Famed Film Producer Carlo Ponti Dies
Posted January 10, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The famed Italian film producer Carlo Ponti, well known for his exploits both in and out of the showbiz world, including his marriage to Sophia Loren, has died at the age of 94.
Ponti passed away in a Geneva hospital overnight Wednesday, according to his family. He had been hospitalized days earlier for pulmonary problems.
He produced hundreds of legendary films including “Doctor Zhivago,” “The Firemen’s Ball,” and “The Great Day,” which were all nominated for Oscars and “La Strada” which won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1954. Ponti worked with the crème de la crème in the biz, including Dino De Laurentiis, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Ustinov and David Lean.
While his movies won acclaim around the world, it was his controversial relationship with Loren, who he became involved with when she was 15, that garnered the most attention. He was 25 years her senior and married to his first wife Guiliana when he met the soon-to-be star.
Ponti’s lawyers went to Mexico to obtain a divorce from his first wife, and Ponti and Loren were married in that country in 1957.
Ponti was later charged with bigamy after the couple failed to beat tough Italian divorce laws. His relationship with Loren also infuriated leaders in the Catholic Church. The couple lived in exile and later in secret in Italy, after the Mexican marriage was annulled but managed to make it official by becoming French citizens and marrying in Paris in 1966.
Ponti was responsible for launching Loren’s film career and discovered other starlets, including Gina Lolobrigida. He had affairs with many of them, and even though many never thought the marriage would last, he and Loren lived happily ever after.
“I have done everything for love of Sophia,” he said in a newspaper interview in 2002. “I have always believed in her.”
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