Frank “Budge” Crawley

Frank Randford Budge Crawley was a Producer Director and filmmaking pioneer What many people dont know is that his company Crawley Films began as a hobby Crawley was the son of an Ottawa accountant Arthur A Crawley and grew up to be an accountant himself After he joined his fathers firm he continued to experiment with filmmaking during the early 1930s He made a number of short blackandwhite industrial films some amateur films on canoeing and in 1938 he shot a travelogue on Ile dOrleans while he and his first wife Judith were on their honeymoon In 1939 they formed Crawley Films and by the late 1940s the Ottawabased company was one of a number of small Canadian companies making newsreels and sponsored films for business The they didnt stay small for long By 1949 Crawley Films had 33 employees and also that year at the very first Canadian Film Awards they won the Film of the Year Award for iThe Loons Necklacei Crawley Films would grow to become one of North Americas biggest studios outside of Hollywood The company would make some 5000 films if you include hundreds of TV commercials in the final tally It would also win more than 270 international awards including the first Canadian featurefilm Oscar for iThe Man Who Skied Down Everesti Budge Crawleys acceptance speech was memorable Thank you very much for this American award for a Canadian film about a Japanese adventurer who skied down a mountain in Nepal In 1980 Budge Crawley was given the Order of Canada There was little left to do and in his 71st year he sold Crawley Films to Atkinson Film Arts in 1982 Two years later the National Archives purchased the Crawley film collection Although Frank Crawley lived until 1987 his wife had died the previous year Crawley Films survived until 1989 But there was little to celebrate when in its 50th year Crawley Films went into bankruptcy The following is a very small sampling of titlesbrbr