J. Hartley Manners

Biography

British-born playwright J. Hartley Manners, of Irish extraction, spent many years in the United States. In his twenties, in Australia, he began a relatively successful acting career and made his debut in London's West End in 1898. Joining the company of famed actor-manager Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, he toured the provinces as an actor. For famed actress Lily Langtry, with whom he was acting, he wrote the play "The Crossways" in 1902, which he produced and co-starred in. At the end of that year Manners, Langtry and the play traveled to America, where it had a brief Broadway run. Manners acted for only another two years, but devoted himself from 1902 to playwrighting, managing to write or collaborate on more than 30 plays in the next twenty-six years. In 1909 his play "The Great John Ganton" introduced one of the century's great theatrical stars, Laurette Taylor, to Broadway. Manners married Taylor and wrote and produced ten plays for her over the next decade. One of these, "Peg o' My Heart," was a huge success, spawning eight road companies during its Broadway run, playing more than 11,000 collective performances in its first nine years. It was filmed several times. An unproduced play was the posthumous source of the musical "The Gay Divorce," a Broadway hit for Fred Astaire and Cole Porter (later filmed as The Gay Divorcee (1934)). Manners had surgery to treat esophageal cancer in November, 1928, and died three weeks later.