Ernst Matray
actor, director, miscellaneous
- Birth name:
- Erno Siblatt
- Born:
- 1891-05-27, Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]
- Died:
- 1978-11-12, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, director, miscellaneous
Biography
Born in the humming heart of fin-de-siècle Budapest on 27 May 1891, Ernst Matray vaulted from the Austro-Hungarian stage onto flickering screens just as cinema learned to speak without words. Between 1915 and 1916 he juggled three early classics—Teufelchen, Die Wilde Blume, and Schloss Phantom—shaping them both in front of and behind the camera. Off-screen, his life read like a serial with three leading ladies: Elisabeth McKinley, Maria Matray, and Greta Schröder. The final reel rolled on 12 November 1978 in Los Angeles, where the once-European prodigy closed his eyes 5,000 miles from the Danube but forever inside the moving pictures he helped forge.
