Richard Belzer, actor and comedian who played Detective John Munch in a string of top-rated US TV series – obituary

Richard Belzer, who has died aged 78, was a stand-up comedian and actor who made television history by portraying the same fictional character, detective John Munch, in no fewer than 11 different television series across six different networks over 23 years.

Munch was originated in 1993 in NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street, which was set in Baltimore and ran for seven seasons. Munch subsequently moved to New York, where he appeared in 15 seasons (326 episodes) of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Belzer appearing alongside Ice-T. Munch also appeared in The Wire, The X-Files and the sitcoms Arrested Development and 30 Rock.

“It was a bit of a miracle how I got the part,” Belzer said in an interview. “I didn’t audition for it. Barry Levinson heard me on The Howard Stern Show and brought me in to read for the character.” Levinson said he was “lousy” in early script readings, but grew into the part. Belzer said of the Munch character: “I would never be a detective, but if I were, that’s how I’d be. The character is very close to how I would be. They write to all of my paranoia, anti-establishment dissonance and conspiracy theories.”

Richard Jay Belzer was born on August 4 1944 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and brought up in a housing project. His father, Charles Belzer, was a tobacco and candy vending-machine salesman, while his mother Frances was a housewife. Both were of Jewish descent, and as a soldier Charles had taken part in the liberation of Dachau concentration camp.

Frances was physically abusive towards Richard and his older brother Len, and Richard would impersonate Jerry Lewis to make their mother laugh and therefore stop hitting them. “My kitchen was the toughest room I ever worked,” he once said.

Richard was 18 when his mother died of breast cancer and 22 when his father committed suicide. His brother Len, who became a radio comedy host, jumped to his death from the roof of a 16-storey Manhattan high-rise in 2014.

After graduating from high school, Belzer worked as a reporter for The Bridgeport Post (he once said he would have liked to have been a reporter if he had not become a comedian). He was expelled from college in 1964 for breaking curfew, having liquor in his dorm, and leading a demo. He subsequently obtained a discharge from the army by feigning various phobias and neuroses, and worked stints as a census taker, a dock worker and a jewellery salesman

In 1973 he played multiple characters in The Groove Tube, a collection of skits which became a cult film, and joined John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray and others on The National Lampoon Radio Hour, which ran for just over a year. In 1975 he became the off-screen warm-up comic for a new weekly television satire show, Saturday Night Live, but while Belushi, Murray and Chevy Chase were on-screen regulars, Belzer had to be content with cameos.

For five years in the 1970s he was also MC at the comedy club Catch a Rising Star, where he learnt to engage with rowdy audiences and deal with hecklers, recording his act every night and analysing it to make improvements. Spiky and acerbic, he combined deadpan humour with mockery and impressions of celebrities such as Ronald Reagan, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan (as a resident of a Jewish old people’s home). His impression of Mick Jagger, which he liked to call “peacock on acid”, was widely admired.

His friend Robin Williams once described his stand-up persona as “the Marquis de Sade as a gameshow host”. A 1978 SNL monologue on UFO sightings drew attention, as did his appearances on The David Letterman Show (including a cruel jibe about Katherine Hepburn deserving her Oscar for On Golden Pond because she managed to keep her head still for two hours).

Cameo film and television roles followed. He played versions of his MC self in Fame (1980) and Scarface (1983), and twice portrayed fictional American presidents, in The Flash television series (1991) and the sci-fi movie Species II (1998). His trademark tinted spectacles, which accompanied him from stand-up into his television roles, were the result of photosensitive eyes. When he cut his hair short, his bat ears were exposed.

He was treated for testicular cancer in 1983, which later inspired his 1997 HBO comedy special Another Lone Nut. In 1985, while hosting his cable television show Hot Properties, Belzer asked Hulk Hogan to put him in a wrestling hold. Hogan obliged with a front chin lock, rendering Belzer unconscious and dropping him to the floor. Belzer hit his head and required eight stitches.

He sued Hogan for $5 million in damages and was able to buy a home for him and his wife in Bozouls in southern France from the proceeds of an out-of-court settlement. He dubbed the property “Chez Hogan”.

In 2006 he grappled with a Fox News producer during a live interview and in 2012 he insulted the Right-wing cable network with a mock Nazi salute. A lifelong Democrat, he was scornful of the role played by the US government in smuggling cocaine to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. “Whoever’s in power, I’m the opposition,” he told the pro-marijuana magazine High Times. “As a political comedian, it’s my job not to go to the White House. You can’t be seduced.”

But paranoia got the better of him when he appeared on the alt-right radio show hosted by Alex Jones and branded the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing as a “false flag” event.

In 2016, his first book (written with David Wayne), about the mysterious deaths of witnesses to the assassination of John F Kennedy, became a bestseller. More books about conspiracy theories and cover-ups followed, as did a comic novel, I Am Not a Cop!, in which a fictionalised version of Belzer investigates the disappearance of a friend. He was also the co-author of How to be a Stand-Up Comic.

His first two marriages ended in divorce, but in 1981 he met Harlee McBride, an actress in commercials and free theatre who was a divorcee. They married in 1985. He lived his last 10 years in retirement in the south of France. His last words were “F-- you, mother---er.”

Richard Belzer is survived by his wife and by two stepdaughters.

Richard Belzer, born August 4 1944, died February 19 2023