The presence of Mr. Ruddy on the information convention so enraged Charles Bluhdorn, the flamable chairman of Gulf & Western, Paramount’s father or mother, that he fired him. However when Mr. Bluhdorn informed Francis Ford Coppola, the director, and Robert Evans, the studio’s vp of manufacturing, to seek out one other producer, Mr. Coppola intervened.
“Al Ruddy’s the one man who can hold this film going!” he informed Mr. Bluhdorn.
“The Godfather” gained three Oscars, together with Mr. Ruddy’s for finest image; for finest actor, for Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Don Vito Corleone; and for finest tailored screenplay, by Mr. Coppola and Mr. Puzo. The movie has been extensively praised as probably the greatest motion pictures ever made.
It spawned “The Godfather Half II” (1974), which additionally gained the Oscar for finest image, and “The Godfather Half III” (1990), which was extensively skewered. Mr. Ruddy had nothing to do with the sequels. Fred Roos (who died on Might 18) was a producer of each, as he was of different movies by Mr. Coppola, his daughter, Sofia Coppola, and his spouse, Eleanor Coppola (who died final month).
Mr. Ruddy was born Albert Stotland on March 28, 1930, in Montreal. His father, Hyman, manufactured uniforms. His mom, Ruth (Rudnikoff) Stotland, was a clothes and luxurious fur designer. After his mother and father divorced when Albert was 6, his mom took him, his sister, Selma, and his brother, Gerald, to New York Metropolis and altered their household surname to Ruddy.
After finding out on the Metropolis Faculty of New York, Albert attended the College of Southern California and graduated with an structure diploma in 1956. He was briefly the architect for a development firm in New Jersey however selected to return to the West Coast. There he was a programmer for the RAND Company, a shoe salesman and the producer of a play, “The Connection” (1959), about drug dependancy, and the film “Wild Seed” (1965), a few teenage runaway trying to find her organic father.
