In brief
Melvin "Mel" Damski (born July 21, 1946) is an American film and television director, producer, and former journalist known for his extensive work in episodic television and made-for-TV movies, including directing episodes of acclaimed series such as MASH and serving as executive producer for Psych. Born in New York City and raised in Roslyn, Long Island, to Jewish immigrant parents who fled Nazi persecution in Europe—his father from Lithuania and mother from Poland—he was one of four children. Damski graduated from Colgate University on a football scholarship before earning an MFA from the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film Studies in 1972. His early career included stints as a sports reporter for Newsday and other outlets, where he interviewed figures like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, before transitioning to directing in 1976.
Damski's television directing credits span decades and include landmark shows like Lou Grant (seven episodes, one Emmy-nominated), Picket Fences (as both director and senior producer), Ally McBeal, Charmed, Boston Legal, and Scorpion, amassing hundreds of hours of directed content. He has also helmed over 40 movies, notably the Emmy-nominated pilot for American Dream (1981), the Christopher Award-winning Everybody's Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure (1989), and more recently, 11 Hallmark Channel films in the early 2020s. His feature films include the pirate comedy Yellowbeard (1983), featuring an ensemble cast of Graham Chapman, Peter Boyle, Cheech & Chong, Eric Idle, and other Monty Python alumni, the teen comedy Mischief (1985) and the romantic drama Happy Together (1989), while his documentary Still Kicking: The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies (1997) earned an Academy Award nomination.
Melvin Damski was born on July 21, 1946, in New York City, New York, to Jewish immigrant parents who were Holocaust survivors—his father from Lithuania and his mother from Poland—having fled Nazi persecution in Berlin, Germany. His father, Paul Damski, was born in Lithuania and worked as a boxing manager in Berlin before fleeing persecution, while his mother came from a Polish Jewish family whose parents, including furrier Sam Rosenfeld, had settled in Berlin; most of his paternal aunts and uncles were murdered during the Holocaust. The family escaped to the United States via Poland, aided by relatives in New York, where they sought safety from Hitler's regime; his mother's brother, Harry Rosenfeld, arrived at age eight with Polish passports that spared the family from immediate internment.
Damski's Northern European Jewish heritage subtly informed his early worldview, reflecting the cultural endurance of his parents' roots amid their American reinvention.
