Al Ruddy, Oscar-Winning Producer of ‘The Godfather’ and
‘Million Dollar Baby,’ Dies at 94
He also co-created TV's 'Hogan's Heroes' and teamed with
Burt Reynolds on 'The Longest Yard' and the 'Cannonball Run' movies.
The Hollywood Reporter
By Mike Barnes
May 28, 2024
Al Ruddy, who co-created the famed CBS sitcom Hogan’s
Heroes, then captured Academy Awards for producing the best picture winners The
Godfather and Million Dollar Baby, has died. He was 94.
Ruddy, also credited as one of the creators of the
long-running CBS police drama Walker, Texas Ranger, died Saturday following a
brief illness at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, his family
announced through a publicist.
On the heels of The Godfather (1972), Ruddy produced
another box-office hit with the original The Longest Yard (1974), the
prison-set football movie that starred Burt Reynolds. The pair then reteamed
for the action road films The Cannonball Run (1981) and its 1984 sequel, both
directed by stuntman-turned-helmer Hal Needham.
The personable Ruddy, who had “a penchant for four-letter
words,” his family said, also produced such films as Bad Girls (1994), the
first Western with all female leads (Madeleine Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson,
Andie MacDowell and Drew Barrymore); the baseball comedy The Scout (1994),
starring Albert Brooks and Brendan Fraser; and Matilda (1978), a comedy that
featured Elliott Gould and a boxing kangaroo that Ruddy wrote as well.
In the early 1960s, Kelly’s Heroes director Brian Hutton
introduced Ruddy to Bernard Fein, who had played Pvt. Gomez opposite Phil
Silvers as Sgt. Bilko on television.
The two came up with a sitcom pilot about prisoners who
outsmart their warden and are able to leave their jail at will, but the writers
found no takers. However, when they heard that NBC was working on a comedy set
in an Italian prisoner-of-war outpost, they changed their show’s setting to a
German POW camp, and CBS and Bing Crosby Productions signed on.
The series, starring Bob Crane, debuted in September 1965
and aired for six seasons. Ruddy was offered a chance to produce or write for
Hogan’s Heroes but turned that down, wanting to work in films.
“When the show became a smash, I got calls from every
studio in town, asking for ideas for other shows that I had,” he said in the
2005 book The Godfather Legacy.
The gravel-voiced Ruddy met Robert Evans at Paramount,
and the studio chief gave him an office on the lot. He enticed Robert Redford
and Michael J. Pollard to star in Big Fauss and Little Halsy (1970), then
produced the teen dramedy Making It (1971). Neither was a big hit, but Ruddy
brought both films in under budget.
Evans and studio president Stanley Jaffe then gave him
the job as lead producer on The Godfather (1972), a prized project based on
Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel.
It was Ruddy and director Francis Ford Coppola’s decision
to reach out to Marlon Brando to star as Don Vito Corleone, and the producer
famously negotiated with the Italian-American Civil Rights League that led to
the agreement that the words “mafia” and “cosa nostra” would not be uttered in
The Godfather.
Al Pacino, who played Michael Corleone in the film for
the first of his nine career Oscar nominations, said in a statement that Ruddy
“was absolutely beautiful to me the whole time on The Godfather; even when they
didn’t want me, he wanted me. He gave me the gift of encouragement when I
needed it most, and I’ll never forget it.”
At the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on March 27, 1973, Ruddy
bounded up on the stage to accept the Academy Award for best picture. “The
American dream and what we all want, for me at least, is represented by this
[holding up the Oscar],” he said. “It’s there for everybody if we want to work,
dream and try to get it.”
Clint Eastwood presented Ruddy with the statuette, and
things came full circle when Ruddy offered Eastwood the opportunity to direct
and star as the trainer in the boxing classic Million Dollar Baby (2004).
