French-born (Paris) George Archainbaud got his start in show business
as an actor and stage manager in France. Emigrating to the US in 1915,
he got work as an assistant director to fellow French expatriate
Emile Chautard at
William A. Brady's World Film Co. in
Fort Lee, NJ. His directorial debut came in 1917 with
As Man Made Her (1917).
Archainbaud turned into a prolific director in both films and
television, turning out more than 100 features over the next 35 years
and numerous TV series episodes.
Although a good amount of his feature-film output was fairly routine,
there was some first-rate work scattered among them, such as
Die letzten Vier (1932), a
gritty and dark tale of a group of former World War I aviators who find
work as stunt fliers in war movies. It was a critical and financial
success, earning accolades from critics for its exciting flying
sequences.
The genre most associated with Archainbaud, however, is westerns. In
the 1940s he turned out some fast-paced, exciting westerns, such as
Der Sheriff von Kansas (1943) and several entries
in the Hopalong Cassidy series. When cowboy star
Gene Autry went to television to star
in his own series, he brought Archainbaud along with him and he became
the principal director on the show and other Autry-produced series,
such as
Buffalo Bill, Jr. (1955),
Annie Oakley (1954) and
Drei gute Freunde (1955).
He died of a heart attack in Beverly Hills, CA, in 1959.
