John Mulrooney, a stand-up comedian, actor, TV host, radio personality and longtime local cop, died suddenly at his Coxsackie, New York home, according to multiple reports. He was 67.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Mulrooney was best known as a stand-up comic. He made his name performing at The Improv, The Comedy Store, The Comic Strip and The Laugh Factory.
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Andrew Dice Clay took to Instagram to remember what made his friend special.
“Crowd Work was his thing long before it became a thing,” wrote Clay of Mulrooney’s talent for engaging with and doing bits about the audience.
Clay recalled seeing Mulrooney at Pips Comedy Club In Brooklyn, where they both started.
“The owners Marty and Seth told me to watch him. He was really amazing at it,” wrote Clay.
To Mulrooney, crowd work was akin to cooking a meal.
“I look at the audience as a spice rack,” Mulrooney said in 2010. “I know I’m gonna make a great meal; I’m just not sure of the ingredients yet.”
Adam Sandler once told Joe Rogan that Mulrooney was one of the stand-up performers “you didn’t want to go after.”
Remembered Sandler, “Mulrooney would just destroy a room. He was so loose and could dominate the room.”
Clay pointed out that, just because Mulrooney never achieved the same level of fame as he and Sandler did, Mulrooney was still great at what he did.
“He was the last comedian to come out of that club that everybody thought would become a really really big star! Johnny was tall, good looking, An ex Boxer … he also had the ingredients… The discipline to get up there every night, the drive, the want and willing to go through whatever it had to be to claw his way to the top.”
Clay continued, “The thing I’m getting at is that he never gave up, he never stopped trying, which is what it’s all about in my book. Not everybody climbs to the top, and not everybody becomes a superstar. John was a great, great comedian.”
In the early ’80s, Mulrooney did stand-up on a TV show called Comedy Tonight. He went on to write and produce original content for 165 episodes of the series. Mulrooney also competed on the Ed McMahon-fronted Star Search. He lost, but was hired as a writer.
When Joan Rivers left Fox’s The Late Show in 1987, Mulrooney replaced her. The show was, however, canceled a few months later. He also guest-hosted on The Pat Sajak Show.
He got another shot as the host of Comic Strip: Live, a TV version of a comedy club show filmed in front of a live audience. It aired locally on KTTV in Los Angeles before Fox brought the show to its owned-and-operated stations. Fox took Comic Strip: Live national on Saturday nights for a year before it ended.
Mulrooney also appeared on HBO, Showtime, A&E and Comedy Central.
On the big screen, he played a talk show host opposite Dennis Quaid in Great Balls of Fire.
True to Clay’s testimony, Mulrooney did all this while maintaining a talk radio career.
In the late 1990s, the comedian co-hosted an Albany-based morning show with Bob “The Wolf” Wohlfeld on WPYX. Mulrooney joined the Poughkeepsie-based WPDH in 2010 before moving to iHeartRadio for “Mulrooney in the Morning.”
At 52, Mulrooney joined the Coxsackie Police Department, where he served through 2024. That led to a pilot for a reality show called Comedy Cop, following Mulrooney’s experiences as a police officer in a small-town.
Visitation will be held at Casey Funeral Home in Staten Island on January 4 from 2-6 p.m.
His funeral will take place at the Church of the Holy Family in New York on January 5 at 10:30 am.
In lieu of flowers donations may be made in John’s memory to St. Jude Children’s Hospital.
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