Word: ponty
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...gentleman from Ferrara wouldn't consider it among his signal accomplishments, but with a couple of seconds in Blowup, he changed Hollywood history. The movie was produced by Carlo Ponti and was to be distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the stately old lion of American film studios. But the industry ratings board wouldn't give the picture a seal because, during a photo-shoot romp, the model Jane Birkin allowed the briefest display of pubic hair. Instead of trimming the scene to the board's specifications, MGM honored Antonioni's version of the film, invented a subsidiary, Premier Productions...
...Ponti was not merely the 40- or 49-year husband of Sophia Loren - though, really, gentlemen, wouldn't that be enough? He was one of Italy's grandest producers, perhaps second only to Dino De Laurentiis. The two forged a partnership in the early 50s, when De Laurentiis was producing films with his own bombshell wife, Silvana Mangano. Dino and Carlo's signature film was Un Americano a Roma, a modest comedy about a young Italian besotted with all things American. It expressed the hope of two paisan producers to make films that appealed both to the local market...
...thousand pretty playthings a producer finds on the casting couch and discards when distracted by the next in line. But Loren knew she had something to put on screen besides a spectacular bosom: an actor's passion and skill, a worldly woman's generous, capricious wit. As for Ponti, he had the drive, the devotion and the clout to turn her into a top international star, Her Oscar for Best Actress in 1962, as the ravaged war mother in Vittorio DeSica's Two Women, which Ponti produced, was proof of his and Loren's mutual mission - their shared triumph...
...Their off-screen story was every bit as dramatic as any of their movies. It might take the name of one of them: Marriage, Italian-Style. Ponti, then married, had tried keeping his relationship with Loren hush-hush, as his lawyers won a Mexican divorce from his estranged wife, Giuliana. In 1957 the producer and his star were married by proxy in Mexico, with two male attorneys standing in for them. But the Italian government forced the annulment of their marriage and branded Ponti a bigamist. The couple had to live either abroad or secretly in Italy, until 1966 when...
DIED. Carlo Ponti, 94, producer of more than 100 movies, including the Academy Award--winning La Strada and 1965's Doctor Zhivago, and the husband of actress Sophia Loren; in Geneva. Though trained as a lawyer, the movieman clashed several times with the law in his native Italy, most famously when he tried to wed Loren, whom he had met when she was a teenage beauty contestant. The couple first attempted their marriage in 1957, but the bond was annulled because Ponti had previously been married, and divorce was not yet legal in Italy. The two successfully wed in Paris...