Howard Storm

Howard Storm — born Howard Sobel on December 11, 1931, on the kitchen floor of an apartment on New York City's Lower East Side — spent ninety-four years proving that laughter is its own kind of genius. The son of vaudevillian Jack Sobel, he claimed to have known from the age of two that he was destined for show business. That certainty never wavered. Storm launched his career in the 1950s as a stand-up comedian, working the top nightclubs in America — Mister Kelly's in Chicago, the Copacabana in New York, the hungry i in San Francisco. He appeared regularly on The Merv Griffin Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, managed alongside Woody Allen, Dick Cavett, and Mike Nichols and Elaine May by the celebrated team of Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe. In 1959 he joined Lucille Ball's Desilu Workshop, where he met future TCM host Robert Osborne and his first wife, singer Marilyn Lovell. It was his work as Woody Allen's assistant on Bananas (1971) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972) that turned Storm toward the director's chair. His television debut came in 1975 on CBS's Rhoda, and within three years he had landed the assignment that would define his legacy: directing Mork & Mindy. He helmed 59 of the show's 95 episodes, becoming its unofficial house director and the man most responsible for giving Robin Williams the improvisational freedom he needed to be extraordinary. "This is like working with Charlie Chaplin," Storm told his wife after his first day on set. "This kid is a genius — it's scary." Williams, who wore a beard in that first season, affectionately called him "Papa." Beyond Mork & Mindy, Storm directed landmark episodes of Laverne & Shirley, Taxi, Full House, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Kenan & Kel, and guided Jim Carrey through his first lead film role in Once Bitten (1985). He served as Chairman of the Directors Guild of America Awards Committee from 1996 to 2012. Away from the set, he was a devoted gardener of flowers and an incomparable storyteller whose tales ranged across eight decades of American comedy history. Howard Storm is survived by his wife, Patricia Ridgely Storm, and his sons Casey and Anthony. He died of natural causes at his home in Beverly Hills on May 26, 2026. The world, as those who loved him said, is less funny without him.