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A distinguished French stage actor from the Odeon and Theatre Royal in Paris, Emile Chautard reportedly played Napoleon Bonaparte no less than 1,500 times in Madame Sans Gene. In films from 1907, Chautard later became an actor/director with the pioneering Eclair company, as a representative of which he arrived in the United States in the early 1910s. For years a dependable director for Thanhouser and World, Chautard also wrote scenarios and assumed the odd onscreen assignment. Among his better-known productions was a 1917 version of Sudermann's Magda (1917) starring Clara Kimball Young, and he later owned an interest in the Mayflower Company, for whom he directed such potboilers as Mystery of the Yellow Room (1919) and Living Lies (1922). In the mid-'20s, Chautard filmed mainly in France but was back in Hollywood as an actor later in the decade, usually playing easily excitable French characters. Chautard became the stepfather of Hollywood director George Archainbaud.