Andrew Warde High School Product Richard Belzer, Noted Actor and Comedian, Passes Away

Richard Belzer, who attended and graduated from Andrew Warde High School (Class of 1962) and was a 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 on Sunday at his home in Bozouls in southern France, according to his longtime friend, Bill Scheft.

Here is Belzer's photo and caption from the Andrew Warde High School 1962 Flame yearbook:

Belzer was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Frances and Charles Belzer. His father was a candy and tobacco wholesaler. 

Belzer grew up with his parents and older brother, Leonard. As a youth, Belzer worked as a paperboy and at Modern Tobacco (his parents' business) part-time while attending high school. 

He was "kicked out of every school he attended." Nonetheless, Belzer was perhaps the most recognizable Andrew Warde High School graduate from the Class of 1962. 

Both parents died while he was young; he was 18 when his mother died of cancer and 22 when his father committed suicide.

The tribute video to the Andrew Warde High School Class of 1962 on its 50-year reunion acknowledged the "Munch."

Belzer, cousin of actor Henry Winkler, played the wise-cracking homicide detective prone to conspiracy theories for more than two decades and across 10 series, including appearances on the hit comedies 30 Rock and Arrested Development. 

Belzer first played Munch on a 1993 episode 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, producer Barry Levinson brought Belzer in to read for the part. “I would never be a detective,” Belzer once said. “But if I were, that’s how I’d be. They write to all my paranoia and anti-establishment dissidence and conspiracy theories. So it’s been a lot of fun for me. A dream, really.”

Paul