Extremely rare vintage 7.5 x 9.5-inch sepia-tone bust portrait, dating to the early 1920s, boldly signed in white fountain pen.  In very fine condition, with gentle soiling in the upper left-hand corner, not substantially detracting from the overall appearance of the item.  An occasional actor in silent films, including Fred Niblo's When Do We Eat? (1918), Ray was a major director of silent comic shorts and full-length comedies, with nearly 150 credits in that genre.  He also wrote early scripts for the Three Stooges.  Among horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery buffs, he is remembered as the director of The Thirteenth Guest (1932), The Intruder (1933) and A Shriek in the Night (1933), and as the screenwriter for the Sidney Toler favorite Charlie Chan in Reno (1939).  His career was tragically cut short, when he died of undisclosed causes in 1944, aged only 46 years.

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