Richard Belzer, the longtime stand-up comedian who became one of TV’s most indelible detectives as John Munch on Homicide: Life on the Street and Law & Order: SVU, has passed away. He was 78 years old.
Belzer died Sunday at his home in Bojoles, southern France, his longtime friend Bill Schaft told The Hollywood Reporter. Comedian Lauren Newman was the first to announce her death on Twitter. Actor Henry Winkler, Belzer’s cousin, wrote “May Richard rest in peace.”
Over two decades and across 10 series — even including appearances on 30 Rock and Arrested Development — Belzer played the wise-cracking, acerbic homicide detective with a penchant for conspiracy theories. Belzer first played Munch in a 1993 episode of Homicide and last played 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 comedian in to read for the part.
“I will never be a detective. But if I were, I would be like this,” Belzer once said. “They write down all my paranoia and anti-authoritarian discontent and conspiracy theories. So it’s a lot of fun for me. A dream, really.”
From that unlikely beginning, Belzer’s Munch became one of television’s longest-running characters and a sunglasses-wearing presence on the small screen for more than two decades. In 2008, Belzer starred in I’m Not a Cop! Novel published. With Michael Ian Black. He also helped write several books on conspiracy theories about such things as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
His longtime friend and fellow stand-up Richard Lewis said on Twitter, “He made me laugh a billion times.”
Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Belzer was drawn to comedy, he said, during an abusive childhood in which his mother beat him and his older brother, Lane. “My kitchen was the most difficult room I ever had,” Belzer told People magazine in 1993.
After dropping out of Dean Junior College in Massachusetts, Belzer began a life of stand-up in New York in 1972. In 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, of which Belzer was a part.
Before Saturday Night Live changed the comedy scene in New York, Belzer performed on the National Lampoon Radio Hour with John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, and others. In 1975, he became the warm-up comic for the newly launched SNL. While several cast members quickly became famous, Belzer’s roles were mostly small cameos. He later said that SNL producer Lorne Michaels reneged on a promise to let him work on the show.