David Manners

David Manners, born Rauff de Ryther Duan Acklom on April 30, 1900, at 108 Tower Road in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was a Canadian-American actor whose career spanned stage and screen from the 1920s through the early 1950s. He died on December 23, 1998, in Santa Barbara, California, at the age of 98.

Manners was the younger of two children born to George Moreby Acklom, a writer who served as headmaster of Harrow House School in Halifax, and Lilian Manners, whose maiden name her son would eventually adopt as his own. His elder sister, Dorothea Cecily Acklom, was born in 1898. His uncle, Cecil Ryther Acklom, held a senior rank in the Royal Navy. In 1906, his father emigrated to the United States to work as a literary advisor for the New York publishing firm E.P. Dutton, and the following year Manners, his mother, and his sister joined him. By 1910 the family had settled at 108 Hillside Avenue in Mount Vernon, New York. By January 1920 they had relocated to West 123rd Street in Manhattan, where Manners was employed as an assistant publisher.

He subsequently returned to Canada to study forestry at the University of Toronto, where he found the academic program unrewarding but discovered an interest in campus theater. After receiving drama training there, he made his acting debut in 1924 at the university's Hart House Theater in Euripides' Hippolytus. Despite his father's objections, he continued pursuing performance work after returning to the United States, joining Basil Sydney's Touring Company and later Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Company in New York. Le Gallienne, who provided him additional training, reportedly described him as a very bad actor following one of his early performances. During this period he appeared on the New York stage with Helen Hayes in Dancing Mothers, written by Edgar Selwyn and Edmund Goulding, at the Booth Theatre. His Broadway career extended from 1924 to 1946 and included credits in Dancing Mothers, Lady Windermere's Fan, Truckline Cafe, and Hidden Horizon.

Around 1927 Manners relocated to California, where film director James Whale encountered him at a Hollywood party. After an uncredited appearance in The Sky Hawk in 1929, he was featured in Journey's End the following year, drawing favorable notices from The New York Times and Variety. He went on to appear opposite actresses including Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Stuart, Myrna Loy, Loretta Young, and Ann Dvorak, and was paired on multiple occasions with Helen Chandler. In late 1930 he filmed the role for which he became most widely recognized, playing Jonathan Harker opposite Bela Lugosi in Universal Pictures' Dracula, released in 1931. He claimed never to have seen the completed film, yet continued to receive fan mail related to it until the end of his life. That same year he co-starred with Barbara Stanwyck in Frank Capra's The Miracle Woman, in which he portrayed a blind war veteran; The New York Times praised his performance in the role. In 1932 he appeared in Karl Freund's The Mummy alongside Boris Karloff, playing the archaeologist Frank Whemple. Also in 1932, his role in Crooner, produced during his tenure at Warner Bros., advanced him from supporting player to leading-man status. Among the final films he made before leaving Warner Bros. was RKO's A Bill of Divorcement, which starred John Barrymore, Katharine Hepburn in her film debut, and Billie Burke. He was among the first group of actors to join the Screen Actors Guild when it was established in 1933. Following three films released in 1936 — Hearts in Bondage, A Woman Rebels, and Lucky Fugitives — he withdrew from film work entirely, having grown dissatisfied with Hollywood and the roles available to him there.

Manners continued to perform on stage for seventeen years after leaving film, appearing in touring productions, summer stock, and on Broadway, including the 1946 production of Hidden Horizon. He retired from acting altogether in 1953.

On May 23, 1929, in New York City, Manners married Suzanne Bushnell of Springfield, Ohio. The 1930 United States census recorded the couple living in Los Angeles. They divorced in 1932. In 1940 he legally changed his name to David Joseph Manners, adopting his mother's maiden name, a change documented in the 1940 census, which also recorded that he had applied for United States citizenship and identified him as an author and actor living in Victorville, California, at a ranch he had purchased some years earlier. In 1948 he met playwright Frederic William Mercer, and the two lived together as partners for thirty years until Mercer's death in 1978. They initially resided at the Victorville ranch before relocating in 1956 to Pacific Palisades.

Manners became a published novelist in 1941 with Convenient Season, followed in 1943 by Under Running Laughter; both were published by E.P. Dutton under the name David J. Manners. In 1971 El Cariso Publications released his philosophical work, Look Through: An Evidence of Self Discovery. After retiring from acting, he devoted his remaining years to painting, writing, and the study of philosophy. He died at 98 in the health center of a retirement community in Santa Barbara, California. His ashes were scattered at Rancho Yucca Loma in Victor Valley, San Bernardino County.