Stand-up comedian known for longtime role as TV detective
NEW YORK — Richard Belzer, the longtime stand-up comedian who became one of TV’S most indelible detectives as John Munch in “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Law & Order: SVU,” has died. He was 78.
Belzer died Sunday at his home in Beaulieu-sur-mer, in southern France, his longtime friend Bill Scheft said. Scheft, a writer who had been working on a docu- mentary about Belzer, said there was no known cause of death, but that Belzer had been dealing with circulatory and respiratory issues. The actor Henry Winkler, Belzer’s cousin, tweeted, “Rest in peace Richard.”
For more than two decades and across 10 series — even including appearances on “30 Rock” and “Arrested Development” — Belzer played the wise-cracking, acerbic homi- cide detective prone to conspiracy theories. Belzer first played Munch on a 1993 epi- sode of “Homicide” and last played him in 2016 on “Law & Order: SVU.”
Belzer never auditioned for the role. After hearing him on “The Howard Stern Show,” executive producer Barry Levinson brought the come- dian in to read for the part.
“I would never be a detective. But if I were, that’s how I’d be,” Belzer once said. “They write to all my para- noia and anti-establishment dissidence and conspiracy theories. So it’s been a lot of fun for me. A dream, really.”
From that unlikely beginning, Belzer’s Munch would become one of television’s longest-running characters and a sunglasses-wearing presence on the small screen for more than two decades. In 2008, Belzer published the novel “I Am Not a Cop!” with Michael Ian Black.
Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Belzer was drawn to comedy, he said, during an abusive childhood in which his mother would beat him and his older brother, Len.
After being expelled from Dean Junior College in Massachusetts, Belzer embarked on a life of stand-up in New York in 1972. At Catch a Rising Star, Belzer became a regular. He made his big-screen debut in Ken Shapiro’s 1974 film “The Groove Tube,” a TV satire co-starring Chevy Chase, a film that grew out of the comedy group Channel One that Belzer was a part of.
Before “Saturday Night Live” changed the comedy scene in New York, Belzer performed with John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray and others on the National Lampoon Radio Hour. In 1975, he became the warm-up comic for the newly launched “SNL.”