It started with that slinky bass line and a shot of the Manhattan skyline at night, and then we were inside the strangest courtroom on television. Night Court premiered on NBC in January 1984 with Harry Anderson as Judge Harry Stone, a card-trick-loving, Mel Tormé-worshipping judge who drew the graveyard shift in a Manhattan arraignment court and decided to have some fun with it. The defendants were odd, the staff was odder, and somehow the show still found room for real heart between the punchlines.
The series ran nine seasons and 193 episodes before the gavel came down for good in May 1992, and its bench of regulars changed more than most fans remember. Four bailiffs, three public defenders and two court clerks came through those doors over the years, and two of the show’s beloved bailiffs were lost to illness while it was still on the air. Here is what became of every main cast member, starting with the stars we have lost and ending with the ones still with us today.
Is Selma Diamond Still Alive?
Selma Hacker was the court’s first bailiff, a tiny woman with a gravel voice who could stop a rowdy defendant cold with one dry remark. Selma Diamond had spent decades as a comedy writer before audiences ever saw her face, working on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and earning an Emmy nomination for Caesar’s Hour. Carl Reiner said he had her in mind when he created Sally Rogers, the wisecracking writer on The Dick Van Dyke Show. When she was the only woman among five writers on Perry Como’s show in 1961, she shrugged it off: “They feel handicapped, not me.”
Her turn as Selma earned her a second Emmy nomination, but she would only get two seasons with the role. Like her chain-smoking character, Diamond was a heavy smoker, and she died of lung cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 13, 1985, at 64. Her loss was the first of two that would hit the show’s bailiff desk within a little more than a year.
Is Florence Halop Still Alive?
Florence Halop stepped in as bailiff Flo Kleiner for the third season, and she arrived with a voice older radio listeners already knew. She had played Miss Duffy, the man-crazy daughter on Duffy’s Tavern, and Hot Breath Houlihan on The Jimmy Durante Show. Just before Night Court, she stole scenes on St. Elsewhere as Mrs. Hufnagel, a surly patient written in for one episode who stayed for 18.
Halop played Flo in 22 episodes before she, too, became ill with cancer. She died in Los Angeles on July 15, 1986, at 63, and the Los Angeles Times marked her passing the next day with an obituary headlined “Florence Halop of TV’s ‘Night Court’ Dies at 63.” Her replacement would turn out to be the bailiff who stayed until the very last episode.
Is Harry Anderson Still Alive?
Harry Anderson came to the bench by way of street corners. He worked as a street magician in San Francisco as a teenager, and he spent five years performing in Ashland, Oregon, before television found him. Fans of Cheers knew him first as Harry “The Hat” Gittes, the con man who kept trying to fleece Sam’s bar, and his sleight-of-hand charm carried straight into Judge Harry Stone across all 193 episodes of Night Court. The role brought him Emmy nominations for lead actor in a comedy.
After the show, he played humorist Dave Barry for four seasons on CBS’s Dave’s World. He and his wife Elizabeth ran a magic shop in New Orleans’s French Quarter before settling in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2006. Anderson was found dead at his Asheville home on April 16, 2018, at 65. His death certificate, as reported by Global News, listed a stroke as the cause, with influenza and heart disease as contributing factors. He had battled the flu earlier that year.
Is Paula Kelly Still Alive?
Paula Kelly played public defender Liz Williams in the first season, and she came to the courtroom with serious Hollywood credentials. She had danced alongside Shirley MacLaine and Chita Rivera as Helene in Bob Fosse’s 1969 film Sweet Charity. Her single season as Liz earned her an Emmy nomination for supporting actress.
Kelly left after that first year, but her career kept going strong, and she picked up a second Emmy nomination for the 1989 miniseries The Women of Brewster Place, opposite Oprah Winfrey. She died on February 8, 2020, in Whittier, California, at 77. The Associated Press reported, citing Los Angeles’s Ebony Repertory Theatre, that the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Is Charlie Robinson Still Alive?
Today, November 9, would have been Charlie Robinson’s 81st birthday. Born in Houston in 1945, he sang with Archie Bell and the Drells as a teenager before turning to acting, and he had just finished a run as Newdell on NBC’s Buffalo Bill when Night Court came calling. He joined in the second season as court clerk Mac Robinson, a soft-spoken Vietnam veteran who was usually the calmest person in the room. He stayed for the rest of the show’s run and directed three episodes along the way.
Later generations knew him as Bud Harper, the head of Binford Tools and Al’s boss on Home Improvement, and he also starred in Love & War. Robinson died in Los Angeles on July 11, 2021, at 75. His family told NBC News the cause was cardiac arrest and multisystem organ failure brought on by septic shock, and that he had also been battling metastatic adenocarcinoma. Less than a month later, the cast lost another member of the family.
Is Markie Post Still Alive?
