Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis (Italian:[ˈdiːnodelauˈrɛnti.is]; 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.
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 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.[2] In 1990, he obtained backing from an Italian friend and formed another company: Dino De Laurentiis Communications in
Beverly Hills.
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.[3]
The first store was opened in the restored palm court in the ornate lobby of the historical
Endicott Hotel now a co-op on Manhattan's
Upper West Side in close proximity to the older establishment,
Zabar's food emporium on Broadway.[4] 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".[5]
Food critic
Gael Greene wrote a scathing review on the opening in New York.[4] 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."[6] A review in The San Francisco Examiner said that it was "worth a peek and a purchase".[7][8]
DDL Foodshow was later considered to be a forebear of the new Italian specialty goods food-store restaurant dining attraction
Eataly.[9]
Personal life
De Laurentiis' brief first marriage in Italy was annulled.[10]
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, a fellow 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,[11] and she died of lung cancer the following year.
Having lived in the U.S. since 1976,[12] De Laurentiis became an American citizen in 1986.[13]
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.
In 1958, De Laurentiis won the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for producing La Strada. It was the only time where individuals could win the award instead of the country it was made in and in the case of the first Foreign Film Oscar, he and his fellow producer won the Academy Award, as opposed to the director of the film
Federico Fellini.