Crawley Films

Crawley Films was a Canadian film company active from 1938 to 1982. It was founded by Frank Radford Crawley (Budge Crawley) and Judith Crawley, and initially financed by Arthur Crawley. It was characterized by its artistic integrity and by its private-sector approach to filmmaking at a time when government subsidies and the tax shelter dictated many of the trends in Canadian cinema. ==Early Years ==

Prior to the formation of the NFB in 1939, the tradition of filmmaking in Canada was that of public and private sector collaboration in the making of promotional films. "Starting with those of the Canadian Pacific Railway, these films served both a public policy purpose and commercial interests in attracting immigrants and tourists." Crawley Films embodied this tradition of filmmaking precisely when government subsidies and interventions began to take root and change the face of Canadian film.

Budge and Judy Crawley spent their 1938 honeymoon making a silent documentary on Quebec's Ile d'Orleans. The resulting film of the same name won the Hiram Percy Maxim Award for Best Amateur Film in the US. Because of the success of this film, Arthur Crawley, Budge's father, decided to loan Budge $3000 to establish a film production company. In the early years, the Crawleys produced films out of their small apartment and, after they founded Crawley Films, in the attic of Budge's childhood home.

From the start, the Crawleys refused to work as state employees for the National Film Board, favouring the private sector model for film production. However they did take on several commissions for the board. The first of these assignments were Study of Spring Flowers and Birds of Canada, both in 1939. In 1941, Crawley Films filmed Canadian Landscape, a documentary about Group of Seven member A. Y. Jackson, as he explores the northern Canadian wilderness. It examines his art and his inspiration.

Crawley Films Ltd
Crawley Films grew rapidly. When it became a limited company in 1946, there were six staff members. Three years later, there were 33. By the mid 1950s, almost 100. Crawley Films developed a reputation for creating "any film exactly as the sponsor wishes", as stated in a 1954 Government report on the film industry. Crawley Films had developed a reputation as a trusted production company in Canada. By the time they turned to feature film making in 1963, Crawley Films had made a thousand films and garnered over a hundred awards

In 1948, Crawley Films made The Loon's Necklace , a short film inspired by British Columbian folklore. Originally costing between $7000 and $10,000 (Wade Rose says it cost $10,000 while Forrester pegs the budget at $7000 . The National Film Board refused to buy the film from the Crawleys. Instead, it was bought by Imperial Oil of Canada (Esso) for $5000 and given to the Canadian Educational Association because it was viewed as suitable for children . It also won First Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1949. Despite the NFB's refusal to purchase the film, The Loon's Necklace earned the company $1.5 million over 30 years.

http://youtu.be/DfUmSFVncPk

In recent years, The Loon's Necklace has been controversial. Some today criticize the film for its appropriation of Native cultures and for promoting racial stereotyping. The fact that the film was viewed as suitable childrens literature indicates the general disregard for native folklore and the equation of folklore with fairytale . In contrast, others view it as a celebration of Native beliefs.

The success of this film led Esso to commission Crawley Films for a documentary on Canada's newest province, Newfoundland. The film, Newfoundland Scenes, was 39 minutes long and was intended to introduce Newfoundland to the rest of Canada. It was named Film of the Year at the fourth Annual Canadian Film Awards.

In 1952, the Canadian Film Industry made $3 million worth of films, including the National Film Board. Of this one sixth were made by the Crawleys   Crawley films also worked in French, and up to a third of their annual productions were French productions. In the early 1960s, Crawley Films began making features. Their first feature, Amanita Pestilens (1963), was the second Canadian colour feature to be shot simultaneously in French and English. It was a financial disaster. Thei second feature, The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964) is the story of an irish immigrant who comes to Montreal. Adapted from a 1960 novel by Canadian writer Brian Moore. it won best feature at the Canadian Film Awards. One third of the funding for this film came from a small New York film theatre chain, who also managed the US distribution.

Following these feature releases, the company was grossing one to two million dollars annually. Operations at Crawley films were split between the profitable documentary and television commercial section and the not-yet-profitable feature film section. Because the company was making so much annually, Budge Crawley believed that his company could afford to take the financial risk of focusing on feature film production.

