Sophia Loren was today mourning her husband of almost 50 years, Carlo Ponti, the Italian film producer who transformed her from teenage beauty queen into one of the world’s most glamorous icons.

Ponti, 94, was surrounded by his doting wife and family when he died in a Geneva hospital last night following pulmonary complications.

"It was a peaceful death, there was not a particular problem. His wife and children were with him. Sophia has always been with him throughout," said Alessandra Mussolini, grand-daughter of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and a niece of Loren.

The couple met in 1952 when Ponti, already an established producer and a married man, voted for Loren, who was then a poor 17-year-old girl from a Naples slum, in a beauty contest.

He cast her in a documentary and soon afterwards Loren made her name as Italy’s premier sex symbol to rival the likes of Brigid Bardot and Marilyn Monroe.

In 1957, Ponti, who became famous for producing classics including La Strada and Doctor Zhivago, married Loren after he unsuccessfully sought from the Vatican an annulment to his first marriage. The marriage caused huge problems for the couple and they were forced to flee from Italy after Ponti was charged with bigamy. He was not acquitted until 1968.

Ponti became a French citizen in 1965 and remarried Loren the following year. The couple had two sons, Carlo Ponti Jr, who is the music director of the San Bernardino Symphony, and Edoardo Ponti, a film director. Ponti also had a son Alex Ponti, also a film producer, by his first wife.

"His death marks the end of an era for film-making because Ponti embodied a great and courageous push to innovate, promoted unforgettable talents and enjoyed huge success," Francesco Rutelli, the Italian Culture Minister, said today.

Ponti was born near Milan in 1912 and studied law. His move into the film industry happened by accident in 1938 when a film producer and client of the law firm he was working for asked him to take over because he was escaping from fascist-era Italy.

"Even then my ambition was to make films of quality, preferably taking the subjects from literature and using directors from a literary background," Ponti once said.

In 1950 he formed a partnership with Dino De Laurentiis and over the next seven years they produced some of the most influential films of Italian cinema, including Fellini's La Strada (1954).

Ponti was nominated for an Oscar as producer of Doctor Zhivago (1965) and went on to produce other well-known films including, Blow-Up, The Cassandra Crossing, The Verdict and The Squeeze.

In 1979, he was sentenced, in his absence, to four years in jail and fined $26 million for illegally exporting money. He was cleared of the charges in 1987.

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