ career was prolific and we can only represent a portion of it in this space. Besides acting and entertaining, Danny was a TV producer. In 1965 and 1966, Thomas presented ‘The Wonderful World of Burlesque,’ featuring Lucille Ball, Jerry Lewis, Don Adams, Carol Channing, Andy Griffith, Sheldon Leonard, and Shirley Jones. He was co-producer of ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show,’ ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ ‘That Girl’ and ‘The Mod Squad.’ Thomas also produced three series for Walter Brennan: ‘The Real McCoys,’ ‘The Tycoon,’ and ‘The Guns of Will Sonnett’ on ABC during the late 1950s and 1960s.
Thomas’ success in entertainment was part of a trajectory that included his incredible philanthropic instinct.
As a ‘starving actor,’ Thomas had made a vow: If he found success, he would open a shrine dedicated to St. Jude Thaddeus, one of the patron saints of lost causes
A St. Jude notice on Danny’s life includes several stories of his predilection for helping others. One such story is about how his mother fostered his story-telling abilities and an interest in his religious faith. “Inspired by his mother’s vow many years prior, Danny visited a church in Detroit to pray for answers about what he should do to support his family. Danny knelt before a statue of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and begged for a sign of what he should do.” That day, Danny promised to erect a shrine to St. Jude if the saint showed him his direction in life as he placed his last $7 in the collection box. The next day, he was offered a small role that paid 10 times the amount he had given to the church.
Seven decades have passed since Danny Thomas’ dream of establishing St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital came true, based on his promise to St. Jude and his belief that “no child should die in the dawn of life.” His early struggles were typical of immigrants in the early 1900s. His story is one of strong faith and perseverance. St. Jude’s biography of Danny reports, “When his Rose Marie was pregnant with their first child, Marlo (Margaret), Danny was still a struggling actor. He was worried about paying all the bills and torn between spending more time at home with the family by getting a 9-5 job versus continuing his search for his big ‘breakthrough’ in the entertainment business.”
In the early 1950s, Thomas began discussing his promise to St. Jude with friends. Gradually, the idea of a children’s hospital began to take shape. In 1955, Danny Thomas and a group of businessmen in Memphis, TN, came up with the idea to create a children’s treatment facility, a research center to help treat childhood cancers worldwide. With his success in show business and film, Danny and his wife began traveling the United States to help raise funds to build St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. “He fervently believed: ‘No child should die in the dawn of life.’” In 1952, Thomas recorded several Arabic folk songs with Toufic Barham for a Saint Jude Hospital Foundation fundraiser record. The songs later appeared on the re-issue album ‘The Music of Arab-Americans: A Retrospective Collection.
Danny, being of Lebanese descent, turned to his fellow Arab Americans because he believed sincerely that they should, as a group, “be thankful to the United States for the freedom and opportunity that they were given and that it would be a noble way of honoring their immigrant forefathers.” In 1957, 100 representatives of the Arab American community met in Chicago to form ALSAC- the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities. The sole purpose of ALSAC was to raise funds to support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. At one point, ALSAC was the nation’s second-largest healthcare charity, supported by more than a million volunteers throughout the United States.
For those interested in the history of religion, St. Jude was one of the 12 Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. He is generally identified as Thaddeus. The Catholic Church named him “the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes.”
It is fitting to end with a tribute to Thomas by Professor Roy P. Mottahedeh, who chaired the Committee on Islamic Studies at Harvard University at the time of Danny’s death on March 7, 1991. Titled “Danny Thomas, a Beloved Arab American,” the tribute describes how Thomas’ “conspicuous kindliness shone through his personal life as surely as it did through his stage personality.” However, news accounts of his death hardly alluded to Thomas’ Arab American Lebanese background. The tribute suggested, “The media seem unable to deal with the fact that Arab Americans have for a long time been an important part of American life, significant both in their numbers and in their contributions.” Further, it chided the press for generally ignoring the important role of Arab Americans as laborers in New England mill towns and the workforce in auto plants in Michigan.
In his tribute to Thomas, Mottahedeh averred, “Sadly, ‘Arab’ has become – with the half-conscious cooperation of the media – shorthand for ‘the dangerous other’ although…many Arabs are not ‘the other,’ they are ‘us.’” Furthermore, he noted, “If we fought in the Gulf for any principles, if President Bush’s repeated references in his State of the Union message to democracy are to have any meaning, we must be vigilant against the racism that treats any portion of our population (or of humanity) by category and not as individual human beings. And, as Americans, we must be proud of the Arab American heritage woven into our tradition by such outstanding Americans as Danny Thomas, whom we will all miss.”
How poignant and fitting, especially in this time of national division.
Sources:
-–”Danny Thomas,” Wikipedia Series on Arab Americans, 2024
–“Danny Thomas,” Arab America (no date)
–“Danny Thomas Story,” St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 2007
–“Danny Thomas, a Beloved Arab American,” Christian Science Monitor, by Roy P. Mottahedeh, Chair, Committee on Islamic Studies, Harvard University, 3/8/1991
John Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. HJohn Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. He has taught at the University of Libya, Benghazi, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo; John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID and the World Bank in 65 countries.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America. The reproduction of this article is permissible with proper credit to Arab America and the author.
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