Founded exclusively as a radio production company in 1945, Crawford Productions then specialized in drama, light entertainment, and educational programs. When broadcast television was introduced to Australia in 1956, Crawford Productions was one of the few Australian radio production houses to successfully transition to the new medium.
Early Crawford TV productions included Wedding Day (HSV-7, 1956), the first Australian-produced sitcomTake That! (HSV-7, 1957–59), The Peters Club (GTV-9, 1958), Raising a Husband (GTV-9, 1958) and the drama play Seagulls Over Sorrento (HSV-7, 1960). They also produced segments of the Export Action documentary series, The Flying Dogtor cartoon series, and a local adaptation of the US game show Video Village (HSV-7, 1962–66).
The company's production quality was known to be higher quality than that of their closest rival, the Reg Grundy Organisation, who specialized in quiz and game shows before transitioning to drama serials. Company co-founder Hector Crawford was well known as an orchestral conductor and as a prominent figure in the ongoing campaign for local content regulations on Australian television.
During the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, Crawford Productions dominated Australian drama series. They gained an early foothold with their first major TV series, Consider Your Verdict (1961–64), which presented dramatizations of court cases. Like other local producers, they faced heightened competition from imported overseas programming, as there were no local content regulations governing Australian television at the time. As a result of this de facto free-trade agreement, most programs shown on Australian TV content were imported from America. At the time when Homicide premiered in late 1964, more than 80% of all content broadcast on Australian TV came from America, and American productions enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the TV drama field. The report of the 1963 Vincent Commission into the Australian media found that 97% of all drama shows broadcast in Australia between 1956 and 1963 were American productions.
Australian producers competed against high-quality, high-budget imported programs that drew from an international talent pool and a skill-base that grew out of Hollywood. The competitive advantage enjoyed by imported content was exacerbated by the fact that the once-thriving Australian film industry had been decimated by competition from the major American studios. Since the beginning of the 1960s, film production in Australia had come to a standstill. Only one locally produced and funded feature film was made in Australia in the decade between 1959 and 1969. One of the major impacts of the suppression of the local film industry was a rapid erosion of skills and experience among local film-makers and an exodus of local talent to Britain and the USA.
Homicide
Crawford experienced mainstream success with its popular and long-running police drama Homicide, which premiered in October 1964 on the Seven Network. It became the first Australian TV drama series produced locally to become a major ratings success and compete effectively with imported American programming.
As video technology was still in its infancy in Australia at that time, Crawford Productions developed a highly efficient integrated production schedule to combine studio scenes recorded on videotape with location footage captured on film for each weekly episode. Encouraged by the success of Homicide (which continued in production until 1975) their next drama project was the ambitious espionage drama Hunter (1967), which was purchased by the Nine Network. It starred Tony Ward and also made a star out of the actor who played its villain, Gerard Kennedy.
Division 4 and Matlock Police
After Hunter ended in 1969, a new police drama, Division 4 (1969) was conceived as a vehicle for Kennedy's talents and he became a dual Gold Logie winner, the series also screened on the Nine Network; the other stars included former game show host and newsreader Chuck Faulkner, Terry Donovan, Frank Taylor and Ted Hamilton. Unlike Homicide, which concentrated on murder plots, Division 4 was set in a suburban Melbourne police station, and covered a broad range of police work, as well as occasionally featuring more light-hearted episodes. It too became an enduring popular success and earned Kennedy two Logie Awards.
Crawford's next venture was a rural police series Matlock Police (1971), which was sold to the Network Ten. Like Crawford's other ventures it enjoyed success and popularity. It starred veteran Australian actor Michael Pate, who had spent many years in Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s, and featured Paul Cronin, who was later given his own spinoff series: Solo One. With the success of Matlock Police, Crawford Productions cemented its position as Australia's leading drama production house and gained the unique distinction of having a successful weekly drama series running simultaneously on each of the three major commercial networks.
