He was nominated at the 6th Academy Awards for the now defunct category of Best Assistant Director.
[1] As a teenager in New York City, he cleaned lights at Biograph Studios and carted flammable nitrate prints to midtown theaters.
[2] He followed silent actress Clara Bow out to Hollywood, where he began as a cameraman,[3] In 1929, he was part of the transition to talking scenes in Chinatown Nights, assisting director William Wellman.
[2] He had a "gift for on-the-fly problem solving" like in The Royal Family of Broadway (1930) where he used a grain forklift to shoot Fredric March running up a staircase.
[2] in a 1980 DGA oral history interview, Jacobson said to assist George Seaton in 1947 on Miracle on 34th Street was one of the highlights of his career.