Ernest Lacy

Born in Warren, Pennsylvania, on September 19, 1863, Ernest Lacy was an American writer whose career was tied to the theater and, later, early motion pictures. Reliable biographical records are sparse, but film and catalog references consistently identify him as a dramatist and writer active around the turn of the century.

Lacy is associated with Chatterton, a play that continued to circulate in print long after its original era, and with the silent film The Ragged Earl (1914), for which he is credited as a writer. That places him among the authors whose work bridged live theater and the rapidly growing film industry of the 1910s.

He died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 17, 1916. Even though he is not widely known today, his surviving credits offer a glimpse of a writer working at an interesting moment when popular storytelling was shifting from the stage to the screen.