Yes. Danny Thomas was a devout Catholic who was raised in a Lebanese Catholic family. His Catholic faith shaped his devotion to St. Jude Thaddeus, influenced major decisions in his life, and inspired the founding of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
Thomas’s religious commitment was expressed through prayer, Mass attendance, personal vows, devotion to saints, and charitable work. He regarded the creation of a shrine and, ultimately, a children’s research hospital as the fulfillment of a promise he had made to St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes.
Danny Thomas’s Catholic upbringing
Raised in a Lebanese Catholic family in Toledo, Thomas had witnessed personal vows to saints. His own mother, when faced with a sick baby, got on her knees, begging “Please God, spare him and I will vow to you [that] I will beg pennies from door to door for a whole year to give to the poor. Spare my baby.”
One hundred years ago today, comedian Danny Thomas was born Amos Jacob to Lebanese parents in Deerfield, Michigan (about an hour southwest of Detroit). At age 26, married, facing the birth of his first child, and struggling to support his family as he tried to make it in show business, Thomas considered giving up his dream of being a performer in exchange for a regular paycheck at an uncle’s grocery store.
A devout Catholic, he walked into SS. Peter and Paul Church in Detroit and knelt before a statue of St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. “Help me find my place in life,” he prayed, and placed his last $7 in the poor box.
His prayer to St. Jude
More than 70 years ago, Danny Thomas, then a struggling young entertainer with a baby on the way, visited a Detroit church and was so moved during the Mass, he placed his last $7 in the collection box. When he realized what he’d done, Danny prayed for a way to pay the looming hospital bills.
The next morning, he received a lucrative job offer in Chicago, and his entertainment career began to take off. The next day, he was offered a small part that would pay 10 times the amount he’d given to the church.
Danny had experienced the power of prayer. Two years later, Danny had achieved moderate acting success in Detroit, but he was struggling to take his career to the next level. Once again, he turned to the church.
Praying to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes, Danny asked the saint to “help me find my way in life, and I will build you a shrine.”
“I asked him to show me my way in life, and I vowed to build him a shrine.”
“Help me find my way in life, and I will build you a shrine.”
How his faith accompanied his career
Before long he traveled to Chicago, where he landed a $50-a-week job doing radio commercials. Shortly thereafter, talent agent Leo Salkin booked him into the 5100 Club on the city’s north side for $75 a week.
At that juncture, he again changed his name from Amos Jacobs to Danny Thomas. He soon became a nightclub sensation, earning $500 a week and drawing customers from all over the city to listen to his outrageously funny stories, which he told in different dialects while deftly skewering human vanity and stupidity.
And, although he had his audience laughing uproariously, he never resorted to using vulgar language. His lengthy night shows on Saturdays ran far into the morning hours, and when he was finished, he went to 6 a.m. Mass at St. Clement Church on his way home.
His career took a turn for the better, and soon he moved his family to Chicago to pursue career offers. Thomas moved to Chicago, changed his name (from Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz), and soon his career took off.
The Chicago shrine and the “forgotten apostle”
It was at the church one day that he noticed a leaflet on a pew. He read the leaflet and learned about a solemn novena to Saint Jude that was then held four times every year at the National Shrine of St. Jude at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on the far southeast side of Chicago.
It was the first he knew that St. Jude’s home was in Chicago. In reading about the Shrine he realized, in the midst of his newly-found professional success, he had completely forgotten his earlier prayers and promises to Saint Jude.
“I’m suddenly finding out that he already had a shrine in the very city to which Fate had taken me.”
While renewing his devotion to the “forgotten apostle,” he planned on somehow showing the church appreciation for his prayers being answered. Tellingly, Danny Thomas had yet to visit the national shrine in South Chicago; the devotion’s aura reached him through word of mouth.
At a church near his northside Chicago apartment in 1942, he found a pamphlet announcing a novena at the shrine. A few years later, at another turning point in his life, Thomas again asked St. Jude’s help and promised, “I’ll build you a shrine.”
In his memoir, Thomas dedicated seven passages to his evolving St. Jude devotion, but never mentioned visiting the shrine itself. The Claretians did develop a relationship with the successful star who headlined fund-raisers and appeared in publicity photos at the shrine.
From entertainer to national figure
Thomas’ life changed dramatically again a few weeks after that. His agent persuaded him to take his comedy routine to New York City, where he was booked into the Club Martinique. From that point on, he moved into the entertainment world’s big time.
