[1] He produced The Godfather (1972) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), both of which won him the Academy Award for Best Picture, and co-created the CBS sitcom Hogan's Heroes (1965–1971).

[6][2] Ruddy attended Brooklyn Technical High School before earning a scholarship to allow him to study chemical engineering at City College of New York.

[7][4] While he was at USC, he accompanied his then-girlfriend, who was employed on one of Roger Corman's first movies, to Palm Springs and wound up becoming the art director for The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955).

[8][9] After a short stint at Warner Brothers, Ruddy moved on to become a programmer trainee at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.

[8][9] With this film completed, Ruddy co-created Hogan's Heroes (CBS, 1965–1971),[10] which was a critical and commercial success and ran for six seasons, despite network doubts about the suitability of WWII Nazis as comedic characters.

[2] 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.

[1] Ruddy then started to work with Hong Kong's Golden Harvest, producing The Cannonball Run (1981), his second picture with Burt Reynolds, a hugely successful film at the box office that received mixed reviews by critics.

[2] Ruddy next produced two action films, Death Hunt (1981) starring Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson, and Megaforce (1982).

Ruddy returned to produce Cannonball Run II (1984), which was another commercial success for the Rat-Pack-prominent cast, and featured a guest appearance by Frank Sinatra.

[26] In the 2022 biographical drama miniseries The Offer, which dramatizes the making of The Godfather and is executive produced by Ruddy, he is played by Miles Teller.