Ponti, Carlo

▪ 2008

Carlo Fortunaro Pietro Ponti 

      Italian motion-picture producer

born Dec. 11, 1912 , Magenta, near Milan, Italy

died Jan. 10, 2007 , Geneva, Switz.

was responsible for producing (or co-producing) more than 150 films, including the Oscar-winning La strada (1954), directed by Federico Fellini; director King Vidor's War and Peace (1955); David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965); Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966); and several by director Vittorio De Sica, notably La ciociara (1960; Two Women), for which Ponti's wife, Sophia Loren, won the Academy Award for best actress. Ponti earned a law degree in 1934 and practiced law until he joined the motion-picture industry in the late 1930s. He discovered Loren when she was a teenager and signed her to a film contract. Their 1957 marriage (in Mexico by proxy) was declared illegal in Italy, which did not acknowledge Ponti's divorce from his first wife. The resulting scandal and subsequent bigamy charges haunted Ponti and Loren for years. The couple obtained an annulment and lived in exile, eventually settling in France, where he legally divorced his first wife (who also had taken French citizenship to expedite the divorce). Ponti and Loren were remarried in 1966 in Paris.

* * *