Albert S. Ruddy

Albert S. Ruddy
Born	March 28, 1930 (1930-03-28) Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Occupation	Film producer
Years active	1965–present

Albert S. Ruddy is a Canadian-born producer. Ruddy was born March 28, 1930 in Montreal and raised in New York City with his mother. Ruddy attended Brooklyn Technical High School before earning a scholarship to allow him to study chemical engineering at City College of New York. He graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California and then he worked in the construction industry on the East Coast.

After a short stint at Warner Brothers, brought about by a chance meeting with Jack Warner, Ruddy moved on to become a programmer trainee at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California. Returning to entertainment, Ruddy was a television writer at Universal Studios, but left when Marlon Brando Sr., father of the legendary actor, hired him to produce Wild Seed in 1965.

With this one film completed, Ruddy co-created Hogan's Heroes (CBS, 1965–1971), and when the show's five-year run was over, Ruddy produced his second film, Making It (1970), about a sexually triumphant high school student who beds the gerontophobic wife of his gym teacher. In 1972, he produced The Godfather and won his first of two Oscars for Best Picture. In 1974, Ruddy produced The Longest Yard, which was also successful.

The following year, Ruddy produced director/animator Ralph Bakshi's satirical film Coonskin. The film was extremely controversial and initially received negative reviews, although it would eventually earn critical acclaim and develop a following with African American viewers.

Ruddy went on to produce a long string of movies that, in most cases, failed to either make money or please critics, or in some cases both. Though successful at the box office, The Cannonball Run (1981) was not well received by critics. Following two financially unsuccessful action flicks, Death Hunt (1981) and Megaforce (1982), Ruddy returned to produce Cannonball Run II (1984), which was not commercially successful. For some time he worked with writer-philosopher Ayn Rand to produce her epic dystopic novel Atlas Shrugged as a movie, the rights to which he purchased in the mid-1970s. He has been interviewed a number of times about Rand.

His name is referenced in the 1976 Paddy Chayefsky film Network as "Mr. Ruddy," the chairman of the Communications Corporation of America, played by Ned Beatty.

Awards

• Won: 1973 Academy Award for Best Picture The Godfather
  Clint Eastwood presented Ruddy with the Best Picture Oscar for The Godfather. Over 30 years later, Eastwood and Ruddy would share Best Picture Oscars as producers of Million Dollar Baby.
• Nomination: 1983 Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Picture Megaforce
• Nomination: 1985 Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Picture Cannonball Run II
• Nomination: 1985 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Screenplay Cannonball Run II (with Hal Needham, Harvey Miller)
• Won: 2005 Academy Award for Best Picture Million Dollar Baby

See also

• Albert S. Ruddy at the Internet Movie Database
• Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood