Canadian Film Weekly (Sep 20, 1944)

oo ere | er e+ —— ERNIE MOULE NOW Yesterday’s troubador is today manager of the Capitol, Brantford, Ontario. DD to your trade gallery of A Brantford, Ontario, nota-° bles Mr. Ernest Moule, a gentleman, a showman and a baritone. You might write his name on the record, hang his picture or have a bust of him but you will not have caught the most famed characteristic of Ernie. For that you’d need a sound track. While the years have no doubt rusted Ernie’s vocal pipes, they were once his chief claim to fame. Once upon a long time the genial Mr. Moule brought golden tones out of those pipes in such appealing fashion as to win the affection of the multitude— or that part of it which inhabited any number of hamlets and communities in central United States and Canada. And that’s why the Allens, Ben Cronk and Clair Hague can go hang their heads, They also served their cinema apprenticeship in Brantford, but they are the first to admit that they had no vocal class, even though their songs were illustrated. Of course, there is the matter of Archie Mason, currently the mayor of “INCLUDE ME IN” I AM ENCLOSING CHECK FOR $4.06 IN PAYMENT OF GREEN FEES, DINNER, ETC. Please make Checks payable to: Tom Daley, Sec.-Treas. Imperial Theatre Yonge Street, Toronto IMPORTANT PLEASE FILL IN YOUR LAST THREE SCORES OR CLUB HANDICAP. EAST. ap te \ | | 3 SCORES | [a Address Entrant Must Be Actively Engaged in Motion Picture Industry Musical Ernie Moule By HYE BOSSIN Springhill, Nova Scotia, and the Liberal nominee for his riding. He, like Moule, took lessons and served in Brantford before heading for the Maritimes. We would like to hear Mr. Mason and Mr. Moule have at each other with the scale for the championship of Brantford Pioneers. In spite of the ravages of time it would probably sound no worse than an air raid. It’s now 34 years since the popular Ernie Moule shook off his home town of London, Ontario, and endowed Brantford with his continuing presence—and has, in return, been endowed by Brantford with unmodified affection ever since. You see, Ernie is by nature a giver and not a taker. He’s had his nose in community causes all down the years. Sometimes he stuck it in and sometimes he’s been pulled in by it. He’s had it tweaked a few times too, something that happens occasionally to all well-meaning persons, but he’s never cut it off to spite his or anyone else’s face. Politics? Nope. He's satisfied to go along uncharted paths to express his civic conscience. Not that he hasn’t been asked. no did he get into the movie 5 business? Believe it or leave it—because he was a2 crackerjack at ten-pin bowling, a popular game then. But let’s start farther back than that. When he got out of school in London he stayed in that city for nine years with a coal company. Not satisfied with warming the folks physically, he took singing lessons in the hopes of spreading spiritual warmth, winning 3 reputation and making good money. Vocal boy finally made good. In 1905 he became a mem~ ber of the Imperial Male Quartette, assisted on the program by Mana Gaylord Beckworth, an elocutionist. They were booked solid. Those were the golden days of the unadorned arrangement and the unassisted voice. There were no microphones and folks sang right out. Barber shops and barrooms resounded with men perilously riding the tonal rapids. Quartette singing, though popular in frowned-on surroundings, was being more sinned against than sinning. The Imperial Male Quartette helped claim it for respectability by offering it before the semi-pious audiences of parish halls and the Chautauqua circuit. The boys and the lady played one-night stands and there was none of your modern moving about in the lap of luxury. They travelled what were great distances then in horse-and-wagon vehicles in weather that would make the statue of Sir John A. MacDonald step down and seek a hospitable fireside. They always got there, fair weather or foul, because they knew that their coming was a looked-for event in those pre-movie days and a dark hall meant disappointment. To keep one engagement they travelled from Botteneau, North Dakota, to Pilot Mound, Manitoba, in 36 below zero. Another time they got out of their rig to fight a Nebraska prairie fire for five hours. There were other hardships too, among them a severe personal NAME OF UB, ‘LUB = HANDICAP | | PreTTe Tree The CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Ist ANNUAL CANADIAN MOTION PICTURE CHAMPIONSHIP GOLF TOURNAMENT =, <% OAKDALE GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB, Weston FRIDAY, SEPT. 29, 1944 ee ERNIE MOULE (1905) Ernie Moule (right) as a member of the Imperial Male Quartette, which was a popular Canadian and USA attraction in those dear dead days not yet beyond recall. “The solo work of Messrs. Parker, Moule and Webster was of a high order,” wrote the Garrettsville (Ohio) Press, “all having voices of remarkable range and purity, and indicating a careful degree of training and culture.” drought. Their church and Chautauqua patrons disapproved of the cup that cheers and cheers and cheers. The boys didn’t dare be caught moistening their throats in local taverns. Cleanliness had to share its place next to Godliness with abstinence. Some time in 1908 Ernie returned to London to hammer the wooden bottles and to make music locally for a while. But there was something else on his mind. He and his singing partners had seen moving pictures growing in popularity in the cities but flickers in small places were rare. That, said Ernie to himself and the others, was the game of the future. 'N LONDON in those days there was a swell guy named Bill Karry, now gone, who operated the National Bowling Alleys and some shoeshine parlors. Ernie bowled on his championship team. Karry, an enterprising: individual, had also eyed the movie field and was about to build the Lyric, a 180-seater. The Wonderland, owned by Ben Cronk’s father, was the only movie house in Brantford at the time, Karry picked Ernie to manage because the latter was in show businegs. In January, 1909, the Lyric opened with a continuous show. Admission was five cents and each program took from 12 to 15 minutes, with an illustrated song by Ernie breaking up the two reels. The Lyric closed in 1914. Accompanying Ernie at the piano was his wife, Adelene, who was in charge of the musical parts of those shows ruled over by Ernie unfil sound pictures chased live Yousicians out of the theatres. (Contintied ort Page 10)