Biography
Born on 13 March 1913 in Cardiff, Wales, Teresa O’Shea died on 21 April 1995 in Leesburg, Florida. Billed as “Two Ton Tessie,” the lively, cheerful, and highly charming performer first encountered variety bills at Cardiff Empire at the age of four. Early talent-contest victories in both singing and dancing led to a solo stage debut at twelve on the boards of the Bristol Hippodrome; an immediate booking at the Chiswick Empire soon followed, along with steady engagements across the variety circuit. Painfully aware of her expanding frame—she eventually tipped the scales at seventeen stone—she favored outlandish costumes featuring elastic-sided boots, striped hosiery, and oversized hats. In her formative years she modeled her robust delivery on Lily Morris, delivering such numbers as “Josh-u-ah,” “Don’t Have Any More, Missus Moore,” “Hold Your Hand Out, Naughty Boy,” and “Why Am I Always The Bridesmaid.”
By the close of the 1930s she had become a headliner, commanding summer seasons in Blackpool and topping bills nationwide while strumming a banjulele for such numbers as “I Met Him By The Withered Weeping Willows,” “Nobody Loves A (Fat) Fairy When She’s Forty,” and, with the outbreak of war, “I Fell In Love With An Airman Who Had Big Blue Eyes, But I’m Nobody’s Sweetheart Now.” During World War II she traveled with ENSA; in 1942 she joined Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson, Cecil Frederick, Robby Vincent, and Harry Korris in Robert Nesbitt’s revue Happidrome at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Two years later she topped the London Palladium bill alongside Max Miller, and in 1946 she returned to the same stage for another Nesbitt production, High Time, co-starring with Nat Jackley, Jimmy Jewel, and Ben Warriss. Her memorable entrance atop an elephant that became pregnant mid-run and unseated her required three months of recovery, yet she was sufficiently healed to appear in the Royal Variety Performance that November. In 1949 she teamed with bandleader Billy Cotton for the buoyant revue Tess And Bill, which enjoyed a London season at the Victoria Palace.
Throughout the 1950s, as television shuttered many variety houses, she sustained her career through summer shows, cabaret, radio work, and provincial stagings of Sailor Beware and Peter Ustinov’s Romanoff And Juliet. On 8 December 1963 she made her Broadway debut in Noël Coward’s The Girl Who Came To Supper, an adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s The Sleeping Prince. Cast as the cockney fish-and-chips vendor Ada Cockle, she stopped the show nightly with her exuberant rendition of “London” (“is a little bit of all-right/nobody can deny that’s true”), captured the Tony Award for Supporting/Featured Actress, and revisited New York in 1966—retaining her Welsh accent—for the musical A Time For Singing, drawn from Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley. Fresh acclaim on Broadway brought guest spots on American talk shows and the role of the Nurse in a New Orleans Repertory Theatre mounting of Romeo And Juliet; she also received an Emmy for her performance in a televised Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. Returning to Britain in 1970, she shared the Blackpool Opera House stage with Ken Dodd and earned praise for the television comedy As Good Cooks Go.
In later years, based in the United States, she appeared as Mrs Hobday in the Walt Disney film Bedknobs And Broomsticks and headlined a revue in Las Vegas. Occasional visits to Britain continued to remind audiences of her singular presence on the variety stage.
By the close of the 1930s she had become a headliner, commanding summer seasons in Blackpool and topping bills nationwide while strumming a banjulele for such numbers as “I Met Him By The Withered Weeping Willows,” “Nobody Loves A (Fat) Fairy When She’s Forty,” and, with the outbreak of war, “I Fell In Love With An Airman Who Had Big Blue Eyes, But I’m Nobody’s Sweetheart Now.” During World War II she traveled with ENSA; in 1942 she joined Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson, Cecil Frederick, Robby Vincent, and Harry Korris in Robert Nesbitt’s revue Happidrome at the Prince of Wales Theatre. Two years later she topped the London Palladium bill alongside Max Miller, and in 1946 she returned to the same stage for another Nesbitt production, High Time, co-starring with Nat Jackley, Jimmy Jewel, and Ben Warriss. Her memorable entrance atop an elephant that became pregnant mid-run and unseated her required three months of recovery, yet she was sufficiently healed to appear in the Royal Variety Performance that November. In 1949 she teamed with bandleader Billy Cotton for the buoyant revue Tess And Bill, which enjoyed a London season at the Victoria Palace.
Throughout the 1950s, as television shuttered many variety houses, she sustained her career through summer shows, cabaret, radio work, and provincial stagings of Sailor Beware and Peter Ustinov’s Romanoff And Juliet. On 8 December 1963 she made her Broadway debut in Noël Coward’s The Girl Who Came To Supper, an adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s The Sleeping Prince. Cast as the cockney fish-and-chips vendor Ada Cockle, she stopped the show nightly with her exuberant rendition of “London” (“is a little bit of all-right/nobody can deny that’s true”), captured the Tony Award for Supporting/Featured Actress, and revisited New York in 1966—retaining her Welsh accent—for the musical A Time For Singing, drawn from Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley. Fresh acclaim on Broadway brought guest spots on American talk shows and the role of the Nurse in a New Orleans Repertory Theatre mounting of Romeo And Juliet; she also received an Emmy for her performance in a televised Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. Returning to Britain in 1970, she shared the Blackpool Opera House stage with Ken Dodd and earned praise for the television comedy As Good Cooks Go.
In later years, based in the United States, she appeared as Mrs Hobday in the Walt Disney film Bedknobs And Broomsticks and headlined a revue in Las Vegas. Occasional visits to Britain continued to remind audiences of her singular presence on the variety stage.
Live