Tessie O'Shea

Teresa Mary O'Shea, known professionally as Tessie O'Shea, was a Welsh entertainer and actress born on 13 March 1913 at 61 Plantagenet Street in Riverside, Cardiff. Her father, James Peter O'Shea, was a newspaper wholesaler and former soldier whose own parents had emigrated from Ireland; her mother was Nellie Theresa Carr. O'Shea died on 21 April 1995 of congestive heart failure at her home in East Lake Weir, Marion County, Florida, at the age of 82.

Raised in the British music hall tradition, O'Shea took to the stage as early as age six, where she was billed as "The Wonder of Wales." A childhood anecdote illustrates her instinct for performance: when she became lost during a stay at Weston-super-Mare, her mother located her by following the sound of her singing the Ernie Mayne song "An N'Egg and some N'Ham and some N'Onion." By her teenage years she had established a presence on BBC Radio and performed on stages across Britain and South Africa. During engagements in Blackpool in the 1930s, she adopted "Two Ton Tessie from Tennessee" as her theme song, a choice that played on her physical stature. She frequently closed her act by singing and playing a banjolele in the style of George Formby, and by the 1940s she was a regular headliner at the London Palladium. The 1950s brought further recognition as a recording artist.

O'Shea's Broadway career spanned from 1963 to 1981 and encompassed four productions: The Girl Who Came to Supper, A Time for Singing, Broadway Follies, and Something's Afoot. Her Broadway debut came in 1963 when Noël Coward created the role of fish and chips peddler Ada Cockle specifically for her in The Girl Who Came to Supper. Her performance of traditional Cockney tunes in that production earned her the 1964 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

Her American profile grew considerably through television. In 1963 she appeared as a guest on The Ed Sullivan Show and returned in 1964 to share the billing with the Beatles, an episode that drew what was at the time the largest audience in the history of American television. She subsequently became a member of the repertory company on the CBS variety series The Entertainers, which ran from 1964 to 1965. In 1968 her performance in the television film The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde earned her an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Drama. She also appeared regularly on the BBC Television variety program The Good Old Days and starred in the British sitcom As Good Cooks Go, which ran from 1969 to 1970.

In December 1970 and January 1971, O'Shea traveled to Vietnam to perform for American troops. On 24 December 1970 she gave a performance at Long Binh and afterward greeted each soldier individually, wishing them a Happy Christmas. Her film credits include London Town, The Blue Lamp, The Shiralee, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Her life was the subject of the BBC Two documentary Two Ton Tessie!, first broadcast in March 2011.