Actor Richard Belzer, best known for his role as the witty and acerbic Detective John Munch in “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” has died. He was 78 years old.
Mr. Belzer died early Sunday at the winter home he shared with his family in France, according to his longtime friend Bill Scheft, who said he is acting as the family spokesman.
Mr. Scheft said the actor had been in poor health with circulatory and respiratory issues.
“He was surrounded by his family and he was without pain,” said Mr. Scheft, a comedy writer who first met Mr. Belzer in 1982 at the New York club Catch a Rising Star.
For many fans, Mr. Belzer, a former stand-up comedian who moved into acting for film and television, was synonymous with the sardonic detective he played across multiple shows for many years.
His career as Detective Munch began in 1993 on “Homicide: Life on the Street,” a gritty cop show set in Baltimore. After seven years, that show ended, but the fictional Detective Munch relocated to New York to work as a sex-crimes investigator on “Law & Order: SVU.”
Mr. Belzer was a cast member for the first 15 seasons of that show. He returned for several guest appearances on “Law & Order: SVU” thereafter.
Mariska Hargitay, who plays Detective Olivia Benson on “Law & Order: SVU,” paid tribute to Mr. Belzer on Instagram. “I will miss you, your unique light, and your singular take on this strange world,” she wrote. “I feel blessed to have known you and adored you and worked with you, side by side, for so many years.”
“Goodbye mon ami. I love you,” fellow “Law & Order: SVU” actor Chris Meloni, who plays Detective Elliot Stabler, wrote on Twitter.
Detective Munch also popped up in cameos in other shows, including “The X-Files,” “The Wire,” “Arrested Development” and “30 Rock.” “Sesame Street” once included his character in a spoof of “Law & Order,” in which he and his colleagues tried to find a missing letter M.
Mr. Scheft, who said he has been working on a documentary about his friend’s career for the past four years, said that before Mr. Belzer became Detective Munch, he was one of the most influential stand-up comics of the 1970s.
“He really redefined what they now call crowd work, when you interact with the audience,” said Mr. Scheft, a novelist and former writer for late-night talk show host David Letterman.
When actor Robert De Niro wanted to learn about stand-up for his role as a struggling comic in the 1982 film “The King of Comedy,” he shadowed Mr. Belzer, according to Mr. Scheft.
Born in Bridgeport, Conn., in 1944, Mr. Belzer was thrown out of most of the schools he attended because of his “uncontrollable wit,” according to a biography posted on his website.
Before deciding to enter show business, Mr. Belzer worked as a teacher, census taker, jewelry salesman, dockworker and a reporter for the Bridgeport Post, among other Connecticut newspapers, his bio said.
Mr. Belzer got his start doing stand up comedy at New York City clubs. His on-screen debut was a role in “Groove Tube,” a counterculture film mocking 1970s television shows that also starred a young Chevy Chase.
He was part of “The National Lampoon Show” on radio and stage with Bill Murray, Gilda Radner and John Belushi and was the warm-up act for audiences at “Saturday Night Live” for five years when the long-running sketch comedy show was in its early days.
Comic Richard Lewis, who first met Mr. Belzer in the 1970s, posted a remembrance on Twitter, sharing a picture of the two of them ahead of a show they did together several decades later.
“In happier times this is us a few days before selling out Town Hall. We practically started our careers [at] the same moment in NYC. He made me laugh a billion times,” Mr. Lewis wrote.
Mr. Belzer also had roles in films such as “Fame,” “Night Shift” and “Scarface.” He appeared as himself in the Andy Kaufman biopic “Man on the Moon.”
Mr. Belzer, who identified as a conspiracy theorist, wrote four books, including “UFOs, JFK and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Believe,” which was published in 2000.
Actress and writer Laraine Newman, one of the original members of “Saturday Night Live,” said Mr. Belzer was one of her first friends when she came to New York City to join the cast for its first season in 1975.
“We used to go out to dinner every week at Sheepshead Bay for lobster. One of the funniest people ever. A master at crowd work. RIP dearest,” Ms. Newman wrote on Twitter.
Note: This article is taken from wsj.com
https://www.wsj.com/articles/richard-belzer-longtime-law-order-svu-actor-dies-at-78-274141f3
