Richard Belzer, the celebrated longtime comedian who became one of TV’s most indelible detectives, known as John Munch in Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: SVU, has died. He was 78 years old.
Belzer died Sunday at his home in Beausoleil, southern France, longtime friend Bill Scheft told The Hollywood Reporter. Comedian Laraine Newman first announced his death on Twitter. “Rest in peace Richard,” Belzer’s cousin, actor Henry Winkler, wrote.
For more than two decades, and across 10 series – even including appearances on 30 Rock and Arrested Development – Belzer has played a wise and acerbic homicide detective prone to conspiracy theories. Belzer first played Munch in a 1993 episode of Homicide and last played him in the 2016’s Law & Order:
Richard Belzer never auditioned for the role. After hearing about it on The Howard Stern Show, executive producer Barry Levinson brought in the comedian to read for the part.
Richard Belzer said, “I will never be a detective. But if I were, that’s who I would be.” “They write all my paranoid, anti-establishment theories about dissent and conspiracy. So it was a lot of fun for me. A dream.”
From this unlikely start, Belzer’s Munch will become one of television’s longest-running characters with a sunglasses-wearing presence on the small screen for more than two decades. In 2008, Belzer published his novel, I’m Not a Cop! With Michael Ian Black. He also helped write several books on conspiracy theories, such as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
“He made me laugh a billion times,” tweeted longtime friend and fellow stand-up artist Richard Lewis.
Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Belzer was drawn to acting, he said, during an abusive childhood during which his mother and older brother, Lynn, beat him. “My kitchen was the hardest room I ever worked in,” Belzer told People magazine in 1993.
Read More: Pelicans’ Jose Alvarado Steals the Show and Wins the Rising Stars MVP Award
After being expelled from Dean Junior College in Massachusetts, Richard Belzer launched into stand-up life in New York City in 1972. On Catch A Rising Star, Belzer became a regular. He made his big screen debut in Ken Shapiro’s The Groove Tube in 1974, a TV satire starring Chevy Chase, a spin-off of the Channel One comedy block that Belzer was a part of.
Before Saturday Night Live changed the New York comedy scene, Belzer sang with John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, and others on National Lampoon Radio Hour. In 1975, he became the warm-up comedian for the new SNL. While many of the cast members rose to fame, Belzer’s roles were mainly on a smaller scale. He later said that Lorne Michaels, the creator of SNL, reneged on his promise to cast him on the show.
