This content was created by Anonymous.

This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Crawley Films Building

[Young Budge Crawley behind camera]

This page is referenced by:

The Founders

The Founders
Frank Rutherford Crawley was born in Ottawa on November 14, 1911, to Arthur A. and Ruth Crawley. In his childhood, he acquired the nickname "Budge," which followed him into his career.[1] He was raised in a Christian household with a strict religious upbringing and values of temperance, good manners, and hard work.[2] He had four siblings: a brother and three sisters. The Crawleys kept company with prominent Ottawa families and members of Ottawa high society.[3] Budge was not an example of calmness or restraint. His childhood and adolescence were filled with playfulness, creativity, adventure, athleticism, rambunctiousness, and energy, all training experiences for his future career as a filmmaker and leading contributor to the development of the motion picture industry in Canada.[4]

When Budge was eleven, the Sparks family moved in next door.[5] They were a well-established Ottawa merchant family.[6] The later romance between their daughter Judith and Budge resulted in their marriage and decades of shared interest in film.[7]

Budge’s father was an accountant who led an independent and prosperous accounting firm in Ottawa, Arthur A. Crawley & Co.[8] He wanted his sons to become accountants and join him in the company.[9] However, in 1927, Budge received a movie camera, a Stewart-Warner, from his father as a birthday present, which sparked his aim to become a filmmaker.[10] Fraser Graeme, a childhood friend of Budge's who became Sales Director and later Vice-President of Crawley Films Ltd., said, "In those days, it was a big deal to get a still camera."[11] Young Budge spent his money on film stock and his time filming, and a room in his house was turned into a studio.[12] In 1933, he bought a Kodak Cine Special.[13] With this camera, Forrester writes that Crawley made black-and-white industrial films and amateur films, like Glimpses of a Canoe Trip.[14] He filmed football practices at nearby Glebe Collegiate, his alma mater, or canoe trips in the Gatineau Hills.[15] Budge reportedly said, "I learned a lot about what not to do” and “A lot of bad films were made, but you learned that way.”[16] He was filled with enthusiasm and determination, not for accounting like his father, but instead, it was for filmmaking.[17]

Judy and Budge married in 1938 and, a few years later, moved into an old stone house on Wellington Street.[18] The house was built by Judith's great-grandfather and passed down through the family.[19] A look through Ottawa Directories shows that in 1946 Budge and Judy lived at 1282 Wellington Street (now demolished).[20]

On their honeymoon, they made Île d’Orléans (1938), their first film and the first that won them an international award: the American Hiram Percy Maxim Award for the Best Amateur Film of 1939, the best in the world.[21] Bills still needed to be paid while their film business developed. Their daughter Michal writes that Budge was an accountant by day, "Moonlighting as a filmmaker while Judy shot films, edited, and wrote narrations in the attic billiard room turned film studio at 540 Driveway."[22]

Judith Crawley – As James Forrester writes, “Judy’s contribution to Crawley Films can not be overlooked. For the first three decades of the company, Budge and Judy were thought of as a team and recognized by the special Canadian Film Award, which they received in 1957.”[23]

“The heyday of Crawleys flowed from the union of two people both with a dream but with different takes on that dream. Above being spouses, above being parents, (…) above all, they were filmmakers. Budge’s approach was more immediate, physical and emotional. Judy’s was analytical, poetic and philosophic. They somehow made their experience more real by putting it on film.” Michal Crawley, The History of Crawley Films.

[1] James A. Forrester, "The Crawley Era," Cinema Canada, June 1982, 22, accessed March 20, 2025, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://cinemacanada.athabascau.ca/index.php/cinema/article/download/1372/1441.pdf.; Barbara Wade Rose, Budge: What Happened to Canada's King of Film (Toronto, ON: ECW Press, 1998), 24.
[2] Rose, Budge: What, 27-28.
[3] Rose, Budge: What, 26.
[4] Rose, Budge: What, 27-29.; John Locke, "Honorary Degree Citation - Frank R. Crawley," Concordia University, last modified June 1985, accessed March 22, 2025, https://www.concordia.ca/offices/archives/honorary-degree-recipients/1985/06/frank-crawley.html.
[5] Rose, Budge: What, 29.
[6] Rose, Budge: What, 29.
[7] Rose, Budge: What, 38-39.
[8] Rose, Budge: What, 24.
[9] Rose, Budge: What, 31.
[10] James A. Forrester, Budge: F.R. Crawley and Crawley Films 1939-1982 (Lakefield, ON: Information Research Services, 1988), 16.; Rose, Budge: What, 33.
[11] Rose, Budge: What, 33.
[12] Rose, Budge: What, 34.
[13] Forrester, Budge: F.R., 16.
[14] Forrester, Budge: F.R., 16.; Rose, Budge: What, 36-37.
[15] Rose, Budge: What, 34.
[16] Rose, Budge: What, 34.
[17] Susanna McLeod, "Crawley Regarded as the 'First Lady of Canadian Films,'" The Kingston Whig Standard, last modified August 28, 2019, accessed March 20, 2025, https://www.thewhig.com/opinion/columnists/crawley-regarded-as-the-first-lady-of-canadian-films.
[18] Rose, Budge: What, 39.
[19] Rose, Budge: What, 49.
[20] Might Directories Limited, "F. Radford (Arthur A Crawley & Co) h 1282 Wellington," in 1944 Ottawa City Directory (Ottawa, ON: Might Directories, 1944), 147, digital file.
[21] Rose, Budge: What, 40.
[22] Michal Crawley, "The History of Crawley Films," Canadianfilm.ca, last modified December 3, 2015, accessed February 12, 2025, https://canadianfilm.ca/2015/12/03/history-of-crawley-films/.
[23] Forrester, "The Crawley," 22.