November 23, 2009

Stroke Claims Director Paul Wendkos

Gidget director Wendkos helmed numerous television movies and miniseries, as well as big screen features.

Paul Wendkos, a prolific television and motion picture director whose resume ranged from historical dramas to buoyant Gidget movies, died November 12, 2009, at his home in Malibu, California. He was 84.

The reported cause was complications of a stroke

Wendkos, whose career spanned more than 40 years, began his career as a film director with The Burglar, a thriller starring Jayne Mansfield. This led to Gidget, in which Sandra De starred as a surfing-obsessed tomboy who finds love for the first time. A sequel, Gidget Goes Hawaiian, followed.

In the ensuing years, Wendkos directed other feature films, including Guns of the Magnificent Seven and The Mephisto Waltz.

The majority of his work was in television, including episodes of The Untouchables, Hawaii Five-O, The FBI and I Spy. He also directed many made-for-television movies — including The Patty Hearst Ordeal, A Cry for Love, The Five of Me, Scorned and Swindled, Right to Die and Cross of Fire.

Wendkos also made miniseries, such as A Woman Called Moses, Harold Robbins’ 79 Park Avenue and Celebrity.

He was born Abraham Paul Wendkos on Sepember 20, 1925, in Philadelphia. He served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, after which he graduated from Columbia University. He went on to studied film at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

Wendkos’s first wife died in 1978. He is survived by his second wife, a son and a granddaughter.

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