[2][3][4] Thomas began performing as a magician at age 12 in his home town of Rushville; he was just a teenager when he wrote a book about magic.

[2] As "Thomas the Magician and Company" he performed "the Mystic Revue, a full evening of magic, mirth, music and mystery" throughout the US.

[3][8] A year later, he interviewed Edgar Bergen and became interested enough in ventriloquilism and dummies to visit the Chicago workshop of the man who produced Charlie McCarthy.

[9] He continued working at WLW, writing and creating his own shows: I Cover the Movies and Inside Radio and as a disk jockey for others, such as BC Battle of the Bands.

[13] He married Ann Deeds, a commercial artist for WLWT,[14] and together the couple hosted one of the station's first television shows: Shopper's Special.

The local Catholic nuns used a sock puppet made into the form of a goose to ask children for charity donations.

One year later, in 1955, the pair found their permanent television home at WGN-TV, where they would be joined by the other characters, making it Garfield Goose and Friends.

Thomas told the story of Garfield Goose from his youth, including information about his family and his average day in the castle.

His guests were people like Dr. Lester Fisher of Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo and J. Bruce Mitchell of the Museum of Science and Industry whose visits were both fun and informative.

Thomas agreed to host the program provided he had editing rights on the films, was able to choose them himself and also to refuse any titles he believed were not suitable for the show.

A set designed by Thomas that resembled a cozy home library complete with a Roy Brown painting of Garfield Goose was built and he began his Family Classics weekly show on Friday evenings.

The networks responded by purchasing new movies to air in the same time slot; this made it necessary for the program to move to Sunday afternoons.

The Thomas family's vacation on an 85-foot (26 m) schooner became Sailing the Seas of Columbus and their trip to England resulted in The Legend of Arthur, the Phantom King.

[8][18] By the 1970s the way Chicago children watched television had changed, and Garfield Goose and Friends moved to mornings on WGN.