John Mulrooney, the stand-up comedian from Brooklyn who hosted Comic Strip Live on Fox and performed at venues including the Improv, the Laugh Factory and Dangerfield’s, has died. He was 67.
Mulrooney died suddenly on Monday at his home in Coxsackie, New York, the Albany Times-Union newspaper reported. No cause of death was immediately available.
Skillful at improvisation and working the crowd, Mulrooney told jokes on HBO, Showtime and on the PBS show Comedy Tonight and was among those who stepped in for Joan Rivers after she was fired as host of Fox’s The Late Show in 1987. He also was a guest host for The Pat Sajak Show on CBS.
As an actor, he appeared on TV on Ryder P.I., 1st and Ten, Ellen, Midtown North, The Good Life and Hardball and in the 1989 film Great Balls of Fire. More recently, he hosted morning and afternoon radio programs in New York City, Cleveland and Albany, New York, and for iHeartRadio.
One of five kids, Mulrooney was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 27, 1958, and raised in Flatbush. He attended Brooklyn Technical High School, boxed in the amateur Golden Gloves competition and started out in comedy in the early ’80s at the Pips nightclub in Sheepshead Bay.
Mulrooney competed on the syndicated Star Search program before he joined its writers room. And in 1994, he was a featured comic on a Valentine’s Day PPV special headlined by fellow Brooklynite Andrew Dice Clay, who also got his start at Pips.
“He never gave up, he never stopped trying, which is what it’s all about in my book,” Clay wrote on Facebook. “Not everybody climbs to the top, and not everybody becomes a superstar. John was a great, great comedian.”
Mulrooney performed several times for U.S. troops overseas, and his family said those “were among his proudest moments, allowing him to give back to the men and women serving far from home and to bring moments of laughter and relief in challenging environments.”
At age 52 in 2010, he was hired as a rookie cop with the Coxsackie Police Department and served through 2024. That led to him performing at fund-raisers for police and fire departments across the country.
Mulrooney “will be remembered as much for being a loyal friend to countless people as for the laughter he brought to a multitude of strangers,” his family said. “His voice, his stories and his spirit will continue to echo in the lives of those he touched.”
Donations in his memory can be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
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