ALBERT S. RUDDY

(28 March 1930 - 25 May 2024)

The Canadian-American film and television producer Albert S. Ruddy, who has died at the age of 94 after a short illness, was the man behind Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and a co-producer of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby. Both films won him Academy Awards. He also produced such popular genre movies as The Longest Yard, The Cannonball Run, Farewell to the King, Impulse, Bad Girls and Cloud 9, among others. He made his mark on TV with series such as Hogan’s Heroes, Walker, Texas Ranger and How the West Was Won.

Albert S. Ruddy was born in Montreal to Ruth Ruddy Hertz and Hy Stotland, but was brought up by his mother in New York City and Miami. He went to Brooklyn Technical High School and won a scholarship to City College of New York, graduating with a degree in architectural design from the University of Southern California where he had a girlfriend who worked for Roger Corman. He became the art director for Corman’s 1955 film The Beast with a Million Eyes. He also designed homes for a building firm and met Jack L. Warner who offered him work at his studios. However, after Ruddy became a computer programmer, he went back to Hollywood to write for Universal’s TV shows. His break came when Marlon Brando Sr asked him to produce Wild Seed (1965), a romantic drama with Michael Parks and Celia Kaye.

Then came Hogan’s Heroes for CBS, a series that ran for six seasons from 1965, that was very popular even though it was set in POW camp in Nazi Germany. It starred Bob Crane, Werner Klemperer (son of Otto), Robert Clary and Ivan Dixon. Ruddy also worked on other TV shows including How the West Was Won, Revenge for a Rape, Martial Law, Running Mates and The Offer. Before The Godfather there were two film comedies, Little Fauss and Big Halsy with Robert Redford and Michael J. Pollard as bikers, with music by Johnny Cash. The other comedy was Making It, about a teenager (Kristoffer Tabori) who sets out to seduce as many girls as he possibly can.

The Godfather was an immense global hit, winning best picture Oscars for producer Ruddy, best actor for Brando and best adapted screenplay for Mario Puzo and Coppola. To follow that success Ruddy produced a screenplay of his own story treatment of The Longest Yard (aka The Mean Machine in the UK), Robert Aldrich’s comedy with Burt Reynolds as an ex-pro footballer. The Cannonball Run (1981), also with Reynolds, as well as Roger Moore, Dean Martin, Jackie Chan and Farrah Fawcett, was based on an actual cross-country road race from Connecticut to California. It spawned a sequel in 1984.

Then Ruddy founded the Ruddy-Morgan Organisation with producer Andre Morgan to make films of mid-range budgets. The first was the film noir Impulse, directed by Sondra Locke. After losing the rights to make a James Bond TV series, he made Million Dollar Baby, a drama about a female amateur boxer (Hilary Swank) and her success with trainer Clint Eastwood, who also co-produced and scored the music. It won Oscars for Ruddy, Eastwood, Swank and supporting actor Morgan Freeman. Ruddy continued to produce films until his last one, Cry Macho, a neo-Western with Eastwood, in 2021.

Albert S. Ruddy married and divorced the producer Francoise Ruddy who had worked with him on The Godfather. His marriage to the actress Kaye Farrington also ended in divorce. With his third wife, Wanda McDaniel, who worked for designer Giorgio Armani, he had two children, John and the actress Alexandra.

MICHAEL DARVELL