German Starlet Maria Solveg

German actress Maria Solveg (AKA Maria Matray) was born in Niederschönhausen in 1907. Her aunt was German artist Kathe Kollwitz. Two of her older sisters were actresses; one was a dancer. Maria studied ballet as a child. At age 14, she left school and joined Ernst Matray's theatrical tour. She began appearing in German films at 16. In 1927, while touring America, she married Ernst. She developed into a fine choreographer and worked with Austrian theater director Max Reinhardt. In the early 1930s, the Nazis took control of German theaters and motion pictures, and Maria and Ernst fled to France and then England. They eventually settled in the United States, where they choreographed movies, often without screen credit, most notably White Cargo (1942), Swing Fever (1943), and The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947). The Matrays moved back to Germany in 1953, and Maria began writing novels and scripts for television with Answald Kruger. Ernst and Maria were divorced in 1962. She continued writing scripts with Kruger until his death in 1977. She worked with different authors well into the 1980s. She died in Munich in 1993.