Ryan and The Box
In 1973, Crawford Productions created the action-adventure series Ryan (1973), starring Rod Mullinar as a private investigator. This was an all-film colour production (at a time when Australian TV was still in black and white and transitioning to colour) made to target overseas sales, but it only lasted one series and 39 episodes. In 1974, Crawfords moved into the realm of soap opera with its sex-comedy serial The Box, which was set in a TV station, UCV channel 12. With the top-rating 0–10 Network serial Number 96 as its lead in The Box was an instant success.
Homicide, Division 4, and Matlock Police remained highly popular through the early 1970s, and The Box was a big hit in its premiere year, ranking as Australia's second highest-rated program for 1974. With a highly popular police drama on each commercial network, the production company was booming. However, in 1975 and 1976, Homicide, Division 4, and Matlock Police were all abruptly cancelled. It has been suggested that this was because Hector Crawford and several of the actors who featured in his shows figured prominently in the contemporary TV: Make It Australian campaign, agitating for stronger local content regulations to promote and protect local TV production.
Though the ratings for The Box were significantly lower when compared to the figures from its first year, the show continued until 1976. The Box was cancelled in early 1977 and production ended on the series 1 April 1977. The company also created situation comedy series The Bluestone Boys (1976) which was set in a prison, and Bobby Dazzler, a vehicle for pop singer John Farnham, in 1977. Bluey (1976) saw a return to police drama but with a new spin; however, the series was not a major success.
The Sullivans and others
Greater success came with The Sullivans (1976–83), a critically acclaimed and highly popular World War II family serial co-starring Lorraine Bayly and former Matlock lead Paul Cronin. Continuing the trend at that time for evening soap opera type shows on Australian television they later launched Cop Shop (1977–84), a meld of soap opera with the Crawfords staple of police drama, and the series emerged as a popular success. Cop Shop featured George Mallaby and former Bellbird star Terry Norris. Skyways (1979–81) replicated the soap opera-meets-weekly adult drama hybrid of Cop Shop in an airport setting, with less success. Later programmes included legal drama Carson's Law (1983–84), a vehicle for former The Sullivans star Lorraine Bayly, children's series Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left and the popular outback medical drama The Flying Doctors.
Acquisition
The company started life in small premises located in Little Collins Street, Melbourne, moved to the now heritage listed Olderfleet Building in Collins Street, then in 1972 to Southampton Crescent, Abbotsford, and in 1982 to Middleborough Road, Box Hill. In the 1980s, they set up an international branch Crawford Productions International, which its main purpose that Crawfords would film series for foreign companies, namely the United States, and Crawford decided to co-finance with American network HBO in order to develop a second series of the long-running All the Rivers Run, which premiered on HBO in 1983.[2] That year, Nick McMahon and Mike Lake, had ankle from the company to serve as consultant executive producers for the programs that were produced by Crawfords.[3] In 1987, Crawfords themselves was sold off to a diversified entertainment group, Ariadne Australia, and there would going to be a link between Crawford Productions and De Laurentiis Entertainment Limited, a subsidiary of the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group in which Ariadne is the second-largest stockholder in the group, and Crawfords' series wanted to be a cash flow underpinning the then-under construction DEL studios to produce their own projects, each of these were filmed.[4]
The company was sold to WIN Corporation in 1989.[5] Subsequent Crawfords drama productions included State Coroner, The Saddle Club, and Guinevere Jones. The Crawford studios in Box Hill were demolished in March 2006 and a Bunnings opened on the site on 30 June 2006. In 2009, Crawfords Australia had an eight-acre studio complex in Melbourne.[6] While the company is still in existence, it currently does not produce television, concentrating instead on marketing DVD releases of the company's earlier dramas.
The Box is an Australian soap opera that ran on ATV-0 from 11 February 1974 until 11 October 1977 and on 0–10 Network affiliates around Australia.
Television in Australia began experimentally as early as 1929 in Melbourne with radio stations 3DB and 3UZ, and 2UE in Sydney, using the Radiovision system by Gilbert Miles and Donald McDonald, and later from other locations, such as Brisbane in 1934.
Andrew McFarlane is an Australian actor with many stage, television, and film credits.
