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The Times, Wednesday, Nov 08, 1950; pg. 9; Issue 51843; col F - has a small note on her divorce.
Miss Tessie O'Shea granted Decree Nisi
Mr Commissioner Blanco White, sitting as a special divorce commissioner, yesterday granted Mrs Theresa Mary Rollo (Miss Tessie O'Shea, the variety star) a decree nisi of nullity on the ground of incapacity of her husband. The parties were married in 1940. The suit was undefended.
Obituary from the Guardian:
SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. T11
LENGTH: 1014 words
HEADLINE: BIG IS BEAUTIFUL AND TOP OF THE BILL;
Obituary: Tessie O'Shea
BYLINE: Peter Cotes
BODY:
TESSIE O'SHEA, who has died aged 82, had a presence that could fill the Albert Hall or the American Funfair in Las Vegas. Her good nature came over to audiences who loved her as they did Gracie Fields and Max Miller. "Nobody loves a fat girl when she's 40," she sang, but she was much more than that, having a touch of the pathos of Bud Flanagan and the great Arthur Lucan. She was one of the century's variety greats.
Tessie O'Shea strummed an instrument called a banjolele, sang, laughed at her own contortions and waggled a bottom which was an important accessory to her act. She enjoyed a career that took in the British variety circuit from Hackney to Birkenhead, Broadway, working men's clubs, Windsor Castle - following a royal invitation - and Shakespeare in New Orleans, where she played the Nurse in Romeo And Juliet. I first saw her when she made her London debut at the Chiswick Empire in 1926. I played on the bill with her in Moss Empires' road shows.
She was born in Cardiff, won a singing prize in Weston-super-Mare as a four -year-old, debuted at eight singing comic songs in a concert party, and first played the North Pier at Blackpool as a stand-in when she was just 15. "I was a big fat girl so I looked about 25," she observed later. She also sang an American song, Two Ton Tessie, which became associated with her. Her proper professional debut was as The Unwee One, at the old Bristol Hippodrome.
Stardom came later. She appeared as a babbling antidote to the famous Ella Shields, who was doing the number Burlington Bertie From Bow, and at one period of her career, she modelled herself on Lily Morris of Don't Have Any More, Mrs Moore and Why Am I Always The Bridesmaid, Never The Blushing Bride?
But her own style developed on variety bills from the thirties into the fifties. She became a firm favourite at the London Palladium when it was in its heyday with folk like Charles Gulliver and George Black controlling events. During world war two, she worked with ENSA at home and abroad and was a regular on radio. In 1946, as star of George Black's first revue High Time, she wowed the town twice nightly at the Palladium, until she went into battle with Mrs Jumbo, a performing elephant. Mrs Jumbo playfully threw Tessie. She was out of the show. Then, throwing her crutches away, she starred in that year's Royal Variety Performance. In the fifties, her career settled down to cabarets, radio and television spots.
There were also films. In 1947, she co-starred with Sandy Powell in a Manchester first feature film curio, Cup-tie Honeymoon, but achieved rather wider distribution when she appeared with Jack Warner and Dirk Bogarde in the police-thriller, The Blue Lamp (1949). She also was in The Shiralee with Peter Finch (1957), Sailor Beware, Romanoff And Juliet, and the children's film, Bedknobs And Broomsticks; she won an Oscar nomination for The Russians Are Coming, The Russian Are Coming, and an Emmy for her part in an American TV production of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, with Jack Palance.
She had played Blackpool for 12 summer seasons from the early fifties when in 1963 she made a fateful trip to the US to play Ada Cockles on Broadway in Noel Coward's The Girl Who Came to Supper, based on Rattigan's play The Sleeping Prince. It transformed her career. She won awards and guest-starred on so many American television chat shows and comedy spectaculars that she stayed on in the US, although she continued to make some appearances in Britain. In 1968, she was back in Blackpool for the summer to co-star with Ken Dodd. Her last professional appearance was 12 years ago in Washington.
When her weight dropped in the late sixties she jokingly called herself Twiggy O'Shea. But she never was thin. "I made my name as a fat girl," she commented, "I have to be careful not to lose too much weight or I would ruin my image." There was no risk of that. Nothing diminished Tessie.
Tessie O'Shea, entertainer, born March 13, 1914; died April 20, 1995.
Glasgow Herald:
Copyright 1995 Caledonian Newspapers Ltd.
