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John Frankenheimer, director of The Manchurian Candidate and Birdman of Alcatraz, died Saturday, July 6, of a stroke following spinal surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 72.

"He was one of those rarest of people who, simply put, can never be replaced," said Directors Guild of America president Martha Coolidge. "John's passion for filmmaking and his appetite for life were without equal."

Frankenheimer learned the basics of filmmaking in the Air Force and joined CBS Television in 1954, quickly moving up the ranks to become assistant director on Person to Person, the interview show. He directed more than 150 live TV productions in the 1950s, and was one of several big-name directors who honed their skills on the legendary program Playhouse 90. He made his enviable reputation as a feature-film director in the early 1960s with dramas and political thrillers like Seven Days in May, a Burt Lancaster vehicle about an aborted military coup.

By his own account, Frankenheimer survived a drinking problem that nearly killed him. Attorney General and would-be presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was his houseguest during a swing through Los Angeles, and Frankenheimer took him to the Ambassador Hotel the night he was assassinated in 1968. The event launched Frankenheimer on a downward spiral that took superhuman effort to turn around, he claimed.

Drinking took its toll on his work throughout the 1970s, a period in which he made mostly forgettable films. Black Sunday, a 1977 film about a terrorist attack on the Super Bowl, was perhaps his most memorable film from that period. In the late 1980s he stopped drinking, and by 1990 had returned to television, directing films for the cable industry. In the last decade, he won four consecutive Emmys for his made-for-TV movies. His George Wallace, which appeared in 1997, won both a Peabody Award and a Golden Globe for best made-for-television film. His most recent film, Path to War, appeared on HBO this past May.

Frankenheimer is survived by his wife, Evans, to whom he was married for 41 years, two daughters, a grandson, a sister, and a brother. As of this report, funeral arrangements were pending. His complete filmography can be viewed on the Internet Movie Database.