"Budge" Crawley: Canada's first TV maverick

TAKE ONE, Summer, 1998 by James Forrester

During the 1950s and 1960s, the word television was synonymous with the CBC and to a minor degree the NFB. Crawley Films received numerous film awards and made hundreds of films, the majority of them shown on television; however, most Canadians have never heard of Crawley Films. You have to ask yourself why?

It may have something to do with our classic Canadian self-deprecation. Frank Randford "Budge" Crawley was born in Canada, established his company here and refused to go to London, New York or Los Angeles to work. Canadians in the 1950s, '60s and '70s were always more impressed with filmmakers who spent years working elsewhere and returned with the Hollywood or New York stamp of approval.

While it is true that he received an Oscar, he paid the price for having the chutzpah to sue a major American studio (Universal) for its dumping of the rockumentary Janis onto television rather than distributing it theatrically. During the Capital Cost Allowance era, he criticized government policy that led to so many bombs, thereby antagonizing the film "packagers" who didn't like anyone rocking their boat. Crawley became the black sheep of the Canadian film industry.

David Clandfield, in Canadian Film, speculates that, "such is the scale, reputation and accessibility of the National Film Board that historians inevitably give less attention to commercial and independent documentaries." In reality, I think that Canadian film historians have had a fixation with the NFB (and the CBC) because the films produced by these agencies happened to match their own personal ideology. Crawley productions, on the other hand, were somewhat suspect because the business world sponsored the majority of his films. During the 1960s and '70s, business was vilified by the academic world. It's hard now to put this into perspective with the current academic community's lust for corporate funding.

Crawley Films began as a hobby for Budge Crawley, the athletic son of an Ottawa accountant, Arthur A. Crawley. "Budge" became an accountant, joined his father's firm, but he continued to experiment with filmmaking during the 1930s. With his Kodak Cine-Special, he made a number of black-and-white industrial films, amateur films on canoeing and a 1938 travelogue on Ile d'Orleans made with his wife Judith, on their honeymoon.

The NFB was founded in 1939, as an advisory body to the Canadian Government. Up until 1941, when the NFB became an active production agency, John Grierson found it convenient to channel contracts to independent companies like Crawley Films rather than deal with the bureaucracy of the Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau. There was an urgent need for training films, so Budge and Judith took over the top floor of the Crawley family home, turning a billiard room into a film studio. Crawley Films grew to a staff of six during the war, making a wide range of films for the government, but also completing films for industry and cultural groups like the Canadian Geographical Society.

During the war years, the Canadian government expanded the outlet for documentary and sponsored films through the formation of nontheatrical circuits. Sponsored films were offered to audiences "free of charge," by distributors like Modern Talking Pictures, in addition to the NFB. Like the "free lunch" of the 1890s and "free television" of more recent times, there was a catch. The sponsor, whether it be a government department or a large corporation, had a message in the medium. Crawley Films had evolved from a tight-knit group of family and friends into a small business by 1946. The company had outgrown the cramped quarters and an old church hall was purchased. Government contracts diminished and the company had to rely mainly on business and industry for sponsorship.

The first Film of the Year Award at the Canadian Film Awards in 1949 went to Crawley Films for the native legend, The Loon's Necklace. The film was made on speculation and it was only after it won the award that Imperial Oil supported its distribution. It went on to win many international awards and helped establish the reputation of the company. By 1949, Crawley Films had 33 employees. That's when the company spirit began to change. As the demand increased for films during the 1950s, more experienced film personnel were brought over from Britain. In 1952, Budge won the Film of the Year Award for Newfoundland Scene, which was again sponsored by Imperial Oil. Most of the footage was shot by him with an assist from one of Crawley's best cameramen, Stanley Brede. The whaling sequence was sold to RKO Radio Pictures and incorporated into The Sea Around Us, which went on to win the Oscar for best documentary in 1953.

Budge was a cameraman/director on many of the early films made by the company. In time, he was forced to take on the role of producer, as he became more interested in the development of the Canadian television and feature film industry. He was executive producer for The RCMP series (1959), the Au pays de Neuve-France/St. Lawrence North series (1959) and The Tales of the Wizard of Oz (1962), which was the first Canadian animated series. In 1958, Crawleys began to build a film studio at Old Chelsea in the Gatineaus. The studio was built in preparation for the production of 39 episodes in The RCMP series, confinanced by Crawley, McConnell Ltd., the CBC and the BBC. At the time, Budge wrote in a promotion, "the decision to pioneer television film production in this country was made on the premise that we can make a place for ourselves in the world television market by choosing subjects which can be made in Canada more efficiently than anywhere else in the world."