Paul Cronin was an Australian actor who played roles in the Australian television series Matlock Police and The Sullivans. He won the Silver Logie for Best Actor five times, including three years consecutively from 1978, the most awarded actor in Australia, alongside Martin Sacks.
Homicide was a landmark Australian television police procedural drama series broadcast on the Seven Network and produced by Crawford Productions. It was the television successor to Crawfords' radio series D24. The "Consummate Homicide cast" includes the four characters that are the best known: Det. Snr. Sgt. David "Mac" MacKay, Det. Sgt. Peter Barnes, Inspector Colin Fox and Sen. Det. Jim Patterson.
Matlock Police is an Australian television police drama series made by Crawford Productions for The 0-10 Network between 1971 and 1976. The series focused on the police station and crime in the Victorian town of Matlock and the surrounding district, and the backgrounds and personal lives of the main policemen.
Bluey is an Australian television series made by Crawford Productions for the Seven Network in 1976.
Leila Hayes is an retired Australian actress, actors agent, radio presenter, playwright, producer, singer and drama teacher, she primarily featured in guest roles in soap operas and miniseries, prior to her regular role in 1980s soap opera Sons and Daughters as matriarch Beryl Palmer appearing throughout its entire run, opposite Tom Richards as her husband David, in the series she was well known for her regular clashes with Rowena Wallaces iconic Patrica Hamilton.
Briony Behets is an English-born Australian former actress who found fame acting in Australian television soap operas of the 1970s and 1980s.
John Stanton is an Australian actor, who has appeared in many stage, television and film productions throughout his extensive fifty-year career.
Thomas Richards is an Australian former actor on television soap operas. He is best known for roles including in Matlock Police as Steve York from 1973 and 1976 and in the 1980s soap opera Sons and Daughters as David Palmer from 1982 until 1987, opposite co-star Leila Hayes.
Dina Mann, also credited as Diana Mann, is an Australian actress and casting director recognised for several television soap opera and film roles from 1970 until 1985, after which she worked as a casting director until 2014. She is probably best known for her role as Debbie Chester in the latter years of TV serial Number 96 in which she featured from 1975 until 1977, in 137 episodes.
John Orcsik, credited also variously as Jon Orcsik, John Orschik, John Orscik and John Crosik, is an Australian television and film actor, screenwriter, director and producer of Hungarian descent, known for his television roles starting from the late 1960s, but also for the film version of the soap opera Number 96. He was married to actress Paula Duncan.
Mary Ann Severne is a New Zealand-born Australian actress active in Australian made films and television programs from the 1970s.
Gary Day is a New Zealand former actor, playwright and lighting director who has appeared in Australian television police drama series, including Homicide and Murder Call.
Hector William Crawford CBE AO was an Australian entrepreneur, conductor and media mogul, best known for his radio and television production firms. He and his sister Dorothy Crawford founded Crawford Productions, which was responsible for many iconic programs and initiated the careers of a number of notable Australian actors and entertainers. His influence on the Australian entertainment industry was immense and enduring, and one obituary described him as "one of the best-known and most respected names in the history of Australian entertainment".
Sonia Ingeborg Borg was an Austrian-Australian writer and producer, one of the leading screenwriters of Australian films and TV in the 1960 and 70s. After extensive experience in theatre in Germany, India and South-East Asia she moved to Australia in 1961 and worked as a stage and television actress before becoming joining Crawford Productions in Melbourne. She wrote, produced and acted at Crawfords until the mid-1970s and worked on most of the company's dramas of the period in a range of roles.
Ben Gabriel was an English Australian character actor, director, voice artist and theatre founder. Gabriel had numerous appearances in stage and radio roles and in film and television.
Me & Mr Thorne is a 1976 Australian television movie starring Gordon Chater and John Farnham and directed by Paul Eddey. It was a pilot for a television series from Crawford Productions that was not accepted. However, the pilot was screened as a stand-alone film.
Terrence Anthony Stapleton (1933–1991) was an Australian writer, playwright and actor, best known for writing and producing television drama series for Crawford Productions.
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