Joe Yule

Ninnian Joseph Yule (30 April 1892 – 30 March 1950) was a Scottish-American burlesque and vaudeville actor who later appeared in many films as a character actor. He starred alongside Renie Riano in the Jiggs and Maggie film series. Yule was the father of actor Mickey Rooney.

Ninnian Joseph Yule was born in the Hutchesontown district of Glasgow on 30 April 1892, the son of Elizabeth (née McKell; 1866–1919) and boiler maker Ninnian Yule (1866–1943). He emigrated to the United States with his parents on the steamship Bolivia, arriving at the Port of New York on 2 August 1892. They settled in Brooklyn. As a teenager, Yule performed in local vaudeville theatres and was later booked into leading burlesque wheels, including the Columbia Burlesque Wheel, where he adopted the stage name Joe Yule.

In 1919, Yule 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 son Ninnian Joseph Yule Jr. was born. He later became a Hollywood actor under the name Mickey Rooney. The Yules separated in 1924 during a slump in vaudeville, and Carter moved with her son to Hollywood in 1925. Yule was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in Los Angeles on 14 May 1943.

Yule died of a heart attack on 30 March 1950 in Hollywood, California. He was 57. Rooney arranged to have his father buried near Rooney's friend and longtime acting colleague, Wallace Beery, who had died the year before. He wrote, "I thought it was fitting that these two comedians should rest in peace, side by side."