Carlo Ponti, 94, film producer and Sophia Loren's husband

ROME - Carlo Ponti, 94, the movie producer who discovered Sophia Loren and launched the movie icon's career, has died.

"I have done everything for love of Sophia," Mr. Ponti said in a newspaper interview in 2002.

He died Tuesday at a Geneva hospital, his family and Loren's agents said. He had been hospitalized about 10 days earlier because of pulmonary complications.

He produced more than 100 movies, including Doctor Zhivago, The Firemen's Ball, and The Great Day, which were nominated for Oscars. Other major movies included Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point.

In 1956, Federico Fellini's La Strada, which he coproduced, won the Oscar for best foreign film, as did Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow in 1964.

Loren was only 15 - and 25 years younger than Mr. Ponti - when they met in 1950. Mr. Ponti was married to his first wife, Giuliana, at the time. The couple tried to keep their relationship secret, while Mr. Ponti's lawyers went to Mexico to obtain a divorce from his first wife. Divorce was not yet legal in Italy.

Loren had roles in 34 of the more than 151 movies Mr. Ponti produced or coproduced.

They wed by proxy in Mexico in 1957 - two male attorneys took their place, and the happy couple found out only when a society columnist broke the news. But they were unable to beat stringent Italian laws.

The couple lived in exile, and then, after their Mexican marriage was annulled, in secret in Italy. They finally got around Italian law by becoming French citizens, and they married for a second time in Paris in 1966.

He and Loren had two sons, Carlo Jr. and Edoardo. He had two children from his first marriage, Guendolina and Alexander.