NEW YORK.- Albert S. Ruddy, a colorful Canadian-born producer and screenwriter who won the Oscar for The Godfather y Million Dollar Baby, died at 94 years old. Ruddy died Saturday at UCLA Medical Center, according to a spokesperson, who added that among his last words were: “The game is over, but we won the game.”
Tall and muscular, with a raspy voice and the swagger of a city boy, Ruddy produced more than 30 films and was present through the highest and lowest, from The Godfather y Million Dollar Baby until Cannonball Run II y Megaforcenominated for the Golden Raspberry Awards for worst film of the year.
Nothing looks better on your resume than The Godfather, but producing it put Ruddy’s job, reputation, and life itself at risk. Frank Sinatra and other Italian Americans were infuriated by the project, which they feared would harden stereotypes of Italians as criminals, and real-life mobsters let Ruddy know that he was being watched. One night he heard gunshots outside his house and the sound of his car windows being shot out.
On his dashboard was a warning that he should shut down production, immediately.
Ruddy saved himself, and the film, through diplomacy; He met with crime boss Joseph Colombo and a couple of henchmen to discuss the script.
“Joe sits across from me, one guy is on the couch, and another guy is sitting in the window,” Ruddy told Vanity Fair in 2009. “He puts on his little Ben Franklin glasses, looks at it (the script) for about two minutes. “What does this ‘fade in’ mean,” he asked.”
A producer sitting next to the mafia
Ruddy agreed to remove a single gratuitous mention of the word “mafia” and to make a donation to the Italian American Civil Rights League. Columbo was so pleased that he urged Ruddy to appear with him at a press conference announcing his approval of the film, a meeting that led to Ruddy being photographed alongside members of organized crime.
Parent company Gulf & Paramount fired Ruddy, only for director Francis Coppola to object and rehire him. In the end, the gangsters were cast as extras and openly consulted with the cast members. Ruddy himself made a cameo appearance as a Hollywood studio guard.
“It was like a happy family,” Ruddy told Vanity Fair. “All these guys loved the underworld characters, and obviously the underworld guys loved Hollywood.”
With a cast that includes Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and Robert Duvall, The Godfather was a critical and commercial sensation and remains one of the most beloved and cited films in history.
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 television actor Bernard Fein in the early 1960s. Ruddy had grown tired of his career, and he and Fein decided to develop a television series, even though neither of them had written anything.
Path to success
Their original idea was a comedy set in an American prison, but they soon changed their mind.
“We read in the paper that… (a) network was making a sitcom set in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp and we thought, ‘Perfect,’” Ruddy later explained. “We rewrote our script and set it in a German prisoner-of-war camp in about two days.”
Hogan’s Heroes aired from 1965 to 1971 on CBS, but was criticized for trivializing World War II and turning Nazis into adorable cartoons. As Fein continued with Hogan’s HeroesRuddy dedicated himself to film, overseeing the low-budget film Wild Seed for Brando’s production company. His reputation for managing costs came in handy when Paramount Pictures boss Robert Evans acquired the rights to Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel The Godfather and looked for a producer for what was supposed to be a minor gangster film.
“I received a call on a Sunday. ‘You want to do ‘The Godfather‘?’”. Ruddy told Vanity Fair. “I thought they were kidding me, right? I said, ‘Yes, of course, I love that book,’ which he had never read.”
Source: AP
