Ray Culley

Ray Culley in 1960. Photo courtesy of the Hagley Museum & Library. Raymond F. Culley (October 12, 1904 - September 18, 1983) and his wife, Betty (Buehner) Culley (May 16, 1914 – June 4, 2016), co-founded Cinécraft Productions, Inc., a sponsored film studio, in 1939. Promoting "Sound Business Pictures in Natural Color," Cinécraft specialized in producing films and slide shows for businesses.

Betty and Ray Culley (behind the camera) on a motion picture shoot in the 1940s.

Ray Culley (center in director's chair) using multiple cameras with teleprompters to film the same scene from different angles simultaneously.

Ray Culley directed the first half-hour TV infomercial. The infomercial featured William Grover “Papa” Barnard selling Vitamix blenders on a show called “Home Miracles of the 1950s.”

Ray Culley also directed early TV sewing, cooking, and craft films featuring Louise Winslow, the "Martha Stewart of early daytime television."

Early Careers Born in Norwalk, Ohio in 1904, Ray Culley started as an actor in B-movies produced by Tiffany Pictures, a Poverty Row studio, but was soon behind the camera working as a production manager and assistant to M.H. Hoffman, Sr., the studio's president. in 1931, he went with Hoffman as production manager when he organized Allied Pictures and continued as production manager and took on the job of supervising foreign versions when Hoffman started Liberty Pictures. In 1935, he joined Republic Pictures Corporation as production manager and assistant director when the new studio bought the assets of Allied and Liberty Pictures.

Culley's transition to industrial filmmaking came in 1937 when he directed a series of films for General Electric (GE) Lighting Division in Cleveland, produced by Tri-State Productions. In 1939, Betty took a film editing job in New York, where she gained experience with a new film format—16 mm safety film. She convinced Ray that the new film size, which at the time was primarily used by amateurs and news film crews, would revolutionize the sponsored film industry.

In 1939, Betty and Ray started Cinécraft Productions in rental space in the Card Building at 118 St Clair Ave. in Cleveland. The studio moved in 1947 to the Chamber of Industries Building at 2515 Franklin Blvd. in Cleveland. In 2025, Cinécraft was still operating out of the John Eisenmann-designed building that started as the home of the first Western Branch of the Cleveland Public Library in 1898. The Hagley Museum and Library (Hagley.org) is the depository of early Cinécraft films, scripts, and records.