As Detective John Munch, he was one of TV’s most ubiquitous characters, appearing on at least 10 different series from 1993 to 2016. Much like Mr. Belzer, the character was cynical and self-deprecating.
His death was confirmed by his friend Bill Scheft, who is making a documentary about the actor and comedian. Mr. Belzer was suffering from circulatory and respiratory issues, Scheft said.
Mr. Belzer, a wiry and intense performer known for wearing dark tinted glasses beneath his mop of black hair, was a self-described “23-year overnight success,” a comic who seemed poised to reach a national audience long before he started playing the cynical, hard-boiled Munch in 1993. He had been a hit at Catch a Rising Star, one of Manhattan’s liveliest comedy clubs; warmed up the studio audience at “Saturday Night Live,” where he was followed onstage by friends like John Belushi and Gilda Radner; and appeared on “Late Night With David Letterman,” where he would ask the host for a loan or poke fun at the audience.
“Sometimes, I’m stunned at how vicious he can be,” his friend and fellow comedian Robin Williams told Rolling Stone in 1981, when Mr. Belzer was perhaps best known as a sharp-edged insult comic in the mold of Don Rickles. “The way he comes back at people is truly amazing. He’s out there juggling a razor, a hand grenade and a cobra — and being funny at the same time.”
By the time Mr. Belzer was cast in “Homicide,” after filmmaker and executive producer Barry Levinson heard him on Howard Stern’s radio show, he was more likely to mock himself instead of the audience, having softened his comic persona after battling testicular cancer, giving up cocaine, heroin and other drugs, and marrying former model and actress Harlee McBride.
“He was smart, and he had an attitude,” Levinson recalled in a People magazine interview. “I wondered if I could take that and put it into the Munch character. A lot of comics who go into acting kind of do it winking at the camera. But Richard’s in there doing it as an actor.”
As Munch, Mr. Belzer was a witty, sardonic Baltimore homicide detective, solving murders alongside his partner Stan Bolander (Ned Beatty). The character was loosely inspired by Baltimore police officer Jay Landsman, who was featured in David Simon’s 1991 nonfiction book “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets” — the basis for the acclaimed TV series — but was developed further by Mr. Belzer, who brought his own morbid sense of humor to the role. He joked in one episode, “Homicide: Our day begins when yours ends.”
The character was prone to wax philosophical (“If a murder is committed in Baltimore and no homicide detective takes the call, did that homicide actually occur?”) and told jokes about Virginia Woolf and atheism, as well as the indignity of getting shot in the backside (“Wanna kiss it better?”). He also had an interest in conspiracy theories, a trait shared by Mr. Belzer, who wrote books on subjects including UFOs and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Mr. Belzer’s performance proved so popular that the character began making guest appearances on other shows, including “Law & Order” and “The X-Files.” When “Homicide” ended after seven seasons, he moved to the Law & Order franchise full-time, becoming a series regular on “SVU,” as the spinoff is known, from 1999 until 2013. Even while investigating sex-based crimes in New York, where he partnered on-