Marlo Thomas
Margaret Julia "Marlo" Thomas is an American actress, producer, author, and social activist. She is best known for starring as Ann Marie in a sitcom series That Girl and her children's franchise Free to Be... You and Me. She has received three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Peabody Award for her work in television and was inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame. She also received a Grammy Award for her children's album Marlo Thomas and Friends: Thanks & Giving All Year Long. She was married to Irish-American television daytime talk show host presenter and writer Phil Donahue from May 1980 until his death in August 2024.
In 2014, Thomas received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, given by then-President Barack Obama.
Thomas served as a National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which was founded by her father Danny Thomas in 1962. She created the Thanks & Giving campaign in 2004 to support the hospital.
Early life
Thomas was born on November 21, 1937 in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in Beverly Hills, California, the eldest child of Rose Marie Cassaniti and comedian Danny Thomas. She has a sister, Terre, and a brother, producer Tony Thomas. Her father was a Catholic Lebanese American and her mother was Sicilian American. Her godmother was Loretta Young. The name "Marlo" came from her childhood mispronunciation of the name Margo, as Thomas was called by her family.Thomas attended Marymount High School and graduated from the University of Southern California with a teaching degree: "I wanted a piece of paper that said I was qualified to do something in the world". She was a member of the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta.
Career
Early career
Thomas appeared in many television programs including Bonanza, McHale's Navy, Ben Casey, Arrest and Trial, The Joey Bishop Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, My Favorite Martian, 77 Sunset Strip, and The Donna Reed Show. Her big break came in 1965 when she was cast by Mike Nichols in the London production of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, co-starring Daniel Massey, Kurt Kasznar, and Mildred Natwick.Thomas and her father, Danny, were cast as Laurie and Ed Dubro in a 1961 episode, "Honor Bright", of CBS' Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre.
''That Girl''
Thomas starred in an ABC pilot called Two's Company in 1965. Although it did not sell, it caught the attention of a network programming executive. He met with Thomas, and expressed interest in casting her in her own series. With their encouragement, Thomas came up with her own idea for a show about a young woman who leaves home, moves to New York City, and struggles to become an actress. The network was initially hesitant, fearing audiences would find a series centering on a single female uninteresting or unrealistic.The concept eventually evolved into the sitcom entitled That Girl, in which Thomas played Ann Marie, a beautiful, up-and-coming actress with a writer boyfriend, played by Ted Bessell. The series told the daily struggles of Ann holding different temporary jobs while pursuing her dream of a career on Broadway. That Girl was one of the first television shows to focus on a working, single woman who did not live with her parents, and it paved the way for many shows to come. Thomas was the fourth woman to produce her own series, following Gertrude Berg, Lucille Ball, and Betty White. That Girl aired from 1966 to 1971, producing 136 episodes, and was a solid performer in the Nielsen ratings.
In 1971, Thomas chose to end the series after five years. Both ABC and the show's sponsor, Clairol, wanted the series finale to be a wedding between the two central characters, but Thomas rebuffed them, saying that she felt it was the wrong message to send to her female audience, because it would give the impression that the only happy ending is marriage. That Girl has since become popular in syndication.
Later career
After That Girl, eager to expand her horizons, Thomas attended the Actors Studio, where she studied with Lee Strasberg until his death in 1982, and subsequently with his disciple Sandra Seacat. When she won her Best Dramatic Actress Emmy in 1986 for the television film Nobody’s Child, she thanked both individuals.In 1972, she released a children's book, Free to Be... You and Me, which was inspired by her young niece Dionne Kirchner. She went on to create multiple recordings and television specials of and related to that title: Free to Be... You and Me and Free to Be... A Family, with Christopher Cerf. Also in 1972, she served as a California delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. She helped the George McGovern presidential campaign in October 1972 at Star-Spangled Women for McGovern–Shriver, reciting a parody of Erich Segal's Love Story for 19,000 people at Madison Square Garden.
