Lombardo, Goffredo

(1920-2005)

   Producer. Son of the founder of the Titanus film company, Gustavo Lombardo, and silent diva Leda Gys, Lombardo graduated in law from the University of Rome before joining the film industry as a scene painter in the late 1930s. After the war he joined his father as an assistant producer and on his father's death in 1951 took over the company, greatly improving its fortunes through the production of a series of enormously popular melodramas directed by Raffaele Matarazzo. With a keen eye for what would be successful at the box office, Lombardo also produced Pane, amore e fantasia (Bread, Love and Dreams, 1953) and its two sequels, Pane, amore e gelosia (Bread, Love and Jealousy, 1954, also known as Frisky) and Pane, amore e . . . (Scandal in Sorrento, 1955), the latter showcasing both the looks and talents of a still little-known Sophia Loren. For Lombardo, however, commercial success was not an end in itself, and he used the profits from these and other popular films to support auteurist cinema, distributing and promoting the films of emerging young directors like Ermanno Olmi and Valerio Zurlini, and producing Federico Fellini's Il bidone (The Swindle, 1955), Luchino Visconti's Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers, 1960), and Vittorio De Sica's La ciociara (Two Women, 1960).

   However, budget overruns on Visconti's II gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963) and Robert Aldrich's Sodom and Gomorrah (1962) put the company into serious financial difficulties and Lombardo was soon forced to sell the Titanus studios, although he succeeded in keeping the production arm of the company intact. Continuing to display courage and foresight, he financed Dario Argento's directorial debut, L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, 1970) as well as Giuseppe Tornatore's first film, Il camorrista (The Professor, 1986). Nevertheless, after a long and productive career during which he was awarded the Nastro d'argento twice and the David di Donatello three times, in 1989, in the wake of a disappointing response to Luigi Comencini's Buon Natale . . . Buon Anno (Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, 1989), Lombardo decided to retire from the industry, leaving the company in the hands of his son Guido.