Paul Haggis had written the screenplay based on a pair of
short stories from the collection Rope Burns by F.X. Toole. Anjelica Huston
brought Toole’s work to Ruddy, who optioned it, but investors and talent didn’t
see it as a movie — it seemed far too depressing.
“Who wants to do a movie about a girl boxer who dies with
two old guys?” was the typical response Ruddy heard.
Well, Eastwood did; he came on as a producer, scored the
film and then won the Oscar for directing. Meanwhile, Hilary Swank was named
best actress and Morgan Freeman best supporting actor.
On the Paramount+ series The Offer, about the making of
The Godfather, he was portrayed by Miles Teller. “It was an honor and a
privilege to portray Al,” Teller said. “Al lived a life most could only dream
of and all would envy.”
Albert Stotland Ruddy was born in Montreal on March 28,
1930. His mother, Ruth, was a luxury fur designer. He moved with his mom and
siblings, Selma and Gerald, to New York when he was 7, graduated from Brooklyn
Tech in 1948 and won a scholarship to City College of New York, where he
studied chemical engineering. He then transferred to USC in Los Angeles and
earned a degree in architecture.
While he was at USC, he accompanied his then-girlfriend,
who was employed on one of Roger Corman‘s first movies, to Palm Springs and
wound up as art director — he designed a monster for $50 — on The Beast With a
Million Eyes (1955).
Working for a construction firm in Hackensack, New
Jersey, the 6-foot-4 Ruddy met Jack L. Warner, who offered him a job in Los
Angeles. He later joined Universal Television but exited when Marlon Brando Sr.
hired him to produce Wild Seed (1965) for his son’s Pennebaker Productions.
After his incredible run with The Godfather and The
Longest Yard, Ruddy encountered trouble with his next film at Paramount, the
animated/live-action comedy Coonskin (1975). A satire about race relations that
was written and directed by Ralph Bakshi, the Harlem-set film was the subject
of protests and labeled as racist, and Paramount chose not to distribute it.
Ruddy’s other producing efforts included Death Hunt
(1981); the campy Megaforce (1982), also directed by Needham; Lassiter (1984),
starring Tom Selleck; the Rodney Dangerfield soccer movie Ladybugs (1992);
Heaven’s Prisoners (1996); Mean Machine (2001), another prison-set yarn;
Camille (2008); Sabotage (2014); and Eastwood’s Cry Macho (2021).
He also wrote and produced Cloud Nine (2006), starring
his old friend Reynolds.
Ruddy partnered with producer Leslie Greif in The
Ruddy-Greif Co., and they created the 1990s Chuck Norris hit Walker, Texas
Ranger with Haggis and Christopher Canaan. Ruddy also developed the 1976 ABC
miniseries How the West Was Won and the 1998-2000 CBS series Martial Law,
starring Sammo Kam-Bo Hung.
His survivors include onetime journalist Wanda McDaniel,
his wife since 1981, who for years was in charge of image management in
Hollywood for Giorgio Armani; his children, John and Alexandra, his producing
partner and principal at Albert S. Ruddy Productions; and his son-in-law,
screenwriter Abdullah Saeed.
“To his contemporaries in the business, Ruddy is best
remembered for his easy-going nature, his undeniable comedic sense and his
undying interest in people and the stories we tell,” his family said. “Among
his last words [were], ‘The game is over, but we won the game.'”
RUDDY, Albert S. (Albert Stotland Ruddy)
Born: 3/28/1930, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Died: 5/25/2024, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Albert S. Ruddy’s westerns – creatore, producer, writer:
How the West Was Won (TV) – 1976-1979 [creator, producer]
Death Hunt – 1981 [producer]
Miracle in the Wilderness (TV) – 1991 [producer]
Walker, Texas Ranger (TV) – 1993-2001 [producer]
Bad Girls – 1994 [producer, writer]
A Gunman’s Curse – 2019 [producer]
Cry Macho – 2021 [producer]
Walker (TV) – 2021-2024 [writer]
The Texans – 2024 [producer]