After USO tours in both Europe and the Pacific, Thomas was engaged to perform at New York’s Roxy Theater at $3,750 a week. He later performed in the most popular nightclubs from coast to coast, broke into movies, playing in “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and “The Jazz Singer” and finally, starting in 1953, he achieved his greatest fame through his starring role in the long-running television comedy series “Make Room for Daddy.”
He was on Make Room for Daddy, later known as The Danny Thomas Show, and he remembered his pledge to build a shrine to St. Jude. In the years that followed, Danny's career flourished through films and television, and he became an internationally known entertainer.
The Danny Thomas Show - Season 6, Episode 12 - Kathy's Career - Full Episode
How Catholic devotion led to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
As Thomas grew more successful, with a good network of Hollywood stars, he acted on Cardinal Samuenl Stritch’s suggestion to raise funds for a children’s hospital to fulfill his promise to St. Jude.
In the early 1950s, Danny began discussing with friends what concrete form his vow might take. Gradually, the idea of a children’s hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where it would be the first fully integrated hospital in the South, took shape.
In 1955, Danny Thomas and a group of Memphis business people who had agreed to help support his dream seized on the idea of creating a unique research hospital devoted to curing catastrophic diseases in children.
More than just a treatment facility, this would be a research center for the children of the world, regardless of race, religion or financial status. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital ® opened in Memphis, Tenn., in 1962.
In the 1950’s, Danny Thomas, by now a successful television star, kept his promise. He founded the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, which opened February 4, 1962.
Fundraising and the Arab-American community
Danny started raising money for his vision of St. Jude in the early 1950s. By 1955, the local business leaders who had joined his cause began area fundraising efforts, supplementing Danny's benefit shows that brought scores of major entertainment stars to Memphis.
Often accompanied by his wife, Rose Marie, Danny crisscrossed the United States by car, sharing his dream and raising funds at meetings and benefits. The pace was so hectic that Danny Thomas and his wife once visited 28 cities in 32 days.
Although Danny Thomas and his friends raised the money to build the hospital, they now faced the daunting task of funding its annual operation. To solve this problem, Danny, of Lebanese descent, turned to his fellow Americans of Arabic-speaking heritage.
Believing deeply that these Americans should, as a group, thank the United States for the gifts of freedom given their parents, Danny also felt the support of St. Jude would be a noble way of honoring his immigrant forefathers who had come to America.
Danny’s request struck a responsive chord. In 1957, 100 representatives of the Arab-American community met in Chicago to form ALSAC® with a sole purpose of raising funds for the support of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
Since that time, with national headquarters in Memphis and regional offices throughout the United States, ALSAC has assumed full responsibility for all the hospital’s fundraising efforts, raising hundreds of millions annually through benefits and solicitation drives among Americans of all ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds.
Thomas’s relationship with the Claretians
Thomas’ “big gift” to St. Jude included devotion through the National Shrine of St. Jude and the Claretians in Chicago, and ultimately the world-famous St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
Danny Thomas even starred in a 1959 promotional film for the Claretian Missionaries called For Heaven’s Sake, filmed on the set of his popular show Make Way for Danny. Fortunately, the Claretian Missionaries Archives holds copies of the film.
His Catholic faith and the hospital’s mission
Drawing upon his faith and his Lebanese Syrian heritage, he rallied support from family, friends and fans to create a shrine to another seemingly hopeless cause - defeating cancer in children.
Through striking improvements in the care of pediatric leukemias and numerous forms of solid tumors, St. Jude has brought about improved health care for children all over the world.
St. Jude physicians and scientists have pioneered treatments that have helped push the overall survival rates for childhood cancers from 20 percent when the hospital opened in 1962 to 80 percent today.
From a promise of “Help me find my way in life, and I will build you a shrine” to the fulfillment of his dream, Danny lived to see his little hospital become an international beacon of hope for the catastrophically ill children of the world.
His death and burial
Thomas died in California of a heart attack at age 78 in 1991. Danny Thomas died on February 6, 1991, and is buried on the grounds of St. Jude Hospital.
The founder of St. Jude and ALSAC died on February 6, 1991, just two days after joining patients, parents and employees to celebrate the hospital’s 29th anniversary. He was laid to rest in a family burial crypt at the Danny Thomas/ALSAC Pavilion on the grounds of the hospital.
On July 12, 2000, his wife, Rose Marie, passed away and now lies with her beloved husband in the Danny and Rose Marie Thomas Memorial Garden. Today, their daughters, Marlo and Terre, and son, Tony, carry on their parents’ work and remain a driving force in fulfilling their father’s mission.