Marton was born in Budapest, Hungary. After high-school graduation in 1922 he was taken by
Alfréd Deésy to Vienna to work at
Sascha-Film, mostly as an assistant editor. After a few months, he rose the attention of director
Ernst Lubitsch, who convinced him to try Hollywood. Marton returned to Europe in 1927, and worked as the main editor of the
Tobis company in Berlin, and later as an assistant director in Vienna. He directed his ''Two O'Clock in the Morning
, first feature film, in 1929 in Great Britain. He joined a German expedition to Tibet in 1934, where he filmed Demon of the Himalayas''. Marton cited that he was Jewish as a reason that the film could not be released with his name as director, citing a conversation he had had with Nazi Propaganda Minister
Joseph Goebbels. After returning to Hungary, he directed his only Hungarian movie in 1935 in Budapest. Between 1936 and 1939, he worked with
Alexander Korda in London. After the outbreak of World War II, he moved to the United States. During the 1940s and 1950s, he worked mostly for
MGM Studios. In 1954, he founded his own production company with
Ivan Tors, Louis Meyer and
László Benedek. Ray worked as both as a feature film director and as a second unit director in many big budget epic films. On
55 Days at Peking, Marton went from second unit direction to act as one of the film's uncredited additional directors, devising the film's opening sequence. Marton was active until the middle of the 1970s. On January 7, 1992, he died of pneumonia in Santa Monica, California. ==Legacy==