Albert S. Ruddy is a colorful Canadian-born producer and writer. He won an Oscar for ‘The Godfather’. ‘Million Dollar Baby’, who developed the raucous prison sports comedy ‘The Longest Yard’ and helped create the hit sitcom ‘Hogan’s Heroes’, has died at the age of 94.
Rudy died “peacefully” Saturday at UCLA Medical Center, a spokeswoman said. His last words were “The game is over, but we won,” he added.
Tall, muscular, with the raspy voice and swagger of a city kid, Ruddy has made more than 30 films, from “The Godfather” and “Million Dollar Baby” to “Cannonball Run II,” for which he was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for worst film of the year. ‘Megaforce’.
Beyond that, he’s had a mix of successes, like “The Longest Yard,” which he produced and wrote the story for, and failures, like the Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller “Sabotage.” He worked frequently with Burt Reynolds, starting with “The Longest Yard” and working on two “Cannonball Run” comedies and “Cloud Nine.” In addition to “Hogan’s Heroes,” his TV credits include the films “Marrying a Stranger” and “Running Mates.”
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Nothing looks better on a resume than this “godfather,” But producing it risked Ruddy’s job, reputation, and his life. Frank Sinatra and other Italian-Americans were outraged, fearing that the project would solidify the stereotype of Italians as criminals, and real-life mobsters let Rudy know that he was being watched. One night he heard gunshots outside his house and car windows exploding.
His dashboard displayed a warning that he must stop production immediately.
Ruddy saved himself and his film through diplomacy. He met with crime boss Joseph Colombo and two of his subordinates to discuss the script.
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“Joe is sitting across from me, there’s a guy on the couch, and there’s a guy sitting by the window,” Ruddy told Vanity Fair in a 2009 interview. “He puts on his little Ben Franklin glasses and looks at the script for about two minutes. He asks what does “fade in” mean?
Ruddy agreed to remove a single unnecessary reference to the word “mafia” and donate it to the Italian American Civil Rights League. Columbo was so excited that he urged Rudy to attend the press conference announcing the film’s approval, at which Rudy ended up being photographed with organized crime members.
With parent company Gulf & Western’s stock price falling rapidly, Paramount fired Rudy, but director Francis Coppola opposed the move and rehired him. In the end, the mobsters were cast as extras and negotiated openly with the cast. Ruddy himself made a cameo as a Hollywood studio guard.
“It’s like happy family“All these people loved the underworld characters, and obviously the underworld people loved Hollywood,” Ruddy told Vanity Fair.
“The Godfather,” starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and others, was a critical and commercial sensation and remains one of the most beloved and quoted films of all time. When Rudy was named the Best Picture Oscar winner at the 1973 ceremony, the host was Clint Eastwood, who co-produced the 2005 Best Picture winner ‘Million Dollar Baby.’ In 2022, Rudy himself has become a character. Miles Teller portrayed him in “The Offer,” a Paramount+ miniseries about the making of a film based on Ruddy’s experiences.
“Al Rudy was so beautiful to me throughout my time on ‘The Godfather.’ He wanted me even when they didn’t want me,” Pacino said in a statement. “He gave me the gift of encouragement when I needed it most and I will never forget that.”
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Ruddy is married to Wanda McDaniel, a sales executive and liaison for Giorgio Armani, who helped promote the brand in Hollywood in films and promotional events. They had two children.
Born in Montreal in 1930, Albert Stotland Ruddy moved to the United States as a child and grew up in New York. After graduating from the University of Southern California, he was working as an architect when he met TV actor Bernard Payne in the early 1960s. Ruddy was tired of his career and he and Fein decided to develop a television series, even though neither of them were writing.
Their original idea was a comedy set in an American prison, but they soon changed their minds.
“We read in the paper… that (a) network was making a sitcom set in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp, and we thought, ‘That’s perfect,'” Ruddy later explained. “We rewrote the script and set it in a German POW camp in about two days.”
“Hogan’s Heroes,” starring Bob Crane as the cunning Colonel Hogan, aired on CBS from 1965-71 but was criticized for trivializing World War II and turning Nazis into lovable cartoons. Ruddy remembered network head William Paley calling the show’s concept “reprehensible,” but softened after Ruddy “literally played out the episode” complete with barking dogs and other sound effects.
While Fein continued to work on “Hogan’s Heroes,” Ruddy turned to film, directing the low-budget “Wild Seed” for Brando’s production. His reputation for cost control proved most useful when he took over as president of Paramount Pictures. robert evans Acquired the rights to Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel “The Godfather” and found a producer for what was expected to be a small, money-making gangster flick.
“I got a call on Sunday: Would you like to do ‘The Godfather’?” Ruddy told Vanity Fair. “I thought they were kidding me, right? I said, ‘Of course, I love that book.’ It was a book I had never read.”
