Helen Broderick had a career in Hollywood comedies, including appearances in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals Top Hat and Swing Time.

Notwithstanding his family's relative prominence, Crawford's childhood and adolescence remain sparsely documented, with a 1977 Saturday Night Live documentary segment essentially intimating that he was raised in the violent, alcohol-sodden and predominantly working class milieu of Midtown Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen district (long favored by actors due to its traditionally low rents and convenient proximity to various entertainment venues, most notably Broadway theatre).

He was in Start Cheering (1938) at Columbia but missed out on reprising his stage performance as Lenny in the film version of Of Mice and Men, losing it to Lon Chaney Jr. Crawford signed a contract with Paramount.

He had a good role in the prestigious Beau Geste with Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston, Brian Donlevy and Susan Hayward and directed by William A. Wellman.

He appeared in two films for Walter Wanger and Tay Garnett, Eternally Yours (1939) with David Niven and Loretta Young and Slightly Honorable (1939) with Pat O'Brien and Edward Arnold.

He supported Edward G. Robinson in Larceny, Inc. (1942) and George Raft in Broadway (1942), and co-starred with Robert Stack in Men of Texas (1942) and Constance Bennett in Sin Town (1942).

In 1949, Crawford was cast as Willie Stark, a character inspired by and closely patterned after the life of Louisiana politician Huey Long, in All the King's Men, a film based on the popular novel by Robert Penn Warren.

He co-starred with Glenn Ford in Convicted (1950), then starred in another hit 'A'-list production with William Holden and Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday (1950), directed by George Cukor.

ZIV Television Productions operated on an extremely low budget of $25,000 per episode of Highway Patrol with ten percent of gross receipts going to Crawford as per his contract.

"[2] Highway Patrol helped revive Crawford's career and cement his tough-guy persona, which he used successfully in numerous movie and TV roles for the rest of his life.

During the series' run he appeared in The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) with Ford at MGM, a successful Western; Between Heaven and Hell (1956) with Robert Wagner at Fox, directed by Richard Fleischer; and The Decks Ran Red (1958) with James Mason for Andrew L. Stone.

Fed up with the show's hectic shooting schedule, Crawford quit Highway Patrol at the end of 1959 in order to make a film in Spain, and try to get his drinking under control.

Recently back from Europe, and having temporarily stopped drinking, Crawford was signed to play the starring role as diamond industry security chief John King.

In 1962, after the end of King of Diamonds, Crawford returned to acting in motion pictures: Square of Violence (1962); Convicts 4 (1962); Javier Setó's The Castilian (1963); A House Is Not a Home (1964); Up from the Beach (1965); Kid Rodelo (1966); The Oscar (1966); The Texican (1966) with Audie Murphy; The Vulture (1967); Red Tomahawk (1967).

He wore the trademark fedora and black suit when he made an appearance as guest host of a 1977 episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live that included a spoof of Highway Patrol.

Musician Webb Wilder's instrumental, "Ruff Rider" (on the album It Came From Nashville), is dedicated to Broderick Crawford in admiration of his Highway Patrol character's ability to solve any crime committed in California by setting up a road block.

Crawford is referenced in the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit in the scene where an Alabama State Patrol officer angrily confronts Sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason) and his damaged vehicle with its horn that won't stop blaring.

[10] His popularity on Highway Patrol also led to him being memorialized in the poker game of Texas Hold 'em, in that a starting hand of a 10-4 (a common police radio code) is nicknamed a "Broderick Crawford".