DINO DE LAURENTIIS DIES AT AGE 91

Italian news media are reporting the death of legendary film producer Dino De Laurentiis in Los Angeles at the age of 91. Beginning in 1940 with L’ultimo Combattimento De Laurentiis went on to produce more than 500 films, including the Fellini classics La Strada (which brought him an Oscar) and Nights of Cabiria in the 1950s, and the Jane Fonda starrer Barbarella and the gangster thriller The Valachi Papers in the 1960s. When his Italian production company collapsed in the 1970s, he relocated to the U.S., where he produced such hits as Serpico, Death Wish, Three Days of the Condor and a remake of King Kong. His films in the 1980s included Ragtime, Conan the Barbarian, Blue Velvet, Stephen King’s The Dead Zone and other adaptations of King’s novels. His films in the 1990s and 2000s were undistinguished, most noteworthy for three Hannibal Lecter sequels to Silence of the Lambs (a film that he did not produce), Hannibal, Red Dragon, and Hannibal Rising. He received 38 Oscar nominations during his career and in 2001 received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.