Tony Thomas
Thomas has served on the ALSAC/St. Jude Board of Directors and Governors for more than a decade. For the last several years he has devoted himself to raising funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which his late father, Danny Thomas, founded in 1962. Tony and his family are carrying on the tradition of continuing to support the facility.
Since 2004, he and his sisters, Marlo and Terre, have spearheaded the Thanks and Giving® campaign, which runs from Thanksgiving through December, and raised more than $300 million for the hospital. Each year Tony has produced national PSA spots and movie trailers for the campaign, which have featured celebrities such as Robin Williams, Jennifer Aniston, Morgan Freeman, Ray Romano, Antonio Banderas, Will Smith, Shaun White, George Lopez, Dwyane Wade, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jimmy Smits and the late Bernie Mac.
In 2010, FOX Sports Supports chose St. Jude as the charity partner for NFL on FOX, and Tony produced the PSAs for St. Jude that aired throughout the NFL season.
Each year, Tony attends the FedEx St. Jude Classic, a PGA golf tournament held in Memphis, and is part of the closing ceremony and the winner’s presentation.
For 25 years, Thomas was a prolific producer of comedy programming on television. With partners Paul Junger Witt and Susan Harris, their company is best known for such long-running, popular series as ABC’s Soap and Benson, and NBC’s The Golden Girls, Empty Nest and Nurses. Witt and Thomas also produced NBC’s Blossom and The John Larroquette Show, FOX’s Herman’s Head and the critically acclaimed CBS drama series, Beauty and the Beast, which along with The Golden Girls, Empty Nest, Soap and Benson, has received numerous Emmy awards and Golden Globes.
Throughout the '80s and '90s Witt-Thomas and Witt-Thomas-Harris combined to form one of the most potent sitcom suppliers in television history. During the early '90s the company had six sitcoms on the airwaves at one time.
Witt and Thomas first teamed together as producer and associate producer, respectively, on the Emmy Award-winning 1971 television movie Brian's Song. Thomas entered the feature film arena in 1984 as producer of Firstborn, a Paramount release starring Teri Garr and Peter Weller. Thomas and partner Witt produced Dead Poets Society, a 1989 Touchstone Pictures release which met with resounding critical success, and was nominated for Best Picture and captured an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Witt-Thomas Films’ 1992 release, Final Analysis, starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman and Kim Basinger, as well as Insomnia in 2002, starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank, were critical and commercial successes.
Witt and Thomas returned to the feature film business in 2011, producing the feature, A Better Life, which garnered an Academy-Award nomination for its male lead, Demian Bichir. They currently have several other projects in development.