John Forsythe

John Lincoln Forsythe, born John Lincoln Freund on January 29, 1918, in Penns Grove, New Jersey, was an American actor whose career in stage, film, and television extended across six decades. The eldest of three children born to Blanche Forsythe and Samuel Jeremiah Freund, a stockbroker, Forsythe was raised in Brooklyn, New York, where his father worked as a Wall Street businessman during the Great Depression. He graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn at sixteen and subsequently attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1936, at eighteen, he took a position as the public address announcer for Brooklyn Dodgers games at Ebbets Field. He was raised in the Jewish faith and remained a lifelong active Democrat.

Forsythe's path to acting began at his father's suggestion, despite his own initial reluctance. He joined Warner Bros. as a minor contract player and appeared in a small role in Destination Tokyo in 1943. He then left his film work to serve in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, during which time he appeared in the play Winged Victory and worked with injured soldiers who had developed speech problems. In 1947, he joined the inaugural class of the Actors Studio, where he encountered Marlon Brando and Julie Harris, among others.

His Broadway career ran from 1942 to 1968 and included productions such as Weekend, Yankee Point, It Takes Two, All My Sons, Mister Roberts, and The Teahouse of the August Moon. In 1949, he also took on a non-regular recurring role as Tom, a homicide detective, on the radio crime drama Broadway Is My Beat, which originally broadcast from New York before relocating to Hollywood with a new cast later that year.

On screen, Forsythe starred in The Captive City in 1952 and co-starred opposite Loretta Young in It Happens Every Thursday in 1953. Alfred Hitchcock cast him in The Trouble with Harry in 1955, alongside Edmund Gwenn and Shirley MacLaine in her first film appearance, and he later appeared opposite Olivia de Havilland in The Ambassador's Daughter in 1956. Forsythe returned to work with Hitchcock in Topaz in 1969. During the 1960s his film credits included Kitten with a Whip, Madame X, and In Cold Blood. He starred in See How They Run in 1964, notable as the first film produced for television. Following quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery in 1979, he returned to work and appeared that same year in the two-time Academy Award-nominated film ...And Justice for All, playing corrupt Judge Henry T. Fleming opposite Al Pacino.

Throughout the 1950s Forsythe worked regularly across all the television networks as a guest star, including an appearance in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Premonition" opposite Cloris Leachman, and a 1957 episode of Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre titled "Decision at Wilson's Creek," in which he played Confederate Lieutenant David Marr. That same year he took the lead role in the CBS sitcom Bachelor Father, playing Bentley Gregg, a playboy lawyer who becomes guardian to his niece Kelly following the death of her parents. The show moved to NBC and later to ABC before its cancellation during the 1961–1962 season due to declining ratings. Forsythe subsequently starred in two additional television series: The John Forsythe Show on NBC from 1965 to 1966, and To Rome with Love on CBS from 1969 to 1971, the latter co-starring Walter Brennan. Between 1971 and 1977 he served as narrator on the syndicated nature series World of Survival, and he hosted the 38th Miss Universe Pageant, broadcast on CBS in 1989.

In 1976, Forsythe began a thirteen-year association with producer Aaron Spelling when he was cast as the unseen millionaire private investigator Charles Townsend in the crime drama Charlie's Angels, a role he held through 1981. He reprised the character in the 2000 and 2003 film adaptations of the series. In 1981, he was selected as a last-minute replacement for George Peppard in the role of Blake Carrington, the patriarch of the Carrington family in the ABC prime time soap opera Dynasty, another Spelling production. Forsythe was the only cast member to appear in all 220 episodes across the show's nine seasons, which concluded in 1989. Between 1985 and 1986 he also appeared as Blake Carrington in the short-lived spinoff series The Colbys. For his work on Dynasty, Forsythe received three Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series between 1982 and 1984, six Golden Globe nominations with two wins, and five Soap Opera Digest Award nominations with two wins.

Outside of his performing career, Forsythe invested substantially in Thoroughbred racing and served on the board of directors at Hollywood Park Racetrack beginning in 1972, remaining on the committee for more than twenty-five years. He also appeared as a guest on talk and variety programs and as a panelist on numerous game shows throughout his career. Forsythe died on April 1, 2010.