- Dino De Laurentiis
-
Dino De Laurentiis 
Born Agostino De Laurentiis
8 August 1919
Torre Annunziata, Campania, ItalyDied 10 November 2010 (aged 91)
Los Angeles, California, United StatesOccupation Actor/film producer Years active 1938–2010 Spouse 1) Marriage annulled
2) Silvana Mangano
(1949– dissolved 1988)
3) Martha Schumacher
(1990–2010) (his death)Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis (8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010) was an Italian film producer.
Contents
Biography
He was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples, and grew up selling spaghetti produced by his father. His studies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War.
Following his first movie, L'ultimo Combattimento, (1940) he produced nearly 150 films during the next seven decades. In 1946 his company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into production. In the early years, De Laurentiis produced neorealist films such as Bitter Rice (1946) and the Fellini classics La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1956), often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti. In the 1960s, Dino De Laurentiis built his own studio facilities, although these financially collapsed during the 1970s. During this period, though, De Laurentiis produced such films as Barabbas (1961) a Christian religious epic, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, an imitation James Bond film; Navajo Joe (1966), a spaghetti western; Anzio (1968), a World War II film; Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), both successful comic book adaptations; and The Valachi Papers made to coincide with the popularity of The Godfather.
In 1976,[1] De Laurentiis relocated to the USA where he set up studios, eventually creating his own studio De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) based in Wilmington, North Carolina; the building of the studio quickly made Wilmington a busy center of film and television production. During this period De Laurentiis made a number of successful and acclaimed films, including The Scientific Cardplayer (1972), Serpico (1973), Death Wish (1974), Mandingo (1975), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Shootist (1976), Drum (1976), Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (1977), Ragtime (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Blue Velvet (1986). It is for his more infamous productions that De Laurentiis's name has become known — the legendary King Kong (1976) remake, which was a commercial hit, Lipstick, the killer whale film Orca (1977); The White Buffalo (1977); the disaster movie Hurricane (1979); the remake of Flash Gordon (1980); Halloween II (the 1981 sequel to John Carpenter's 1978 classic horror film); David Lynch's Dune (1984); and King Kong Lives (1986). De Laurentiis also made several adaptations of Stephen King's works during this time, including The Dead Zone (1983), Cat's Eye (1985), Silver Bullet (1985) and Maximum Overdrive (1986); Army of Darkness (1992) was produced jointly by De Laurentiis, Robert Tapert and the movie's star Bruce Campbell. They distributed the animated Transformers movie.
De Laurentiis also produced the first Hannibal Lecter film, Manhunter (1986). He passed on adapting Thomas Harris' sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, but produced the two follow-ups, Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002), a remake of Manhunter. He also produced Hannibal Rising (2007), which tells the story of how Hannibal becomes a serial killer.
In his later choice of stories he displayed a strong preference for adaptations of successful books, especially sweeping classics like Barabbas (1961), The Bible: In the Beginning (1966), or Dune (1984).
In the 1980s he owned and operated DDL Foodshow, a specialty retailer with two gourmet Italian markets in New York City and Los Angeles.[2]
In 2001 he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
De Laurentiis died on 10 November 2010 at his residence in Beverly Hills, California.[3][4][5]
Family
His brief first marriage in Italy was annulled.[6] In 1949 De Laurentiis married actress Silvana Mangano, with whom he had four children: Veronica, Raffaella, who is also a film producer, Federico, who died in a plane crash in 1981, and Francesca. They divorced in 1988[7] prior to her death in 1989. In 1990 he married movie producer Martha Schumacher, with whom he had two daughters, Carolyna and Dina. One of his grandchildren is Giada De Laurentiis, host of Everyday Italian, Behind the Bash, Giada at Home and Giada's Weekend Getaways on Food Network. His nephew is Aurelio De Laurentiis, also a film producer and the chairman of SSC Napoli football club.
Selected filmography
References
- ^ Lane, John Francis (11 November 2010). "Obituary: Dino De Laurentiis". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/nov/11/dino-de-laurentiis-obituary. Retrieved 11 November 2010.
- ^ "lets-do-lunch". Foodandwine.com. February 2002. http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/lets-do-lunch. Retrieved 12 November 2010.
- ^ "Filmmaker Dino De Laurentiis Dies at Age 91". USA Today. 11 November 2010. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2010/11/filmmaker-dino-de-laurentiis-dies-at-age-91/1. Retrieved 11 November 2010.
- ^ "Movie Producer Dino de Laurentiis dies". CNN. 11 November 2010. http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/11/movie-producer-dino-de-laurentiis-dies/?hpt=T2. Retrieved 11 November 2010.
- ^ Mondello, Bob (11 November 2010). "Dino De Laurentiis: For Decades, A Big-Picture Guy". NPR. http://www.npr.org/2010/11/11/131244809/dino-de-laurentiis-for-decades-a-big-picture-guy. Retrieved 11 November 2010.
- ^ Arnold, Laurence (11 November 2010). "Dino De Laurentiis, Producer of Film Spectacles, Dies at 91". Business Week. http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-11-11/dino-de-laurentiis-producer-of-film-spectacles-dies-at-91.html. Retrieved 11 November 2010.
- ^ Reuters (11 November 2010). "Italian film producer Dino De Laurentiis dies". The Globe and Mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/movies/italian-film-producer-dino-de-laurentiis-dies/article1794981/. Retrieved 11 November 2010.
Funeral services for De Laurentiis will be held Monday
External links
- Dino De Laurentiis Company Official site
- Dino De Laurentiis at the Internet Movie Database
- Who Was Dino De Laurentiis? – image slideshow by Life magazine
Academy Awards Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award Darryl F. Zanuck (1938) · Hal B. Wallis (1939) · David O. Selznick (1940) · Walt Disney (1942) · Sidney Franklin (1943) · Hal B. Wallis (1944) · Darryl F. Zanuck (1945) · Samuel Goldwyn (1947) · Jerry Wald (1949) · Darryl F. Zanuck (1951) · Arthur Freed (1952) · Cecil B. DeMille (1953) · George Stevens (1954) · Buddy Adler (1957) · Jack Warner (1959) · Stanley Kramer (1962) · Sam Spiegel (1964) · William Wyler (1966) · Robert Wise (1967) · Alfred Hitchcock (1968) · Ingmar Bergman (1971) · Lawrence Weingarten (1974) · Mervyn LeRoy (1976) · Pandro S. Berman (1977) · Walter Mirisch (1978) · Ray Stark (1980) · Albert R. Broccoli (1982) · Steven Spielberg (1986) · Billy Wilder (1988) · David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck (1991) · George Lucas (1992) · Clint Eastwood (1995) · Saul Zaentz (1997) · Norman Jewison (1999) · Warren Beatty (2000) · Dino De Laurentiis (2001) · John Calley (2009) · Francis Ford Coppola (2010)
Categories:- 1919 births
- 2010 deaths
- People from Torre Annunziata
- Italian film actors
- Italian film producers
- Italian expatriates in the United States
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