Silvana Mangano; Italian Movie Actress

Silvana Mangano, an Italian screen beauty and former wife of producer Dino De Laurentiis, died Saturday in a Madrid hospital of cancer. She was 59.

Mangano had been in a coma for several days after surgery, a hospital spokesman said. Three daughters from her marriage to De Laurentiis--Francesca, Veronica and Raffaela--were at the hospital when she died.

Mangano was perhaps best known for her role as a sensual country girl in director Giuseppe De Santis’ 1949 film “Bitter Rice,” a film about peasant girls working in the rice fields of northern Italy.

She emerged as a dark, sensuous star in the post-war era that also saw the rise of such world-famed Italian beauties as Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida. Throughout her film career, Mangano was often overshadowed by the two better-known actresses.

Her career was also eclipsed in later years by the fame of De Laurentiis, her husband for 34 years. She separated from De Laurentiis in 1983 and filed for divorce last year.

Mangano was born April 21, 1930, in Rome, the daughter of a Sicilian railroad worker and an English mother.

She began her film career in 1947 at the age of 16 after being selected Miss Rome in a beauty contest.

In 1949, she became an international star with her role in “Bitter Rice.”

Although she attained stardom, Mangano was never completely comfortable in her role as a screen beauty. She said once: “I never liked myself, neither when I was a roundish girl, nor when I became a slender woman.”

Since 1947, Mangano made 34 films, most of which had little success outside Italy.

In 1981, her son Federico, 26, a budding film director, was killed in a plane crash in Alaska.

After that, she withdrew from public view, although she emerged in 1983 to play the Reverend Mother in David Lynch’s science fiction epic “Dune.”