Albert Stotland Ruddy (born March 28, 1930) is a Canadian-American film and television producer. He is known for producing The Godfather (1972) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), both of which won him the Academy Award for Best Picture, as well as co-creating the CBS sitcom Hogan's Heroes (1965–1971). Early life Albert S. Ruddy was born to Ruth (née Ruddy) Hertz and Hy Stotland, a Jewish family in Montreal, and raised in New York City and in Miami Beach, Florida, by 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. In 1956, he graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in architectural design. Career Ruddy then worked designing homes for a construction company, in Hackensack, New Jersey. After a short stint at Warner Brothers, brought about by a chance meeting with studio chief Jack L. 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 (1965). With this film completed, Ruddy co-created Hogan's Heroes (CBS, 1965–1971), which was a critical and commercial success and ran for six seasons. As the sitcom wound down its run, Ruddy returned to films, producing two comedies: Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970), about two motorcycle racers, and Making It (1971), about a sexually triumphant high school student who beds the gerontophobic wife of his gym teacher. In 1972, he produced The Godfather, an adaptation of Mario Puzo's novel. The film was a massive success both commercially and critically, and is regarded as one of the best films ever made, as well as a landmark of the gangster genre. The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won three – including Ruddy's first of two Oscars for Best Picture. In 1974, Ruddy produced an adaptation of his own story treatment as The Longest Yard. The film, which has been described as "the first successful modern sports movie", was very successful financially and was subsequently remade twice with Ruddy as executive producer (as Mean Machine (2001) and as The Longest Yard (2005)). The following year, Ruddy produced director and animator Ralph Bakshi's satirical film Coonskin (1975). The film was extremely controversial and