Mel Stuart, an award-winning American documentarian who also directed Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, has died. He was 83.

Mel Stuart, shown Aug. 18, 2011, died Thursday in Los Angeles of cancer. He was 83. (StarPix/ Marion Curtis/Associated Press)

His daughter, Madeline Stuart, said he died Thursday night of cancer at his home in Los Angeles.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Stuart was associated with David L. Wolper, with whom he established a base of West Coast documentary production at a time when New York filmmakers and TV networks' news divisions dominated the field.

Stuart's documentaries during those years include The Making of the President 1960, about the race between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, which was completed just before Kennedy's assassination. He won an Emmy for the documentary and went on to explore the campaigns of 1964 and 1968, basing his work on Theodore White's Pulitzer-winner books about the campaign.

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Other programs were The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a three-part TV series based on William L. Shirer's book about the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, and the Oscar-nominated Four Days in November, about the JFK assassination.

His groundbreaking 1973 film Wattstax focused on the black community in Los Angeles' Watts district and a concert organized to commemorate the 1965 Watts riots. It won a Golden Globe and was screened at Cannes.

By 1980, Stuart was an independent producer and director whose credits include portraits for PBS' American Masters on artist Man Ray and the director Billy Wilder. He was executive producer of the 1980s ABC series Ripley's Believe It or Not, whose host was Jack Palance.

Airing on PBS in 2005, The Hobart Shakespeareans was Stuart's profile of a teacher in inner-city Los Angeles whose fifth-grade class each year performed a play by William Shakespeare.

Gene Wilder portrays Willy Wonka as the world’s greatest confectioner in a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,a film Mel Stuart made at the request of his daughter. (NBC/Associated Press)

He produced or directed various dramas including The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal, Ruby and Oswald and the 1981 TV film Bill, starring Mickey Rooney and Dennis Quaid, which won a Golden Globe and a Peabody award.

Children's classic

Stuart made the 1971 musical fantasy Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder, at the request of his daughter Madeline, who was a fan of the Roald Dahl children's classic. With Wilder as Willy Wonka (and 11-year-old Madeline in a cameo role as a student in a classroom scene), it became an enduring family favourite.

Other features include Stuart's 1969 comedy-romance, If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, starring Suzanne Pleshette and Ian McShane.

A New York native, Stuart attended New York University, where he set aside his early aspirations to be a composer in favour of a career in filmmaking.

Before joining forces with the Wolper Organization, he was a researcher for CBS News' 1950s documentary series, The 20th Century, which was hosted and narrated by Walter Cronkite.

Besides his daughter, an interior designer, Stuart is survived by sons Andrew, a literary agent, and Peter, a filmmaker.