# Dino De Laurentiis

Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis (Italian:; 8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010) was an Italian film producer and businessman who held both Italian and American citizenship. Following a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he moved into film production; alongside Carlo Ponti, he brought Italian cinema to the international scene in the post-World War II period. He produced or co-produced over 500 films, with 38 of his Hollywood films receiving Academy Award nominations. He was also the creator and operator of DDL Foodshow, a chain of Italian specialty foods stores.

## Early life

Agostino De Laurentiis was born in Torre Annunziata, Kingdom of Italy, on 8 August 1919. He grew up selling spaghetti made by his father's pasta factory. His older brother, Luigi De Laurentiis (1917–1992), later followed him into film production. He studied at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1937 and 1938, but his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II.

## Career
### Film production

De Laurentiis produced his first film, L'ultimo Combattimento, in 1941. His company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into film production in 1946. In the early years, De Laurentiis produced Italian neorealist films such as Bitter Rice (1949) and the early Fellini works La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1956), often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti.
In the 1960s, De Laurentiis built his own studio facilities. He produced such films as Barabbas (1961), a Christian religious epic; The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966); Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1966), an spoof of the James Bond films; 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 (1972), released before its originally scheduled date in order to capitalize on the popularity of The Godfather.
In 1973, De Laurentiis relocated his headquarters to New York and he was reportedly considering to produce an American television series. His studio financially collapsed during the 1970s. In the 1980s, he had his own studio: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) based in Wilmington, North Carolina. The studio made Wilmington an unexpected center of film and television production. In 1990, he obtained backing from an Italian friend and formed another company: Dino De Laurentiis Communications in Beverly Hills.
De Laurentiis produced a number of successful 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), Blue Velvet (1986) and Breakdown (1997). De Laurentiis' name became well known through the 1976 King Kong remake, which was a commercial hit; Lipstick (1976), a rape and revenge drama; Orca (1977), a killer whale film; The White Buffalo (1977), a western; the disaster movie Hurricane (1979); the remake of Flash Gordon (1980); David Lynch's Dune (1984); The Bounty (1984); and King Kong Lives (1986).
De Laurentiis produced several adaptations of Stephen King works, including The Dead Zone (1983), Cat's Eye (1985), Silver Bullet (1985), and Maximum Overdrive (1986). De Laurentiis' company was involved with the horror sequels Halloween II (1981), Evil Dead II (1987), and Army of Darkness (1992). De Laurentiis also produced the first Hannibal Lecter film, Manhunter (1986), an adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon. He passed on adapting the novels' sequel, The Silence of the Lambs (1991), but produced the two follow-ups, Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002), a re-adaptation of the novel. He also produced the prequel Hannibal Rising (2007), which tells the story of how Hannibal becomes a serial killer.

### DDL Foodshow

DDL Foodshow was an Italian specialty foods store with three locations: two in New York City and one in Beverly Hills. They were opened in the mid-1980s, and were owned and operated by De Laurentiis.
The first store was opened in the restored palm court in the ornate lobby of the historic Endicott Hotel, now a co-op on Manhattan's Upper West Side, near the existing Zabar's food emporium on Broadway. The first NYC store opened in November 1982, and it was reported that the store "opened to crowds of 30,000 over the Thanksgiving weekend, when de Laurentiis himself greeted customers at the door". The store's assistant manager said that "it was like the premiere of a movie".
The food critic Gael Greene wrote a scathing review on the opening in New York. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune a month later, she admitted that the store was "probably the most stunningly handsome grocery in the world, certainly in New York", but "the pricing was insane. They hadn't paid enough attention to the competition." She reported that she'd talked to De Laurentiis: "Dino's reaction was that I'm full of it. And we're meeting over a bowl of pasta to discuss it." A review in The San Francisco Examiner said that it was "worth a peek and a purchase".
DDL Foodshow was later considered to be a forebear of the new Italian specialty goods food-store restaurant dining attraction Eataly.

## Personal life

De Laurentiis' brief first marriage in Italy was annulled.
In 1949, De Laurentiis married Italian-British actress Silvana Mangano, with whom he had four children: Veronica, an author and actress; Raffaella, a fellow film producer; Federico, also a film producer who died in a plane crash in 1981; and Francesca. His granddaughter through Veronica is chef Giada De Laurentiis, while his nephew through his brother Luigi is fellow film producer Aurelio De Laurentiis. He and Mangano divorced in 1988, and she died of lung cancer the following year.
Having lived in the U.S. since 1976, De Laurentiis became an American citizen in 1986.
In 1990, De Laurentiis married American producer Martha Schumacher, who had produced many of his films since 1985. They had two daughters named Carolyna and Dina and remained married until his death in 2010. Schumacher died of cancer in 2021.

## Death

On 10 November 2010, at the age of 91, De Laurentiis died at his home in Beverly Hills, California.