In 1968, the Crawleys divorced. They continued to work together at the company.

==The Founding of the CFDC ==

The Canadian Film Development Corporationwas founded in 1968 to provide financial loans to filmmakers, in order to support feature film development to Canadians. With the financial assistance of the CFDC, Crawley Films produced The Rowdyman (1972). Written by and starring Gordon Pinsent, it takes place in Newfoundland. The film lost to Wedding in White for best feature at the Canadian film awards. It cost $350000 to make but did not make any money because it could not find American distribution (Forrester 65).

Meanwhile in the non-feature side of the company, Crowley Films made several thousand films in the mid-1960s. Of these, 450 were in French.

In 1971, Crawley Films sought a rock opera film version of Hamlet.

Crawley Films next project was a documentary on Janis Joplin (titled Janis; 1975). The CFDC would not back this project, because they would not finance a film for a non-Canadian subject. Instead, Crowley Films signed a deal with Universal Studios for theatrical and television distribution. However, Universal soon sold the television rights to the film for $450,000 and did little by the way of theatrical distribution. . Budge Crawley sued and in addition, bought back the rights to his film in Canada; however this cost him more money than the film was able to make back in Canada.

Though none of the films were financially successful, Crawley films was a pioneer in the Canadian feature film industry. In contrast to the majority of films in the tax shelter years in Canada (1970s), where hundreds of "mostly hopeless films were made in Canada in a response to tax law", Crawley Films maintained its artistic integrity.

While the Crawley Films features were a financial failure, in 1975 they produced a documentary entitled The Man who Skied Down Everest. Following the Japanese World Fair, Crawley Films bought a film entitled "Everest Symphony", made by a Japanese film crew about Yuchiro Miura's attempt to ski Everest. The film was recut, with a narrative written by Judith Crawley, and utilizing a Hollywood editor and cinematographer, resulting in about 70% new material. The resulting film won the Feature Documentary Oscar in 1976 and quickly made its money back "because of the global publicity and the international appeal".

==The End ==

By 1982, Crawley Films' debt had reached over one million dollars. The company was then sold to Atkinson Film Arts for assumption of debt. However, Budge Crawley was given a small stipend, in addition to the right to carry on his own feature projects under a different name.

According to Melnyk, one of the feature projects which pushed Crawley films to bankruptcy was a film rendition of a literary property called "The Strange One", based on a 1959 novel by Fred Barnworth. The novel told the story of a biologist who fell in love with a native woman.

==Legacy ==

Though feature filmmaking led to the demise of Crawley Films, the Crawleys were pioneers for feature and documentary filmmaking in Canada. The technical skill of Budge Crawley, the creative talent of Judy Crawley, and the business acumen of Budge's father, Arthur, led to the success of the company. Budge's private sector approach to filmmaking in Canada had been incredibly sucessful in his documentary production, despite the existence of a prominent publicly funded documentary filmmaking bureau in Canada. In making feature films, Crawley Films struggled becuase Budge sought to make films with artistic integrity. He believed that great, artistic films could not be made with the help of a state-funded enterprise and criticized the negative effects of schemes such as the Capital Cost Allowance scheme of the 1970s and 1980s, which brought many tax-sheltered investments into feature film production in Canada, in an article in Macleans ==Partial filmography ==
 * 1938: Ile d'Orléans
 * 1939: Study of Spring Flowers (commissioned by the NFB)
 * 1939: Birds of Canada (commissioned by the NFB)
 * 1941: Canadian Landscape
 * 1948: The Loon's Necklace
 * 1950: Newfoundland Scene
 * 1953: The Power Within
 * 1958: The Legend of the Raven
 * 1961: Tales of the Wizard of Oz (animated series)
 * 1963: Amanita Pestilens (feature)
 * 1964: The Luck of Ginger Coffey (feature)
 * 1964: Return to Oz (television special)
 * 1967: The Entertainers
 * 1971: Hamlet (television)
 * 1972: The Rowdyman (1972)
 * 1973: August and July
 * 1975: The Man Who Skied Down Everest
 * 1975: Janis
 * 1982: Heartland Reggae