The Herald (Glasgow)
April 24, 1995
SECTION: Pg. 5
LENGTH: 694 words
HEADLINE: Obituary
BODY:
VETERAN variety star Tessie O'Shea, who has died at her home in Florida at the age of 82, was larger than life in more ways than one.
The star of stage, screen and radio, rejoiced in the nickname Two-Ton Tessie.
Starting as a singer in the late years of British music hall, she soon found her expanding girth casting her in the role of the jolliest girl at the party, and added comedy to her act.
Her career spanned six decades, fading only in the late 1970s.
She had appeared in the Royal Variety Performance, starred at the London Palladium and was invited to Windsor Castle by Queen Elizabeth, now the Queen Mother.
While there she was introduced to the then Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, who, she was assured, were two of her greatest fans.
Billed as The Last of the Red Hot Mommas, she went on to live in America where she was very popular, and at one stage owned two homes there.
Born in Cardiff in 1913, she was set on the road to stardom from the age of four, when she won a singing competition in a Weston-super-Mare pierrot show.
She started dancing lessons while singing in local concerts near her Cardiff home.
At 11 she went to London to sing in a charity concert, was noticed, and was soon turning professional.
As a decidedly chubby 15-year-old, she stood in for a sick artiste in a Blackpool summer show, and was asked by the producer to sing an American song, Two-Ton Tessie.
The name stuck. For years she weighed around 17 stone, needing clothes in size 28.
Her career was ending before she heeded health warnings and shed several stones.
Her last performance was 10 years ago in Washington, when she played the starring role in a musical.
She had long turned her talents to acting, in both musical and straight plays and films. She was in The Blue Lamp, Disney's Bedknobs and Broomsticks and was nominated for an Oscar for her role in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.
She never married, and once said she was happy to have "thousands of pals'' around the world. "They love my fat girl act," she said.
Daily Mail:
Copyright 1995 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
Daily Mail (London)
April 22, 1995
SECTION: Pg. 23
LENGTH: 453 words
HEADLINE: TESSIE, LAST OF THE RED HOT MOMMAS
BYLINE: Charles Masson-Smith
BODY:
TESSIE O'SHEA, the larger-than-life music hall queen, died yesterday at her home in Florida, after a lengthy battle against heart disease.
She was 82, and had delighted audiences over a career spanning nearly 70 years.
Known as The Last of the Red Hot Mommas, Tessie died the day she discharged herself from hospital after refusing to take any more medicine. She returned to her home in Lake Weir and died peacefully in her sleep.
Her best friend, actress and writer Margaret Greene, said: 'Tessie was a fighter and very brave but a lot of people don't want to to hang on and be kept alive through medication.
'She spent her final years doing the things she wanted to. Her favourite pastime was feeding the birds that used to flock to her balcony and watching her favourite TV soap operas.'
Born in Cardiff in 1913, Tessie was on the stage at the age of four. Famous for playing the banjo, she earned her first nickname at the age of 15 when she replaced a sick performer in a summer musical in Blackpool. Because of her name the producer asked her to sing an American song, Two Ton Tessie, and she was an overnight success.
She later appeared in the Royal Variety Performance and shared top billing with Hollywood stars such as Danny Kaye at the London Palladium.
In 1963, at the age of 46, she took Broadway by storm in Noel Coward's last musical The Girl Who came to Supper, performing a medley of music hall numbers billed as 'a triumphant Cockney crescendo'. After a standing ovation lasting five minutes, Coward said he had 'never heard such cheering'.
The role brought her instant success in America and won her a Tony award. After The Girl Who Came to Supper, Tessie moved to the States.
She was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the film The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, and also starred in London Town, The Blue Lamp, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Shiralee.
At one stage tipping the scales at 17 stone, she even wrote a book, The Tessie O'Shea Slimming Cookbook.
She was once invited to Windsor Castle to meet the Queen Mother. She said later: 'As I got out of the car she came to me and said, 'Miss O'Shea, I want you to meet two of of your greatest fans'.
'I said, 'Who's that, Ma'am?' and she said, 'My daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret'.'
Her last performance was at the Ford Theatre in Washington ten years ago when she played the starring role in the Edwardian-style musical Lady Lilly, written by her friend Mrs Greene.
She never married and had no children, preferring to live much of her life with her adoptive family of Austrian-born pianist Ernest Wampold, his wife Kathleen and their children Katy and Karl.
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