In 1973, Thomas joined Gloria Steinem, Patricia Carbine, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin as the founders of the Ms. Foundation for Women, the first women's fund in the US. The organization was created to deliver funding and other resources to organizations that were presenting liberal women's voices in communities nationwide.
In 1976, Thomas made a guest appearance on the NBC situation comedy The Practice as a stubborn patient of her father Danny Thomas' character Dr. Jules Bedford, and the chemistry of father and daughter acting together made for touching hospital-room scenes.
She has made guest appearances on several television series, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Ballers, The New Normal, Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later. She also narrated the series Happily Never After on Investigation Discovery.
From 1996 to 2002, Thomas had a reoccurring role on the television show Friends. She played Rachel Green's mother, Sandra Green, in three episodes. The role was poignant because of parallels to That Girl. Both shows were comedies about being young and single in New York City. Like Ann Marie three decades earlier, Rachel Green had left the suburbs for independence as a single woman in Manhattan. Thomas's first appearance on Friends was in Season 2 when her character went looking for her daughter, who had run off to Manhattan after abandoning her fiancé, Barry, at the altar. Sandra confessed to Rachel that she was leaving her husband and expressed interest in being one of the girls, marijuana and what is new in sex. Sandra envied her daughter's lifestyle, which she never experienced due to taking a more traditional path. When Rachel became upset at her mother's frankness, Sandra explained that she thought Rachel especially would understand because "you didn't marry your Barry, honey, but I married mine." In 2019, Thomas described her on-screen daughter, Rachel, as the "That Girl" of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Thomas compared the on-air standards 30 years apart, noting that in That Girl, Donald never spent the night at Ann's apartment, but on Friends, sex was more openly spoken about. Thomas also spoke of the great respect the Friends cast showed her when they worked together; they were familiar with her work and yielded to her comedic expertise.
Thomas appeared in films such as Jenny, Thieves, In The Spirit, The Real Blonde, Starstruck, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Playing Mona Lisa, LOL with Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus, and Cardboard Boxer. She also starred in television films, including It Happened One Christmas , The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck, Consenting Adult, Nobody's Child, Held Hostage: The Sis and Jerry Levin Story, Reunion, Deceit, and Ultimate Betrayal.
Thomas' Broadway theatre credits include Thieves, Social Security, and The Shadow Box, and in 2011, she starred as Doreen in Elaine May's comedy George Is Dead in Relatively Speaking during a set of three one-act plays. The other two plays were written by Woody Allen and Ethan Coen.
Off-Broadway, Thomas has appeared in The Guys, The Exonerated, The Vagina Monologues and Love, Loss, and What I Wore. Also off-Broadway, she appeared opposite Greg Mullavey in the 2015 New York debut of Joe DiPietro's play Clever Little Lies at the Westside Theatre. Regional theatre productions include: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Hartford Stage; Woman In Mind at the Berkshire Theatre Festival; Paper Doll, with F. Murray Abraham at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre; and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds at the Cleveland Playhouse. In 1993, she toured in the national company of Six Degrees of Separation. In the spring of 2008, she starred in Arthur Laurents' last play, New Year's Eve with Keith Carradine, at the George Street Playhouse.
Thomas has published seven best-selling books : Free to Be... You and Me; ''Free to Be... A Family; The Right Words at the Right Time; The Right Words at the Right Time, Volume 2: Your Turn; Marlo Thomas and Friends: Thanks & Giving All Year Long ; her 2009 memoir, Growing Up Laughing; and It Ain't Over...Till It's Over: Reinventing Your Life and Realizing Your Dreams Anytime, At Any Age.
Thomas serves as the National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, which was founded by her father, Danny Thomas. She donated all royalties from her 2004 book and CD Marlo Thomas and Friends: Thanks & Giving All Year Long and her two Right Words at the Right Time books to the hospital.
In 2010, Thomas created MarloThomas.com, a website for women aged 35 and older, associated with AOL and the Huffington Post''.