Family
Mantley had a sister, eleven years older than himself, who taught dancing well into her eighties. Mantley said that she was "the one born in a (show business) trunk", but strangely enough, I was the one who ended up involved in television and films."
Their father, Cecil Clay Van Manzer, adopted the stage name Clay Mantley. Van Manzer met his wife Violet Petello in 1906 in New York City at the casting of The Convict's Daughter, directed by Maurice Costello. He later wrote playlets which his wife appeared in on the vaudeville circuit.
In later years Van Manzer operated a traveling circus while his wife ran a number of concession stands in a park across the lake from Toronto. Their son John operated the candy booth and at 17 traveled with the carnival, serving as the bingo game barker.
Read more about this topic: John Mantley
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“Do not let your bachelor ways crystallize so that you can’t soften them when you come to have a wife and a family of your own.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Because it’s not only that a child is inseparable from the family in which he lives, but that the lives of families are determined by the community in which they live and the cultural tradition from which they come.”
—Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)