Make Room for Daddy [TV Show] (DVD)

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If you're into classic television--either for research or for pleasure--you know what a crapshoot it can be to order a DVD. Some are quite good, but with too many of the releases the quality is horrendous, the episodes can be snipped or cobbled together, transfers are sloppy, and there's often no rhyme or reason to justify why those particular episodes were included. It's like buying a Whitman Sampler and finding that all the chocolates have gone bad.

After one of the earliest and most popular sitcoms was kicked around like an under-inflated ball by other distributors, S'more Entertainment picked up that ball and ran with it. And they scored earlier this year when they released "Make Room for Daddy" Season 6.

"Make Room for Daddy" was one of the longest running and most beloved family sitcoms of the Fifties. It ran from 1953-64, second only to "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet" for longevity. Nominated for 14 Emmys (and winning Best Director for Sheldon Leonard, Best Actor for Danny Thomas, and Best Situation Comedy Series), the half-hour sitcom featured Thomas as nightclub entertainer Danny Williams, whose family had to "make room" for him when he came back from his numerous road trips. In real-life, daughters Marlo and Terre had to shift bedrooms to accommodate their dad. Here, the Williams children are 11-year-old Rusty (Rusty Hamer) and five-year-old Linda (Angela Cartwright, "The Sound of Music," "Lost in Space"). More unique than having an entertainer for a dad was the fact that Marjorie Lord played Danny's second wife, whom Rusty calls Kathy. Jean Hagen originally played the mother, but she became the first character to be killed off in a series after she quit. So with Danny and son Rusty combining with the widowed Kathy and her daughter Linda, we also get the first sitcom to feature a blended family.

Lord and Thomas clicked as a TV couple, but it's easy to see why Hagen dropped out. This is all about Thomas and the cute (but sassy) kids, with Mom standing on the edge of many frames, used more for reaction shots than anything else. This was the era of TV dads dispensing wisdom, and Thomas (whose real name--Amos Alphonsus Muzyad Yaqoob--wouldn't fit on the end titles) doles out plenty. Thomas also sings more than I remember. In fact, you can tell he's a nightclub entertainer because he finds ways to work a song into quite a few episodes, and the guest list looks like Thomas's version of the Sinatra Rat Pack. Fellow entertainers Jack Benny, Dinah Shore, Lucille Ball, Tony Bennett, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Bob Hope, Shirley Jones, and Frankie Laine all have cameos that allow them to showcase their own talents. The indomitable Hans Conried appears again as the wild-haired Uncle Tonoose, while Sid Melton turns up as Uncle Charley, and Sherry Jackson plays the sometimes-seen teen daughter, Terry.

This is the season in which popular Mouseketeer Annette Funicello joined the cast as Gina, an exchange student from Italy. Everyone's favorite Mouseketeer, Funicello was riding a wave of popularity in 1959, with "Walt Disney Presents" featuring the five-part "Annette" and the "Spin and Marty" series still fresh in fans' minds. All five of the episodes featuring Funicello are included in this season: "Gina from Italy," "Gina's First Date," "Frankie Laine Sings for Gina," "The Latin Lover," and "Gina for President." This season also features one of the earliest cameos by a Metropolitan opera star crossing over into a pop medium, with Salvatori Baccaloni playing a rich fan of Danny Williams. There's an honesty to this sitcom that people didn't usually see. Yes, husbands and wives sparred in shows like "The Life of Riley" and "I Love Lucy," but in "Make Room for Daddy" Danny and Kathy's fights have a more realistic tone, played for drama as much as laughs. In one episode this season Kathy even leaves him. So from a strictly historical perspective, "Make Room for Daddy" is a valuable artifact from the early days of television.

But "Make Room for Daddy" is also well-written and genuinely funny. This season's episodes still have entertainment value some 50 years after they first aired. The show finished at number five in the Nielsen ratings this season, and coincidentally a 2004 TV Guide story ranked Danny Williams #5 in a roundup of the top 50 TV dads. Part of the appeal is the way he relates to his children. You could imagine Bill Cosby taking notes when he was watching this show, because the dads display a similar blend of playfulness, befuddlement, wisdom, and strong-handedness. The comic lines often reflect a vaudeville tradition. In one episode, when Rusty and Linda don't get the parts they want in a playground production, Danny tries to give them a pep talk about persistence. But embedded in the talk is a ruthless bit of advice, and a gag. He tells them how once he had the smallest part and was told to just stay in the background. All he did, day after day was stand in the background and eat bananas. Then one day his big break came. The star couldn't go on, and he was asked to take the lead role, and the rest is history. "What happened to the star?" one of them asks. "He slipped on a banana." (parum-pum!). That kind of humor permeates the show, with a lot of one-liners and comebacks as well.

Tonoose: "I got a voice like a bird."
Danny: "Yeah, a crow.

And on the next exchange, Danny says, "You sound like a camel playing a bagpipe" (which is a pretty accurate description of the nasal noise that Conried makes!). Sometimes the lines zero in on the kids' innocence. But what's impressive is that they don't just seem like cute/comic lines that just happen to be spoken by kids. They seem quite in character with what a five or eight year old would think or say.

Danny: "My kids aren't quitters."
Linda: "Then how come we're quitting?"

Other times, Danny's the brunt of the jokes.

Danny: (About Rusty's talent) "Look at the block he's a chip off of."
Kathy: "You mean look at the ham he's sliced from."

There are some bona fide funny moments in a good two-thirds of these shows. Thirty-two complete episodes that look VERY good are contained on five single-sided discs and housed in three slim clear-plastic keep cases and tucked into a sturdy cardboard slipcase. The back of each keep case gives a capsule summary and original airdates and production numbers for every episode. Here's the rundown:

1) "Jack Benny Takes Danny's Job." Danny gets nudged out of his annual gig emceeing a Boy Scout function when Rusty's scout troop votes to ask rival Jack Benny instead. It's great seeing an icon of comedy and television in an extended role, rather than a brief cameo.

2) "Rusty, the Ward-Heeler." Rusty wants to be president of his class, and it doesn't take much to persuade his stage-father dad to help push him in the "right" direction.