One the most prominent American film directors, Elia Kazan, has died at the age of 94. The son of a Greek immigrant, he won a number of awards as a stage director before extending his talents to writing and the cinema. He directed some of America's best known films of the 1950s and 1960s, including On the Waterfront, East of Eden and Splendor in the Grass. However some critics have said Kazan diminished his stature during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s, when he named Communist sympathisers who had worked with him. He had always insisted years later that he had done the right thing and bore no guilt. Kazan died at his home in New York on Sunday. No details about the cause of death have been given.