The Italian producer behind such cinema classics as La Strada (1954), Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and Blow-Up (1966); and who guided the career of his wife Sophia Loren to international superstardom, died on January 9 of pulmonary complications in Geneva, Switzerland. He was 94.

He was born on December 11, 1912 as Carlo Fortunaro Pietro Ponti in Magenta, Lombardy, Italy, a small town just outside of Milan. He earned a law degree from the University of Milan in 1934, and practiced law for several years before he began working for a Milan film company in 1940. He produced his first film, a simple drama titled Old-Fashioned World (1941), but didn't really come to notice until he produced a version of Les Miserable/I Miserabili (1948) with Valentina Cortese. After making a star out of Gina Lollobrigida in Miss Italia (1950), Ponti's life took a fortunate turn when he discovered a 16-year-old beauty at the Miss Rome pageant in 1951. She wasn't a contestant, but Ponti knew star quality when he saw it, and promptly had a meeting with her. The budding starlet was none other than his future wife, Sofia Lazzaro as her stage name was then, soon to be known as Sophia Loren.

By 1953, Ponti signed her to an exclusive contract. He began grooming her for certain projects, and made her a star in her native Italy with the earthy melodrama The River Girl (1955). Several of his films did not star Loren, and the standouts among these included Federico Fellini's award-winning La Strada (1954) and King Vidor's War and Peace (1955), Yet overall, Ponti produced films in the U.S. and Europe with her and found top-notch directors in the process: Martin Ritt's The Black Orchid (1958), Sidney Lumet's That Kind of Woman (1959), George Cukor's Heller in Pink Tights (1960), Vittorio De Sica's Two Women (an Oscar® winner for Best Actress, 1961), and the hilarious Marriage Italian-Style (1964), Peter Ustinov's Lady L, and Michael Anderson's Operation Crossbow (both 1965). Around this period, Ponti also produced David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (also 1965) that garnered a Best Picture Oscar® nomination.

He developed a professional relationship with the brilliant if erratic Michelangelo Antonioni and produced three of his seminal movies: Blow-Up (1967), Zabriskie Point (1969), and The Passenger (1975); and perhaps most surprisingly, worked with Andy Warhol for his Flesh for Frankenstein (1973); before scoring his last commercial hit - The Cassandra Crossing (1976) which again starred Sophia Loren.

In 1979, a Rome court convicted Ponti in absentia (he and Loren announced their Italian citizenship and relocated to France when the government refused to acknowledge their marriage) on charges that he illegally transferred several million dollars abroad. Ponti was sentenced to four years in prison and fined over $20 million, but he and Loren remained in exile for several years until they returned to Italy in the early '80s. His son Edoardo, is a practicing film director. Ponti is survived by wife Sophia; sons, Carlo Ponti Jr., Edoardo, and Alexander; and a daughter, Guendolina.

by Michael T. Toole