Thomas’ Charity, Charm Recalled : Funeral: Celebrated entertainers lead throng in remembering a fellow pioneer in comedy.

The Church of the Good Shepherd was full, and then some.

Yet among the men and women who come to fill the pews and stand at the back--as they did Friday--to honor another notable who has died, the memorable faces are vanishing, becoming the eulogized, not the eulogists. Each time one of them dies, there are more admirers to mourn them, and fewer peers.

So it was on Friday. Several kings of comedy and two former Presidents came to the Beverly Hills church to honor Danny Thomas, who died Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of 79. They joined more than 500 people inside and scores on the grass outside who listened to the service on loudspeakers. They wept for the philanthropist Danny Thomas and laughed for the comedian Danny Thomas, as his friends conjured for this last time a man of charity and charm.

Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, Bob Hope and Milton Berle, Mary Tyler Moore and Loretta Young all went to their seats as the glossy, black coffin was brought in, covered by a spray of ferns and white roses, escorted to its place below the altar by caped Knights of Malta and Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, orders to which Thomas belonged.

Up and down the pews were comedy’s summa cum laude alumni: Carl Reiner, Joey Bishop, Red Buttons, Morey Amsterdam, Bill Dana, Martha Raye. The waning winter sun cast ruby and azure light from the stained-glass windows on bowed heads whose hair was grayer or thinner than the last time they had all come together for a funeral.

Every year, early television loses more of its stalwarts: Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Jack Benny and Arthur Godfrey. The showmen inside the church know the gaps in their ranks and recite them as soldiers list fallen comrades.

Hope had no doubt that Thomas is “in heaven with St. Jude, Jack Benny, Lucille Ball and Sammy and lots of old friends.”

Jan Murray last saw Thomas at the Hillcrest Country Club last month, celebrating George Burns’ 95th birthday. It was late, and they had gone to the grill, talking about the “round table” group of even older days, “when all the greats of another era used to assemble and have lunch.” Al Jolson, Danny Kaye, the Marx Brothers and the Ritz Brothers would toss out one-liners like salted peanuts.

“I said, ‘Danny, wouldn’t it be great if they had a round table like this up in heaven?’ . . . I feel good thinking all of them now have welcomed Danny.”

At the oaken double doors of the church, where the likes of Rita Hayworth and Vincent Minnelli have been eulogized, people had clamored to squeeze in as fire marshals counted heads and monitors consulted guest lists.

One man ruffled a fan of snapshots that showed him with Danny Thomas --”Look at this one”--to persuade a fire marshal that he, too, should have a place inside.

A woman named Joan Lewis arrived Friday for a four-day visit from Connecticut when she saw the crowd at the church and stopped. “I just saw (Thomas) on ‘Empty Nest’ last week and was surprised at how he had aged,” she sighed. “And this week he’s dead. It’s the end of an era.”

The sentiment inside was much the same.

“We came to think of him as more holy than mortal,” said Thomas’ son-in-law, talk show host Phil Donahue, who is married to daughter Marlo. “This week, he proved us wrong. And he broke our hearts.”

To Reagan, who had celebrated his 80th birthday two days earlier with some of the same friends who were now in the church, Thomas was “a pioneer in wholesome entertainment,” a man he honored in 1985 with the Congressional Gold Medal for his work to found and fund St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn.

To Archbishop Roger Mahony, who said the funeral Mass, Thomas was “a special meteor, a person of unusual brilliance and light.”

To Sheldon Leonard, Thomas was a longtime partner in producing some of the most popular shows on television. “For one brief shining moment, we had our own Camelot, under the reign of King Danny,” he said.

And to the aging showmen, whose cumulative years of friendship with Thomas would run into the hundreds, dating from the lean days on the nightclub circuits long before they all hit it big on TV, Thomas was another star in their constellation that had flickered into darkness.

“Every time you lose a friend, those memories grow larger and so much richer,” said TV pioneer Berle, who lauded Thomas as “an original, which is more than I can say for myself.”

Thomas “didn’t just wish for things to be better and brighter--he went out and made them that way,” said Hope, who summoned smiles and tears with his line, “I have it on good authority (that) God said, ‘Move over--make room for Danny.’ ”

Comedy was Thomas’ bread and butter, and his colleagues made laughter a part of their tribute.

As Donahue introduced him, Berle couldn’t resist the aside, “Thank you, Geraldo,” nor the crack, as he exchanged glances with Mahony, “I got a line here that’ll close the church.”

Thomas, whose nose, religion and Lebanese heritage were the subject of “10,000 jokes” by Hope, filled in for him at an engagement about 10 years ago, when Hope was having eye trouble. “Bob, rest that eye,” Hope said Thomas told him. “My nose can handle this.”