Jacques Jaccard

Biography

New York-born Jacques Jaccard got an early start in the film business, appearing on-screen as an actor as early as 1913. While continuing his acting career, he also performed behind-the-scenes duties such as assistant director, but he found his niche as a writer and eventually began directing also. He specialized in serials, westerns and action films, many for Universal Pictures. However, starting around the mid-'20s he began working for lower-rent studios like Goodwill Pictures, Syndicate Pictures and Arrow Pictures and then for cheapjack independent producers like Ben F. Wilson. When the sound era dawned Jaccard, like many silent-era directors, didn't adjust well to the new technologies and procedures, and while he found work as a director, it was mostly on low-grade westerns destined for the states-rights market. At one point he apparently was so desperate for work that he took a job as director on one of legendary fly-by-night, bottom-of-the-barrel producer Robert J. Horner's productions, The Cheyenne Kid (1930) (and, given Horner's reputation, probably never got paid for it). He directed his last film in 1936--a cheap western for low-rent Beaumont Pictures, Senor Jim (1936)--and worked as a screenwriter and dialogue director until he retired in 1944. He died in Los Angeles in 1960.