He also played the mayor of San Francisco in 1976's The Enforcer, the third Dirty Harry film featuring Clint Eastwood, as well as the Chief Engineer in Irwin Allen's classic 1972 box-office smash and disaster-film epic The Poseidon Adventure.

[3] When he returned to the United States, he played supporting roles in several films but was more prolific on TV in character roles, in scores of series such as State Trooper (in the episode "The Last Stage Robbery"), Gunsmoke (14 episodes between 1959 and 1974), The Twilight Zone, Combat!, The Fugitive, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Wheels, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Incredible Hulk, The Time Tunnel, Mannix,[4] Lost in Space, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, Hogan's Heroes, The Rockford Files and most notably as Sheriff Ep Bridges on CBS' The Waltons.

Crawford co-wrote the screenplay of the film The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), directed by Sam Peckinpah.

His other notable silver screen turns include the investigating State Trooper in I Saw What You Did (1965), the Chief Engineer in The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Callahan in The Towering Inferno (1974), and as Brian Deering in The Boogens (1981).

According to Variety, he died in Newbury Park, California and was survived by his longtime companion and former wife, Ann Wakefield.