## Awards and recognitions

In 1957, De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for producing La Strada (1954). This was a unique occasion when the producers' names were included in the nominations, and they, not the director Federico Fellini, received the award.
In 2001, De Laurentiis received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In 2012, he was posthumously honored with the America Award by the Italy–USA Foundation.

## Filmography
### Producer

| Year | Title | Director(s) |
| 1946 | Black Eagle | Riccardo Freda |
| 1946 | The Bandit | Alberto Lattuada |
| 1947 | The Captain's Daughter | Mario Camerini |
| 1947 | Bullet for Stefano | Duilio Coletti |
| 1948 | Bitter Rice | Giuseppe De Santis |
| 1948 | The Street Has Many Dreams | Mario Camerini |
| 1949 | The Wolf of the Sila | Duilio Coletti |
| 1950 | I'm in the Revue | Mario Soldati |
| 1951 | Anna | Alberto Lattuada |
| 1952 | Europe '51 | Roberto Rossellini |
| 1952 | Lieutenant Giorgio | Raffaello Matarazzo |
| 1952 | Toto in Color | Steno |
| 1953 | Funniest Show on Earth | Mario Mattoli |
| 1953 | The Unfaithfuls | Mario Monicelli |
| 1953 | Man, Beast and Virtue | Steno |
| 1954 | La Strada | Federico Fellini |
| 1954 | Attila | Pietro Francisci |
| 1954 | Woman of Rome | Luigi Zampa |
| 1954 | The Gold of Naples | Vittorio De Sica |
| 1954 | Where Is Freedom? | Roberto Rossellini |
| 1954 | A Slice of Life | Alessandro Blasetti Paul Paviot |
| 1954 | An American in Rome | Steno |
| 1954 | Ulysses | Mario Camerini |
| 1955 | The River Girl | Mario Soldati |
| 1955 | Mambo | Robert Rossen |
| 1955 | The Miller's Beautiful Wife | Mario Camerini |
| 1956 | War and Peace | King Vidor |
| 1956 | Nights of Cabiria | Federico Fellini |
| 1958 | This Angry Age | René Clément |
| 1958 | Tempest | Alberto Lattuada |
| 1959 | The Great War | Mario Monicelli |
| 1960 | Everybody Go Home | Luigi Comencini |
| 1960 | Five Branded Women | Martin Ritt |
| 1960 | Under Ten Flags | Duilio Coletti |
| 1960 | Crimen | Mario Camerini |
| 1960 | The Hunchback of Rome | Carlo Lizzani |
| 1961 | The Last Judgment | Vittorio De Sica |
| 1961 | A Difficult Life | Dino Risi |
| 1961 | Black City | Duilio Coletti |
| 1962 | The Italian Brigands | Mario Camerini |
| 1963 | Il Boom | Vittorio De Sica |
| 1963 | The Verona Trial | Carlo Lizzani |
| 1964 | My Wife | Luigi Comencini Mauro Bolognini Tinto Brass |
| 1966 | The Bible: In the Beginning | John Huston |
| 1966 | Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die | Henry Levin |
| 1966 | Navajo Joe | Sergio Corbucci |
| 1967 | The Stranger | Luchino Visconti |
| 1967 | Matchless | Alberto Lattuada |
| 1967 | The Witches | Luchino Visconti Mauro Bolognini Pier Paolo Pasolini Franco Rossi Vittorio De Sica |
| 1968 | Danger: Diabolik | Mario Bava |
| 1968 | Barbarella | Roger Vadim |
| 1968 | Anzio | Edward Dmytryk Duilio Coletti |
| 1968 | Bandits in Milan | Carlo Lizzani |
| 1968 | Caprice Italian Style | Mauro Bolognini Mario Monicelli Pier Paolo Pasolini Steno |
| 1969 | Fräulein Doktor | Alberto Lattuada |
| 1969 | Brief Season | Renato Castellani |
| 1969 | The Bandit | Carlo Lizzani |
| 1970 | A Man Called Sledge | Vic Morrow |
| 1970 | Waterloo | Sergei Bondarchuk |
| 1970 | The Deserter | Burt Kennedy |
| 1972 | The Valachi Papers | Terence Young |
| 1972 | The Assassin of Rome | Damiano Damiani |
| 1972 | The Most Wonderful Evening of My Life | Ettore Scola |
| 1973 | Mean Frank and Crazy Tony | Michele Lupo |
| 1974 | Two Missionaries | Franco Rossi |
| 1974 | Crazy Joe | Carlo Lizzani |
| 1974 | Three Tough Guys | Duccio Tessari |
| 1975 | Mandingo | Richard Fleischer |
| 1976 | King Kong | John Guillermin |
| 1976 | The Serpent's Egg | Ingmar Bergman |
| 1976 | The Shootist | Don Siegel |
| 1979 | Hurricane | Jan Troell |
| 1980 | Flash Gordon | Mike Hodges |
| 1981 | Ragtime | Miloš Forman |
| 1985 | Marie | Roger Donaldson |
| 1985 | Cat's Eye | Lewis Teague |
| 1985 | Year of the Dragon | Michael Cimino |
| 1985 | Red Sonja | Richard Fleischer |
| 1987 | Million Dollar Mystery | Richard Fleischer |
| 1987 | Hiding Out | Bob Giraldi |
| 1987 | Evil Dead II | Sam Raimi |
| 1987 | The Bedroom Window | Curtis Hanson |
| 1987 | From the Hip | Bob Clark |
| 1989 | Collision Course | Lewis Teague |
| 1990 | Sometimes They Come Back | Tom McLoughlin |
| 1990 | Desperate Hours | Michael Cimino |
| 1992 | Once Upon a Crime | Eugene Levy |
| 1992 | Kuffs | Bruce A. Evans |
| 1992 | Body of Evidence | Uli Edel |
| 1995 | Solomon & Sheba | Robert Young |
| 1995 | Slave of Dreams | Robert Young |
| 1995 | Rumpelstiltskin | Mark Jones |
| 1996 | Unforgettable | John Dahl |
| 1997 | Breakdown | Jonathan Mostow |
| 2000 | U-571 | Jonathan Mostow |
| 2001 | Hannibal | Ridley Scott |
| 2002 | Red Dragon | Brett Ratner |
| 2007 | Hannibal Rising | Peter Webber |
| 2007 | Virgin Territory | David Leland |
| Year | Title | Director |
| 1954 | Poverty and Nobility | Mario Mattoli |
| 1956 | Toto, Peppino, and the Hussy | Camillo Mastrocinque |
| 1960 | Toto, Fabrizi and the Young People Today | Mario Mattoli |
| 1961 | Totòtruffa 62 | Camillo Mastrocinque |
| 1963 | The Hours of Love | Luciano Salce |
| 1965 | Pierrot le Fou | Jean-Luc Godard |
| 1973 | Chino | John Sturges |
| 1974 | Death Wish | Michael Winner |
| 1976 | Drum | Steve Carver |
| 1986 | Pirates | Roman Polanski |
| 2006 | The Last Legion | Doug Lefler |

