Joseph Tomelty

Joseph Tomelty was an Irish actor and theater manager who also wrote plays, novels and short stories, working across film, television, radio and the stage. He was born in Portaferry in 1911, and the music he heard as a boy stayed with him: several of his plays, among them The Singing Bird (1948), Down the Heather Glen (1953) and The Drunken Sailor (1954), took their titles from songs. He helped found the Group Theatre in Belfast in 1940 and ran it as general manager until 1951. His radio sitcom The McCooeys began in 1949 on the BBC's Home Service for Northern Ireland and became the region's most listened-to program over the next six years. He also starred on stage in Over the Bridge, Sam Thompson's 1960 play, and wrote the novels Red Is the Port Light (1948) and The Apprentice (1953).