Director Paul Wendkos, whose career spanned fifty years and covered some 100 films and television shows, has died due to a lung infection that followed a stroke. He was 84. Family representative C. Christie Craig said Wendkos died Thursday in Malibu, Calif.

While Wendkos' biggest commerical success was the 1961 movie "Gidget," much of his work was in television.

His other films included 1969's "Guns of the Magnificent Seven" and 1970's "Hell Boats."

He worked on a wide variety of TV shows throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, before transitioning to made-for-TV films and miniseries. Some highlights include "The Legend of Lizzie Borden," starring Elizabeth Montgomery, and 1978's "A Woman Called Moses" with Cicely Tyson. His final directing job was on the 1999 made-for-TV film "Different," which starred Annabeth Gish as a young woman who was left mentally disabled after a car crash.

Wendkos was born Sept. 20, 1925 in Philadelphia and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He attended Columbia University in New York and later studied film history and aesthetics at the New School for Social Research.

Wendkos married Ruth Burnat in 1953, and the couple had one son, Jordan Elkan Wendkos. Ruth died in 1978. Wendkos's second marriage was to former NBC television producer Lin Bolen. He is survived by Bolen, his son Jordan, a granddaughter, niece and nephews.