### Executive producer

| Year | Title | Director |
| 1961 | Goliath and the Vampires | Sergio Corbucci Giacomo Gentilomo |
| 1961 | The Best of Enemies | Guy Hamilton |
| 1961 | Io amo, tu ami | Alessandro Blasetti |
| 1962 | The Police Commissioner | Luigi Comencini |
| 1962 | Mafioso | Alberto Lattuada |
| 1973 | Serpico | Sidney Lumet |
| 1976 | Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson | Robert Altman |
| 1978 | The First Great Train Robbery | Michael Crichton |
| 1978 | King of the Gypsies | Frank Pierson |
| 1984 | The Bounty | Roger Donaldson |
| 1986 | Raw Deal | John Irvin |
| 1986 | Maximum Overdrive | Stephen King |
| 1986 | Tai-Pan | Daryl Duke |
| 1992 | Army of Darkness | Sam Raimi |
| 1995 | Assassins | Richard Donner |
Uncredited
| Year | Title | Director |
| 1957 | Guendalina | Alberto Lattuada |
| 1961 | The Fascist | Luciano Salce |
| 1965 | Battle of the Bulge | Ken Annakin |
| 1966 | The Hills Run Red | Carlo Lizzani |
| 1975 | Three Days of the Condor | Sydney Pollack |
| 1976 | Lipstick | Lamont Johnson |
| 1977 | The White Buffalo | J. Lee Thompson |
| 1977 | Orca | Michael Anderson |
| 1978 | The Brink's Job | William Friedkin |
| 1979 | Beyond the Reef | Frank C. Clarke |
| 1981 | Halloween II | Rick Rosenthal |
| 1982 | Conan the Barbarian | John Milius |
| 1982 | Fighting Back | Lewis Teague |
| 1982 | Amityville II: The Possession | Damiano Damiani |
| 1982 | Halloween III: Season of the Witch | Tommy Lee Wallace |
| 1983 | The Dead Zone | David Cronenberg |
| 1984 | Firestarter | Mark L. Lester |
| 1984 | Conan the Destroyer | Richard Fleischer |
| 1984 | Dune | David Lynch |
| 1985 | Silver Bullet | Daniel Attias |
| 1986 | Crimes of the Heart | Bruce Beresford |
| 1986 | Manhunter | Michael Mann |
| 1986 | Blue Velvet | David Lynch |
| 1986 | King Kong Lives | John Guillermin |
| 1989 | Leviathan | George P. Cosmatos |
| 1990 | The Rift | Juan Piquer Simón |
| 1996 | Bound | The Wachowskis |