Italian Film Producer Carlo Ponti Dead

Husband Of Actress Sophia Loren, Celebrated Producer Of "Doctor Zhivago," "Blowup," Was 94

(CBS/AP)  Film fans of yesteryear may have imagined actress Sophia Loren taking comfort in the arms of co-stars Cary Grant or Anthony Quinn, or, for some, perhaps their own, but her true fans have always known there's just one man who truly won her heart: Carlo Ponti.

The prolific Italian film producer, who featured the actress who won his own heart and soul in some of his movies, died overnight in a hospital in Switzerland.

That's according to a statement released Wednesday by his family.

They say Ponti, 94, died several days after being hospitalized in Geneva for pulmonary complications.

He produced more than 100 films in all, including "Doctor Zhivago," "The Firemen's Ball," and "A Special Day," which were nominated for Oscars. Other major films included "Zabriskie Point," "The Passenger" with Jack Nicholson, "The Cassandra Crossing," and "Andy Warhol's Frankenstein."

In 1956, "La Strada," which he co-produced, won the Academy Award for best foreign film, as did "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" in 1964.

His best known English language films include the 1966 avant garde sensation "Blowup," starring Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles and David Hemmings, about a photographer and his reactions to shocking and explicit scenes he captures on film.

But it was his affair with the young ingenue Loren, long considered to be one of the world's greatest beauties, that captivated the public, rather than his work with top filmmakers such as Dino De Laurentiis, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Peter Ustinov, David Lean and Roman Polanski.

"I have done everything for love of Sophia," he said in a newspaper interview shortly before his 90th birthday in 2002. "I have always believed in her."

Born near Milan in the small town of Magenta on Dec. 11, 1912, Ponti studied law and worked as a lawyer before moving into film production in the late 1930s.

He was married to his first wife, Giuliana, when he met Loren — then Sofia Lazzaro — about 1950. At the time she was only 15 — a quarter-century younger than Ponti.

They tried to keep their relationship a secret despite huge media interest, while Ponti's lawyers went to Mexico to obtain a divorce from his first wife.

Ponti and Loren were married by proxy in Mexico in 1957 — two male attorneys took their place, and the happy couple only found out when the news was broken by society columnist Louella Parsons.

But they were unable to beat stringent Italian divorce laws and the wrath of the Roman Catholic church. Ponti was charged with bigamy.

"I was being threatened with excommunication, with the everlasting fire, and for what reason? I had fallen in love with a man whose own marriage had ended long before," Loren has said.

"I wanted to be his wife and have his children. We had done the best the law would allow to make it official, but they were calling us public sinners," she said. "We should have been taking a honeymoon, but all I remember is weeping for hours."

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