If you loved Mary Tyler Moore, you may want to thank Danny Thomas.

If the actress had not been cast in “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” which Thomas produced with Sheldon Leonard, she may never have become America’s TV sweetheart for the New Frontier and the feminist decade that followed.

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Are you a fan of “The Andy Griffith Show,” which is just about the only program from the black-and-white era that has never left Memphis television and that remains a cable staple?

Thank Thomas. He produced the show, after introducing the character of Sheriff Andy Taylor in a 1960 episode of his own sitcom, “The Danny Thomas Show.”

What about Beale Street? Any interest in that place?

In 1955, Thomas composed and recorded what a Billboard magazine reviewer described as “a blues lament for a street that’s now an avenue.”

Released on the Decca label, the now-forgotten song, “Bring Back Our Beale Street,” was inspired by a visit to Memphis, which Thomas had chosen as the site for his planned children’s hospital, to be named for St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Copies of the 45 rpm single reportedly were added to 2,000 jukeboxes in Memphis and Shelby County, with proceeds from spins of the record going to support the hospital.

According to Billboard, Thomas was “mortified” when he discovered that Beale Street, “about which he’d heard all his life in blues songs,” had been renamed “Beale Avenue,” to conform with a city ordinance that designated north-south roadways as “streets” and east-west thoroughfares as “avenues.”

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Thomas introduced the song during a 1955 fundraiser for his hospital at Crump Stadium. According to Billboard, “the crowd went wild” when Thomas sang that Beale needed its “street” identity restored because it belonged not just to Memphis but “to the world.” Mayor Frank Tobey, who was in the audience, responded, and soon Beale was a Street again.

Described by The Commercial Appeal as “the guy with the big nose, the big heart and the big dream,” Danny Thomas died 26 years ago this past Monday in his Beverly Hills home at the age of 79. The anniversary— which arrived two days after the 55th anniversary of the opening of St. Jude — didn’t get much notice, but it caused me to wonder if Thomas’ overall “presence” in Memphis is underappreciated and if the cultural impact of this proudly ethnic nightclub comic turned movie star turned television pioneer is undervalued. (TV programs he produced ranged from the hick — “The Real McCoys” — to the hip — “The Mod Squad.”)

Of course, most people are aware of the Downtown boulevard that was named for Danny Thomas in 1966. And many people know that Memphis’ annual golf tournament bore Thomas’ name for 14 years. And almost everybody (I hope) is aware of Thomas’ signature achievement, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a vision so bold and an achievement so impressive — the place still gives free cancer treatment to children from all over the world — that it’s almost beyond human reckoning. (Which is what Thomas — a devout Catholic with faith in divine intervention and the intercession of saints — believed.)

But did you know Danny Thomas — like Elvis — is buried here? His burial crypt — also the resting place of Thomas’s wife, Rose Marie Thomas, who died in 2000 — is on the St. Jude campus. Unlike Elvis’ grave at Graceland, the Thomas crypt is not a tourist attraction per se, but you can visit it, if you call ahead.

“He could have chosen to be buried in Beverly Hills with all of his friends from the film industry and where he lived much of his life,” said Richard Shadyac Jr., CEO of ALSAC, the fundraising organization for St. Jude. “He chose to be buried at St. Jude, to be surrounded by the kids whose lives he was impacting since 1962.”

The Thomas burial crypt is framed by a memorial garden adjacent to the gold-domed Danny Thomas/ALSAC Pavilion, which is decorated with stained-glass windows representing the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths. Opened in 1985, the pavilion contains a wealth of information, exhibits and memorabilia relating to Thomas, the hospital and ALSAC. You can visit this, too; it’s an entertainment mini-museum in its own right, with vintage movie posters and lobby cards for such films as “The Jazz Singer” (1952), “I’ll See You in My Dreams” (1951), with Doris Day, and “Call Me Mister” (1951), with Betty Grable; a shelf of Thomas’ Emmy Awards; pictures from this top 10 TV series, “The Danny Thomas Show” (originally known as “Make Room for Daddy”); and loads of stills that depict Thomas — with his signature cigar and nose to match — rubbing shoulders with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Sugar Ray Robinson, Shamu the killer whale and Jimmy Durante. (In the case of the latter, Thomas is not rubbing shoulders but literally rubbing schnozzolas.)

ALSAC is an acronym for American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities, and it’s a reminder that Thomas was immensely proud of his Middle Eastern heritage. The son of Lebanese immigrants, Thomas was born in Deerfield, Michigan, as Amos Muzyad Yakhoob Kairouz (try getting that name through an airport today). “It’s a beautiful immigrant story,” Shadyac said, adding that St. Jude was an opportunity for “Lebanese and Syrian and other Arab-Americans to come together and build something that is probably one of the most noble missions on the planet.”

As many people know Thomas, as a struggling comic, made a pledge to build a shrine to St. Jude if he found success; by the 1940s he was making $3,500 a week in nightclubs, and he decided his “shrine” would be a children’s hospital.

Less well known is: Why Memphis? The city was recommended to Thomas by Samuel Stritch, the Archbishop of Chicago, who had been pastor at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church here. Thomas already had chosen to build in the South, in reaction to a story about a black teenager who died after being denied treatment at “white” hospitals. “I decided that I was going to build a hospital in the South where they would treat anybody,” he said in 1966. “White, black, green or sky-blue pink.”

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Danny Thomas’ Beverly Hills funeral took place Feb. 8, 1991, at the Church of the Good Shepherd near Hollywood. I covered the event for The Commercial Appeal, and I am confident I will never see so many recognizable and important people in one space again.

In addition to Thomas’ daughter, actress Marlo Thomas, and Marlo’s husband, talk-show host Phil Donahue, the mourners included Don Rickles, George Burns, Bob Newhart, Morey Amsterdam, Rose Marie, Peter Falk, Angie Dickinson, Milton Berle, Joey Bishop, Cyd Charisse, Martha Raye, Red Buttons and songwriter Sammy Cahn, to name a few. Most of these people entered the front of the church, but together at the side entrance, shielded from press access, were a sequestered big four: former presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan; Nancy Reagan; and Bob Hope.

Thomas had been at St. Jude just two days before his death. The day after his Los Angeles funeral, his body was returned to St. Jude, to lie in state at the Pavilion; St. Jude patients, family members and other mourners filed by the closed black casket by the dozens. The following day, Feb. 10, what The Commercial Appeal described as “an overflow crowd” of more than 1,200 mourners “jammed” the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Central Avenue for a public funeral. Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue were there, along Danny’s other children, Terre Thomas and Tony Thomas, and his wife, Rose Marie Thomas; and later that day, the family presided over the private ceremony in which Thomas was entombed in the memorial garden crypt on the St Jude campus. Most people don’t know he’s there, but the ones Danny Thomas wanted to be near, they know.

To visit the Danny Thomas/ALSAC Pavilion and Memorial Garden, call 901-578-2042 or 1-800-877-5833, or email [email protected].

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