Cinecraft oral histories
Creation: 2021Abstract
Cinecraft, Inc. is a corporate film and video production house. The company was founded in 1939 by Ray Culley (1904-1983) and Betty Culley (1914-2016) in Cleveland, Ohio. Ray Culley served as president of the company until his retirement in 1970. During his tenure, Cinecraft specialized in commercial productions for business, industry, trade organizations, and, in some cases, government agencies and social service organizations. Cinecraft was one among hundreds of production houses in the U.S. during the middle decades of the twentieth century that specialized in a motion pictures commonly referred to as non-theatrical, industrial, commercial, business and/or sponsored films. This collection includes five interviews with former employees as well as relatives of Cinecraft employees.
Dates
- Creation: 2021
Creator
- Spohn, Benjamin (staff) (Interviewer, Person)
- Schneider, Robert A. (Interviewee, Person)
- Haviland, Jim (James R.) (Interviewee, Person)
- McCormick, Neil (Interviewee, Person)
- Culley, John (Interviewee, Person)
- Keckan, Maria (Interviewee, Person)
- Schneider, Nancy (Interviewee, Person)
- Haviland, Robert E., 1914-2003 (Interviewee, Person)
- Culley, Paul (Interviewee, Person)
- Hagley Museum and Library. Library. Oral History Project Office (Organization)
Extent
8 digital_files
5.10 Gigabytes
Physical Description
5 WAV files. 4 DOCX files. 7 PDF files.
Historical Note
Cinecraft, Inc. is a corporate film and video production house. The company was founded in 1939 by Ray Culley (1904-1983) and Betty Culley (1914-2016) in Cleveland, Ohio. Ray Culley served as president of the company until his retirement in 1970. During his tenure, Cinecraft specialized in commercial productions for business, industry, trade organizations, and, in some cases, government agencies and social service organizations. In addition to producing industrial films and television commercials, Cinecraft made slide films for clients and audio only programs for radio. In some cases, they managed the sales of film prints for clients and, on a small scale, sold stock footage. While ownership has changed twice since its founding, Cinecraft is still in business and rightfully claims itself the "country's longest standing corporate film & video production house."
Content Description
A collection of oral histories about the history of Cinecraft Productions. The collection includes five interviews with former employees as well as relatives of Cinecraft employees. In addition, an interview conducted in 1999 with Paul Culley (former owners) and Bob Haviland (former Executive Producer) is included in this collection.
Existence and Location of Originals
View this collection online in Hagley Digital Archives.
Access Restrictions
No restrictions on access; this collection is open for research.
Language of Materials
English
Subjects
Finding Aid & Administrative Information
- Title:
- Cinecraft oral histories
- Date:
- 2022
- Description rules:
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description:
- English
- Script of description:
- Latin
Revision Statements
- 2022: Laurie Sather
Repository Details
Repository Details
Part of the Audiovisual Collections Repository