SWITZERLAND: Carlo Ponti, film producer and film actress Sophia Loren's husband, dies aged 94
- 00:00:56
- ITN Source
SWITZERLAND: Carlo Ponti, film producer and film actress Sophia Loren's husband, dies aged 94
Carlo Ponti, one of Italy's best known film producers and the husband of actress Sophia Loren, has died at the age of 94, his family said on Wednesday (January 10). In his 50-year career, Ponti produced more than 150 films, including "La Strada" in 1954 and "Dr. Zhivago" in 1965. But he was equally famous for discovering a teenager Loren and turning her into one of the world's most glamorous stars. "It was a peaceful death," said Alessandra Mussolini, niece of Loren and grand-daughter of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Ponti had been in a Geneva hospital since Christmas. "His wife and children were with him. Sophia has always been with him throughout," she told Reuters. Italy's first couple of the movie industry met in 1952 when Ponti, already an established producer and a married man, cast his vote for a poor girl from a Naples slum in a beauty contest. Loren made her name soon afterwards when Ponti, 20 years her senior, gave her a part in a semi-documentary. He then stood back as she became Italy's sex symbol, standing in comparison with Brigitte Bardot and Marilyn Monroe. In 1957, after unsuccessfully seeking a Vatican annulment of his first marriage -- Italy then had no divorce laws -- Ponti married Loren in Mexico. The furore over the affair forced the couple to leave Italy, where he was charged with bigamy and was not acquitted until 1968. They initially moved to Hollywood and later had two sons; increasingly bitter towards his homeland, Ponti became a French citizen in 1965. From 1950 to 1955 he worked with producer Dino de Laurentiis, but the partnership broke up over budget squabbles. Among the films he produced were "Marriage Italian Style" (1964), "Blowup" (1966) and "A Special Day" (1977). In his absence, he was sentenced in 1979 by an Italian court to four years in jail and fined 26 million U.S. dollars for illegally exporting money. He was cleared of the charges in 1987. Ponti began making films in 1938 by accident, when a film producer client of the law firm he was working for fled fascist-era Italy and asked him to take over. Ponti was an avid reader and is reputed to have been the first Italian to order a copy of "Dr Zhivago", by the late Russian writer and Nobel Prize winner Boris Pasternak, placing the order by telephone from Hollywood. He then made the book into one of his most successful films.
ITN Source | January 10, 2007
