GENEVA, Switzerland, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- Carlo Ponti, an Italian film producer and husband of actress Sophia Loren, died after several days of hospitalization in Geneva, Switzerland at 94.
Ponti, producer of films including Federico Fellini's "La Strada," David Lean's "Dr. Zhivago" and Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blowup," died about 10 days after being admitted to a hospital for pulmonary complications, the BBC reported Wednesday. "Doctor Zhivago" earned the producer an Academy Award nomination in 1966.
"He died overnight," Loren's niece Alessandra Mussolini said. "It was a peaceful death, there was not a particular problem.
"His wife and children were with him. Sophia has always been with him throughout."
He married Loren, who he discovered at a beauty contest he judged when she was 15, in 1957, but the marriage was annulled shortly after and the couple remarried in 1966.
