Ludwig Blattner (5 February 1880 – 29 October 1935) was a German-born inventor, film producer, director and studio owner in the United Kingdom, and developer of one of the earliest magnetic sound recording devices.

[3] Whilst on a promotional tour of his sound recording technology in 1928 he would choose ladies from the audience to dance with to music being played from a Blattnerphone.

[10] In 1928 his company produced a series of short films of musical performances such as "Albert Sandler and His Violin [Serenade – Schubert]" and "Teddy Brown and His Xylophone".

Films produced by other companies at the Blattner Studios included Dorothy Gish and Charles Laughton's first drama talkie Wolves (1930),[11] the 1934 adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart",[12] Rookery Nook (1930) and A Lucky Sweep (1932).

[21][22] Despite being a "promoter of genius with far-seeing ideas about technical developments in sound and colour" according to the film director Michael Powell,[23] business problems with the studio, due to the advent of rival talking picture systems, led to heavy financial loss, and in 1934 Joe Rock leased Elstree Studios from Ludwig Blattner, and bought it outright in 1936, a year after Blattner's suicide.

[29] Ludwig Blattner never became a British citizen, and during the First World War he remained in an internment camp, which interrupted his management of the Gaiety cinema in Wallasey.