Richard Moll, the 6-foot-8 actor who delighted tv audiences with a childlike appeal in his position because the hulking bailiff on the NBC sitcom “Night time Courtroom,” died on Thursday at his dwelling in Huge Bear Lake, Calif. He was 80.
His loss of life was introduced by a household spokesman, Jeff Sanderson. No trigger was given.
In a profession of greater than 4 many years, Mr. Moll performed a wide range of roles on tv reveals and in movies. However he was greatest recognized for portraying the baldheaded, wide-eyed Aristotle Nostradamus Shannon, higher referred to as Invoice, on all 9 seasons of “Night time Courtroom,” which ran from 1984 to 1992.
Bull Shannon’s dimwitted persona lent an air of lighthearted innocence to the sequence, which was set inside a fictional municipal night time courtroom in Manhattan. It starred Harry Anderson, who died in 2018, as Decide Harry Stone and John Larroquette because the prosecutor Dan Fielding.
Mr. Moll was “bigger than life and taller too,” Mr. Larroquette mentioned on Friday in a publish on X, the positioning previously referred to as Twitter.
Richard Charles Moll was born on Jan. 13, 1943, in Pasadena, Calif., to Harry and Violet Moll. He graduated with a level in historical past from the College of California, Berkeley, in 1964. His father wished him to pursue a legislation profession, however she to took up appearing as an alternative.
He initially labored in theater, performing in Shakespeare performs in California. He bought his first tv and movie roles within the late Seventies; his early roles included Joseph Smith, the founding father of the Mormon Church, in “Brigham,” a 1977 film about Brigham Younger. and an look in an episode of the tv sequence “Welcome Again, Kotter” in 1978.
“Most likely auditioning for ‘Night time Courtroom’ could be my first massive break,” Mr. Moll mentioned in a 2010 interview with MaximoTV. He famous that he had been requested if he was prepared to shave his head for the half.
“I mentioned ‘Are you kidding?’ ” he recalled. “‘I’ll shave my legs for the half. I’ll shave my armpits. I don’t care.’”
After “Night time Courtroom” resulted in 1992, Mr. Moll went on to do voice-over work on numerous cartoons, together with roles as Two-Face, a disturbed villain with a disfigured mug on the “Adventures of Batman & Robin” on Fox, and as Scorpion, one of many many adversaries on “Spider-Man: The Animated Sequence,” on the identical community.
Although largely recognized for his comedic work, together with in motion pictures similar to “Scary Film 2” and “However I’m a Cheerleader,” Mr. Moll was additionally featured in horror and science-fiction movies. His first main film roles included the 1985 horror function “Home” and the 1986 indie fantasy “The Dungeonmaster.”
Mr. Moll labored as an actor and voice-over artist as late as 2018, in keeping with IMDb. His closing notable look was within the 2010 live-action movie “Scooby-Doo: Curse of the Lake Monster,” by which he performed the mysterious lighthouse keeper Elmer Uggins.
Mr. Moll retired to Huge Bear Lake within the Southern Californian mountains, the place, in keeping with his household, he reveled within the idyllic surroundings and exercised his love of bird-watching.
He’s survived by a daughter, Chloe Moll; a son, Mason Moll; his ex-wife, Susan Moll; and two stepchildren, Cassandra Card and Morgan Ostling.
