David Manners
David Manners (actually Rauff Acklom, born April 30, 1900 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, † December 23, 1998 in Santa Barbara, California ) was a Canadian- American actor.
Life and career
David Manners was born in Canada, but the family moved to New York later. He originally studied forestry at the University of Toronto, but when he found this too boring, he was against the wishes of his family actor. He initially joined the theater, among other things, directed by George Cukor on before he came to the beginning of the sound era in Hollywood. He was under contract with Warner Brothers, but he also played for other studios. The director James Whale put him in his films The Journey 's End and in Dracula, where he appeared as an opponent of Bela Lugosi in one of his most famous roles. Manners appeared in two other horror films, 1932 in The Mummy and 1934 in The Black Cat. In addition, David Manners was regularly seen as a leading man alongside established female stars such as Ruth Chatterton in The Right to Love, Barbara Stanwyck in The Miracle Woman and Kay Francis in Man Wanted. Manners played among other things on the side of Katharine Hepburn in her movie debut in a divorce. He was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild Screen Actors Guild. In 1936 he retired to around 40 films from the film business. Until the 1950s, he performed regularly as a theater actor. In 1946 he played in Maxwell Anderson's Truck Line Cafe next to Marlon Brando, who later claimed that he would owe his career Manners.
From 1929 to 1931 he was married to Suzanne Bushnell, but the marriage was divorced. He lived from 1936 on a ranch near the California Victorville, then until his death in 1978 with writer Bill Mercer in Pacific Palisades. Manners died at the age of 98 years, after he spent his last years in a retirement home.