One of cinema's most famous producers dies aged 91
The death of Dino De Laurentiis was announced today, a man who started in the Italian film industry and was awarded with an Oscar for Federico Fellini's La Strada, which placed him on the international map. He then set up his own studio to rival Cinecitta, making a string of cult and popular hits such as The Bible: In the Beginning, Mario Bava's Diabolik and Barbarella - by this time he was well on his way to having produced about a hundred films.
When his Italian business failed, he moved to Hollywood, mixing prestige pictures like Waterloo, Serpico, Three Days of the Condor and The Serpent's Egg with the kind of populist, critically frowned upon works his name became synonymous with. Films like Death Wish, Mandingo, Lipstick, the 1976 King Kong remake, Jaws rip-off Orca and camp classic Flash Gordon, which as he progressed into the eighties were followed by such notables as Conan the Barbarian (making Arnold Schwarzenegger a movie star), mega-flop Dune, a host of Stephen King adaptations, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, Body of Evidence and all the Hannibal Lector series except The Silence of the Lambs. A true character with a celebrated way for mangling the English language in his interviews, he was the closest thing to an old time movie mogul the latter half of the 20th Century produced.
