Steve Landesberg | 'Barney Miller' cop, 74

Steve Landesberg, 74, a comic actor who played the intellectual Detective Arthur Dietrich in the long-running ABC sitcom

Barney Miller

, has died.

Mr. Landesberg died early Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said his agent, Jeff Leavitt. No cause was given.

Barney Miller starred Hal Linden as a New York police captain managing an offbeat group of officers in a Greenwich Village station.

The show, which ran from 1975 to 1982, included Abe Vigoda as Detective Phil Fish, Ron Glass as Detective Ron Harris, and Max Gail as Detective Stanley "Wojo" Wojohowicz.

Mr. Landesberg joined the cast in 1976 as Dietrich, whom a Los Angeles Times reviewer once referred to as "infuriatingly cerebral."

"I'm not really much like Dietrich," he told the Washington Post in 1979. "He reads everything. Science, technology, economics. I have no interest in that stuff. . . . I try to play him as a cop. Intellectual and funny, but a good cop."

He started doing stand-up comedy in New York clubs in 1969, working on the same stages as David Brenner and Robert Klein.

Mr. Landesberg made his first appearance on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson in the early 1970s and became a familiar face on television. His later roles included The Golden Girls in 1991 and That '70s Show in 2007. His most recent film role was as the pediatrician Rosenbaum in the 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

- Los Angeles Times