Up for auction "The Godfather" Dino De Laurentiis Hand Signed 3X5 Card.

ES-3632D

Agostino

"Dino" De Laurentiis (Italian: [ˈdiːno de lauˈrɛnti.is]; 8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010)

was an Italian-American film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers who brought Italian cinema to the international scene at the end of

World War II. He produced or co-produced more than 500 films, of which 38 were

nominated for Academy Awards. He also

had a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s. De Laurentiis was

born at Torre Annunziata in

the province of Naples, and

grew up selling spaghetti made by his father's pasta factory. He started his

studies at the Centro

Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome in the years 1937–1938

then interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. Following his first film, L'ultimo

Combattimento (1940), De Laurentiis produced nearly 150 films during

the next seven decades. In 1946 his company, the Dino de Laurentiis

Cinematografica, moved into production. 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,

Laurentiis built his own studio facilities, although these financially

collapsed during the 1970s. During this period, though, De Laurentiis produced

such films as Barabbas (1961),

a Christian religious epic; The Bible: In the

Beginning... (1966), Kiss the Girls and Make

Them Die, an imitation James Bond film; 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),

made to coincide with the popularity of The Godfather  De Laurentiis relocated to the US in 1976, and

became an American citizen in 1986. In the 1980s he had his own studio, De Laurentiis

Entertainment Group (DEG), based in Wilmington, North Carolina.

The building of the studio made Wilmington a center of film and television

production. In 1990, De Laurentiis obtained backing from an

Italian friend and formed another company, Dino De Laurentiis Communications in

Beverly Hills. De Laurentiis made a number of successful and/or acclaimed

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); and King Kong Lives (1986). De Laurentiis also 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's company was involved with the horror sequels Halloween II (1981), Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992).