Michael O'Shea

Michael O'Shea, born Edward Francis Michael Patrick Joseph O'Shea on March 17, 1906, in Hartford, Connecticut, was an American actor, comedian, musician, and bandleader whose career encompassed stage, film, and television work spanning the 1940s through the early 1970s. Before entering show business, he worked as a newspaper copy boy, a Western Union messenger, and a tobacco farmer.

O'Shea was a drummer and banjo player who, early in his career, performed as a comedian and emcee at speakeasies. He organized a dance band called Michael O'Shea and His Stationary Gypsies and later worked in radio, appearing on programs including Superman, Mr. District Attorney, The March of Time, and Gangbuster. During this period he was sometimes billed as Eddie O'Shea.

His Broadway career began in 1942 with the play The Eve of St. Mark, a production that earned him considerable acclaim and drew the attention of film producers. The success of that stage role led directly to an offer to appear opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the film Lady of Burlesque (1943), produced by Hunt Stromberg and released through United Artists. That same year, Samuel Bronston cast O'Shea in the title role of the biopic Jack London (1943), also released through United Artists, with a cast that included Virginia Mayo. O'Shea was subsequently invited to reprise his stage performance in Twentieth Century-Fox's film adaptation of The Eve of St. Mark (1944). His other film work during this period included Man from Frisco (1944) for Republic Pictures, directed by Robert Florey; Something for the Boys (1944) at Fox with Carmen Miranda; It's a Pleasure! (1945) for International Pictures, in which he played a hockey star opposite figure skater Sonja Henie; and Circumstantial Evidence (1945), also at Fox.

O'Shea returned to Broadway in 1945 with a role in the revival of The Red Mill, produced by Hunt Stromberg Jr., which ran for 531 performances through 1947. That production marked his second and final Broadway credit during his primary stage years, which the database records as spanning 1942 to 1945.

Following the close of The Red Mill, O'Shea transitioned into supporting film roles. His credits from this period include Mr. District Attorney (1947) for Columbia, Violence (1947) for Monogram Pictures opposite Nancy Coleman, Last of the Redmen (1947) for Columbia in which he played Natty Bumppo, Smart Woman (1948), Parole, Inc. (1949), The Big Wheel (1949) at United Artists supporting Mickey Rooney, and The Threat (1949) for RKO. He continued with supporting parts in Captain China (1950), The Underworld Story (1950), and Disc Jockey (1951), before appearing in three Twentieth Century-Fox productions: Fixed Bayonets (1951) for director Sam Fuller, The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951) for director George Cukor, and Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952).

As his film work diminished, O'Shea moved into television, appearing on programs such as The Revlon Mirror Theater, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Damon Runyon Theater, and Schlitz Playhouse of Stars. He had a supporting part in the film It Should Happen to You (1954) and then took on the lead role of Denny Davis, a former GI seeking civilian employment, in the NBC sitcom It's a Great Life, which ran from 1954 to 1956. His performance earned him an Emmy Award nomination in 1955. He later worked as a television panelist and guest-starred on episodes of Adventures in Paradise, Daktari, and Adam-12. In 1960, he and his wife Virginia Mayo filmed a pilot for a sitcom titled McGarry and His Mouse, though it was not picked up as a series. In 1964, O'Shea returned briefly to the New York stage in the production of I Was Dancing.

In his personal life, O'Shea was married twice. His first marriage, to Grace Watts, produced two children and ended in divorce in 1947, the same year his first wife later sued him for unpaid alimony. He married actress Virginia Mayo in 1947, having first met her on the set of Jack London in 1943. The couple had one child, Mary Catherine O'Shea, born in 1953, and appeared together in stock productions including George Washington Slept Here, Tunnel of Love, and Fiorello! O'Shea maintained a bricklayer's union card and served as a reserve deputy sheriff in the Ventura County Sheriff's Office. In 1957, he pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm after firing two shots into a tractor tire near his home, and in August 1959 he was arrested in Philadelphia after brandishing a pistol during a restaurant dispute involving his wife. O'Shea died of a heart attack in Dallas on December 4, 1973, shortly before he was to begin a tour with Mayo in a production of Forty Carats.