He also encouraged her to learn languages and recommended books for her to read, reshaping her personality and tastes in the process. He signed her to a personal contract in 1953 and thereafter, according to Alan Levy’s biography “Forever, Sophia,” he picked her gowns, films and parts. Ponti, Loren’s career slowly began to build. She said yes, came in second, and met with Mr. Ponti was so impressed with the teenager, known then as Sofia Lazzaro, that he sent a pageant official over to ask whether she wanted to enter the contest. Ponti spotted the 16-year-old Loren in the front row with friends. Ponti, who once said, “I don’t like actors I prefer women,” met Loren in Rome in 1951 while judging the Miss Rome beauty contest. “He took care of her, and his love for her was so apparent he was always very solicitous, and I admired that very much.” “I admired the way he was with Sophia Loren,” Kirk Douglas, who starred in the 1955 film “Ulysses,” told the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday. Ponti recalled his good nature and devotion to Loren, who reportedly was at his bedside when he died. Ponti- and David Lean-produced “Doctor Zhivago,” director Lean’s epic 1965 romantic-drama set against the Russian Revolution, received an Oscar nomination for best picture. Ponti was a producer on about 150 movies, including Federico Fellini’s Oscar-winning foreign-language film “La Strada,” Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt,” Claude Chabrol’s “Bluebeard,” Jacques Demy’s “Lola,” and Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blowup,” “Zabriskie Point” and “The Passenger.” “His death marks the end of an era for filmmaking, because Ponti embodied a great and courageous push to innovate, promoted unforgettable talents, and enjoyed huge success,” Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said Wednesday.ĭuring a decades-long career that reflected the rise of Italian neo-realism in the 1940s and the French New Wave in the 1960s, Mr. Ponti, who had been hospitalized for about 10 days with pulmonary complications, died Tuesday at a hospital in Switzerland, his family said Wednesday. Carlo Ponti, the prolific Italian producer of internationally acclaimed films such as “Doctor Zhivago” and “Blowup” and the longtime husband of Oscar-winning actress Sophia Loren, whom he discovered as a teenager in the 1950s and helped build into a star, has died.
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