Joe Yule


Ninnian Joseph Yule was a British-American burlesque and vaudeville comedian who later appeared in many films as a character actor. He was noted for his starring role in the Jiggs and Maggie film series, opposite Renie Riano, and as the father of Mickey Rooney.

Biography

Yule was born in Scotland on April 30, 1892 in the Hutchesontown district of Glasgow, and emigrated to the United States when an infant in 1892 with his parents, Ninnian Yule and Elizabeth Yule, nee McKell, on the steamship, Bolivia, which sailed from the Port of Glasgow, Scotland, and arrived at the Port of New York, August 2, 1892. Their surname was recorded on the ship's manifest as Yule not "Ewell." They settled in Brooklyn. His father was a boiler maker. The Yules spelled the men's Christian name as Ninnian not as Ninian.
As a teenager, he performed in local vaudeville theatres in Brooklyn and later was booked into leading burlesque wheels, including the Columbia Burlesque Wheel; he adopted the stage name Joe Yule. In 1919, he married fellow vaudevillian Nellie W. Carter, a native of Kansas City, Missouri. In 1920, while they were appearing together in a Brooklyn production of A Gaiety Girl, their only son, Ninnian Joseph Yule, Jr., was born. The Yules separated in 1924 during a slump in vaudeville, and in 1925 Nellie moved with her son to Hollywood. Yule was naturalized as a United States citizen at the United States District Court in Los Angeles on May 14, 1943.
Yule died from a heart attack on March 30, 1950 in Hollywood, California. Rooney arranged to have his father buried near Rooney's friend and longtime acting colleague, Wallace Beery, who had died the year before. "I thought it was fitting that these two comedians should rest in peace, side by side," he wrote.

Filmography