Although he later starred in the longest running situation comedy in television history and became one of TV's top producers, Danny Thomas once denounced the new medium as a "workplace for idiots." He made this comment after spending two years hosting NBC's All-Star Revue, rotating with comedians Jack Carson, Jimmy Durante, and Ed Wynn. He quit the show in 1952 to return to the nightclub circuit. A year later, he was back on the small screen, well on his way to becoming one of the icons of television's Golden Age.

Danny Thomas

Born Muzyad Yakhoob in Deerfield, Michigan, the fifth of nine children of Catholic immigrants from Lebanon, Danny's first experience in show business was selling candy at a burlesque theater. At age twenty he began singing on a Detroit radio station, and six years later he started a career in nightclubs, as a standup...