ROME, Italy (AP) -- Oscar-winning film producer Carlo Ponti, who risked excommunication to marry Sophia Loren and later fled his native Italy to avoid fraud charges -- has died, his family said Wednesday. He was 94.
Ponti died overnight at a Geneva hospital, his family said. He had been hospitalized about 10 days earlier because of pulmonary complications, the family said in a statement.
The Milan-born Ponti had studied law and worked as a lawyer in his hometown before moving into film production. In 1956, the film "La Strada," which he co-produced, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. 1965, he was nominated as producer for the Best Picture Oscar for "Doctor Zhivago."
Other well-known movies produced by Ponti include "Blow-Up," "The Cassandra Crossing," "The Verdict" and "The Squeeze." Among the directors he worked with were Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard and David Lean.
But it was his affair with the young ingenue Loren that captivated the public rather than his behind-the-scenes work with the world's top filmmakers.
Ponti was married to his first wife, Giuliana, when he met Loren, who was nearly 25 years younger than him, in about 1950.
They tried to keep their relationship a secret in spite of the huge media interest, while Ponti's lawyers went to Mexico to obtain a divorce.
Catholic wrath
Ponti and Loren were married by proxy in Mexico in 1957 -- two male attorneys took their place and the happy couple only found out when the news was broken by society columnist Louella Parsons.
But they were unable to beat stringent Italian divorce laws and the wrath of the Roman Catholic Church. Ponti was charged with bigamy and Loren with being a concubine.
"I was being threatened with excommunication, with the everlasting fire, and for what reason? I had fallen in love with a man whose own marriage had ended long before," Loren has said.
"I wanted to be his wife and have his children. We had done the best the law would allow to make it official, but they were calling us public sinners," she said. "We should have been taking a honeymoon, but all I remember is weeping for hours."
The couple first lived in exile and then, after the annulment of their Mexican marriage, in secret in Italy.
They finally beat Italian law by becoming French citizens -- the approval was signed personally by French President Georges Pompidou -- and they married for a second time in Paris in 1966.
Despite many predictions that the marriage would founder over Ponti's affairs and the many dashing leading men who reportedly fell in love with Loren, the couple stayed together.
Ponti had several other brushes with the law.
He was briefly imprisoned during World War II for a film considered anti-German. An Italian court later gave Ponti a six-month suspended sentence for his 1973 film "Massacre in Rome," which claimed Pope Pius XII did nothing about the execution of Italian hostages by the Germans. The charges eventually were dropped on appeal.
Kidnap attempts
Though Loren was better known, Ponti amassed a fortune considerably greater than that of his wife -- and again fell foul of the Italian authorities.
In 1979, a court in Rome convicted him in absentia of the illegal transfer of capital abroad and sentenced him to four years in prison and a $24 million fine.
Loren, along with film stars Ava Gardner and Richard Harris, were acquitted of conspiracy.
It took Ponti until the late 1980s to settle his legal problems and finally obtain the return of his art collection, which had been seized by authorities and given to Italian museums.
He also survived two kidnapping attempts in 1975.
Ponti discovered many of the great Italian leading ladies, including Gina Lollobrigida, and had affairs with several of them. "I don't like actors. I prefer women," he said at the time.
In recent years, the couple lived mostly in Switzerland, where they had several homes. Despite reports that he was seriously ill, Ponti attended the 1998 Venice Film Festival to accept a lifetime achievement award for his wife, who was kept away by illness.
Ponti and Loren had two sons -- Carlo Jr., a celebrated conductor, and Edoardo, a film producer. He also had two children from his first marriage, Guendolina and Alexander.
No date was given for funeral arrangements but a statement from the family said it would be a "strictly private" event.