Markie Post first walked into the courtroom as a guest in the second season, while she was still under contract as Terri Michaels on ABC’s The Fall Guy. Once she was free, she joined for good in the third season as public defender Christine Sullivan, and the sweet, slightly flustered Christine became the woman Harry spent years trying to win. After Night Court, she starred opposite John Ritter in Hearts Afire and played Cameron Diaz’s mother in There’s Something About Mary.
What fans never knew was how hard her final years were. Post died on August 7, 2021, at 70, after battling cancer for nearly four years, her manager confirmed. She kept working through chemotherapy, which she called her “side job.” You can read more about how Markie Post quietly fought her illness while she kept showing up on set. She is survived by her husband of nearly four decades, Michael A. Ross, and their two daughters.
Is Richard Moll Still Alive?
At six feet nine inches tall, Richard Moll looked like the last man you would want to cross, which made Bull Shannon’s gentle, childlike sweetness all the funnier. Moll had shaved his head for the 1983 film Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, and the Night Court producers liked the look so much they asked him to keep it. He played Bull in all nine seasons, one of only a handful of actors who stayed from start to finish.
His deep voice gave him a second career. He voiced Harvey Dent and Two-Face on Batman: The Animated Series,. In his later years he retired to Big Bear Lake, California, where his family said he loved the scenery and bird-watching. Moll died peacefully at home there on October 26, 2023, at 80, and no cause of death was made public. John Larroquette summed him up in one line, as reported by TVLine: “Larger than life and taller too.”
Is Karen Austin Still Alive?
Karen Austin was the show’s very first court clerk, Lana Wagner, and she appeared in 10 episodes of the first season before Mac took over the desk. Austin has said she was let go after being diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, as Idolator and Sportskeeda have reported. It was a hard break, but her career kept moving, from John Candy’s beach comedy Summer Rental to the Johnny Depp film The Rum Diary.
Yes, Karen Austin is still alive. Born in Welch, West Virginia, on October 24, 1955, she is 71 today, and she has spent much of her later career teaching. SAG-AFTRA describes her as an acting coach who has lectured at Stanford and leads her own Mastery of Acting Workshop. In May 2026 she was a guest on the podcast Love Letters To The Future, which introduced her as an “acclaimed actor, director, and teacher.”
Is Ellen Foley Still Alive?
Before she was public defender Billie Young in the second season, Ellen Foley was the voice going toe to toe with Meat Loaf on “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” She also worked with The Clash and made solo albums of her own, so a sitcom courtroom was an unusual stop. A 1985 announcement said she was leaving to pursue other acting and singing roles, but Foley has since said plainly that she was fired, and her part went to Markie Post once Post was free of The Fall Guy.
Yes, Ellen Foley is still alive. Born in St. Louis on June 5, 1951, she is 75 today. She went on to Broadway in Into the Woods, played a small role in Fatal Attraction, and in 2021 released her fifth solo album, Fighting Words. She still laughs about the duet that follows her everywhere. “I call it ‘The Thing That Will Never Die,'” she told PopMatters.
Is Marsha Warfield Still Alive?
Marsha Warfield took over the bailiff’s post in 1986 as Roz Russell, a no-nonsense straight shooter who could silence a courtroom with a look, and she held the job for the last six seasons. She was already a stand-up veteran, and after the show she hosted her own daytime talk show and joined Empty Nest.
Yes, Marsha Warfield is still alive. Born in Chicago on March 5, 1954, she is 72 today, and she is still very much on the road. She came back as Roz in the Night Court revival, where the character was revealed to be gay and getting married, a storyline that echoed Warfield’s own life after she came out publicly in 2017. “Roz could not have been gay then,” she told UPI, adding that she had waited until after her mother died to come out, at her mother’s request. She has a recurring role as Hen’s mother on 9-1-1, and this year she has been touring with Martha Wash of The Weather Girls in a music and comedy show called It’s Raining Queens, with stops in New York, Phoenix, Memphis and Chicago.
Is John Larroquette Still Alive?
Nobody walked away from the original show with more hardware than John Larroquette. His shameless, skirt-chasing prosecutor Dan Fielding won him four straight Emmys for supporting actor from 1985 to 1988, and in 1989 he asked to be taken out of the running. He later won a fifth Emmy for a guest role on The Practice, joined Boston Legal, and won a Tony Award in 2011 for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Yes, John Larroquette is still alive. Born in New Orleans on November 25, 1947, he is 78 and turns 79 later this month. In 2023 he became the only original regular to return full time when NBC revived Night Court with Melissa Rauch as Abby Stone, Harry’s daughter. Playing Dan again felt strange at first. “I’m playing my own grandfather in a way,” he told the Associated Press in a story carried by Fortune. The revival ran three seasons before NBC canceled it in May 2025, and Larroquette has kept working since. Deadline reported in April 2026 that he will guest star as a billionaire businessman in Prime Video’s crime drama Bishop. Forty-two years after he first strutted into that courtroom, he got to walk back in, and for three more seasons the night shift had its prosecutor back.
