David Joseph Manners (born Rauff de Ryther Duan Acklom; April 30, 1900 – December 23, 1998) was a Canadian-American actor who plays John Harker in Tod Browning's 1931 horror classic Dracula, which stars Bela Lugosi in the title role. The following year, Manners portrayed the archaeologist Frank Whemple in The Mummy, another pre-Code thriller by Universal Pictures.
Early life
Manners (originally Rauff Acklom) was born in Canada at 108 Tower Road in Halifax, Nova Scotia on April 30, 1900. He was the younger child and only son of British parents, Lilian (or Lillian) Manners and writer George Moreby Acklom, as well as being the nephew of Cecil Ryther Acklom, a senior officer in the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. He had an elder sister, Dorothea Cecily Acklom (later Mrs. Hall; 1898-1972). His father, in Halifax, was then the headmaster of Harrow House School, a prestigious private boarding school for boys. Eight years later, in 1907, Rauff, his mother, and his older sister left Canada and emigrated to the United States to join his father, who had emigrated in the previous year and secured a job as a literary advisor for E.P. Dutton, a publishing company in New York. By 1910 the entire Acklom family was living at 108 Hillside Avenue in Mount Vernon, New York, a northern suburb of New York City.
The Ackloms by January 1920 had moved again, then to West 123rd Street in Manhattan, where 19-year-old Manners (still Rauff) continued to reside with his parents. He was employed as an assistant publisher and seemed destined to repeat his father's own career choice and live out his life as an editor and publisher. Soon, perhaps in an effort to chart an entirely different course for himself professionally, Manners stopped working as an assistant publisher and returned to Canada to study forestry at the University of Toronto. He found the curriculum there boring; however, he was attracted to stage work on campus. After receiving some drama training, he made his acting debut in 1924 at the school's Hart House Theater in Euripides' play Hippolytus.
Despite his father's objections, Manners continued to pursue an entertainment career when he came back to the United States. Before long he was performing in theaters in Chicago, on Broadway, and elsewhere after joining Basil Sydney's Touring Company and later Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Company in New York. During his time, before he moved to Hollywood at the beginning of the sound era in films, he obtained additional training under Le Gallienne, even though she had remarked that he was "a very bad actor" after seeing one of his performances. Manners in this period also appeared on the New York stage with Helen Hayes, with whom he co-starred in Edgar Selwyn and Edmund Goulding's play Dancing Mothers at the Booth Theatre.
