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. Hollywood career After arriving in California, around 1927, Manners was serendipitously "discovered" by the film director James Whale at a Hollywood party, and within a few years he was a popular leading man, playing opposite such actresses as Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Gloria Stuart, Myrna Loy, Loretta Young, and Ann Dvorak. He was paired several times with Helen Chandler. After performing in an uncredited role in The Sky Hawk in 1929, he was featured the next year in Journey's End. Reviewers of the latter film, such as The New York Times and Variety, officially bestowed their endorsements on the fledgling movie actor's work. His subsequent performances were critically praised again in The New York Times and by other influential film critics. In late 1930 Manners filmed his best remembered role, as Jonathan Harker opposite Bela Lugosi, in Universal's horror classic Dracula (1931). Until the end of his life, he continued to receive mail from fans of the movie, although he claimed to have never seen the finished film. In his tenth movie, he co-starred with Barbara Stanwyck in Frank Capra's critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful The Miracle Woman (1931). The New York Times lauded Manners again for his portrayal of a blind war veteran, stating that "Manners does exceptionally well with this sympathetic assignment". During his brief tenure with Warner Bros., which had loaned him to other studios quite frequently, Manners progressed from being a supporting player to achieving true movie-star status following his role in Crooner in 1932. Shortly after that production's release, he began to freelance with much success. One of the final films he made before the end of his Warner Bros.' contract was RKO's A Bill of Divorcement, starring John Barrymore, Katharine Hepburn and Billie Burke. After the success of Dracula, Manners worked for several years as a romantic leading man, and was most often seen in a tuxedo in romantic comedies and light dramas. The Last Flight (1931), a Lost Generation celebration of the high life in Paris, and Karl Freund's The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff were two standouts. But by 1936 he had grown