The world of cinema lost one of its greatest entrepreneurs on Wednesday with the death of 91-year-old producer Dino De Laurentiis.
Agostino De Laurentiis was born in Torre Annunziata near Naples in 1919 and was the son of pasta makers. His first job was selling his father’s spaghetti. He became interested in the cinema during the medium’s post-war boom in Italy and had set up his own production company by 1946. In Italy he often worked with the producer Carlo Ponti and the directors Roberto Rossellini and Federico Fellini. He was awarded an Oscar in 1956 for “La Strada”, directed by Fellini. He produced many neo-realist films but was not afraid to experiment with other genres. In the 1960s he set up a film studio called “Dinocittà” near Rome.
In 1976 De Laurentiis moved to the USA where he created the Dino De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. Among his most famous productions were: Three Days of the Condor [1975] Conan the Barbarian [1982] Dune [1984] the remake of King Kong [1986] and films based on the horror stories of Stephen King. He produced the first Hannibal Lecter film, Manhunter, in 1986.
Dino De Laurentiis produced over 150 films and was nominated for an Oscar 38 times. In 2003 he received the Irving G Thalberg Award at the Oscars for the consistent quality of his productions. In 2003 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Film Festival.
De Laurentiis married the actress Silvana Mangano in 1949 and they had four children.They divorced in 1988. After Magnano’s death he married the producer Martha Schumacher, with whom he had two daughters. His life was not without tragedy, for his son, Federico was killed in a plane crash in Alaska in 1981. His nephew Aurelio is also a film producer and his granddaughter Giada is a well known TV chef in the US.
Among those who have this week paid tribute to De Laurentiis are California Governor Arnold Scwarzenegger, who said he had been a “genius” and lawmaker, former Mayor of Rome and co-founder of the Rome Film Festival Walter Veltroni, who said that the pasta maker’s son had been “one of cinema’s greats”.
