John Forsythe was born on January 29, 1918, in Penns Grove, New Jersey. He was the eldest of three children born to a factory worker. Later his father became a Wall Street businessman during the great depression of 1929 and the family moved to Brooklyn.
After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School at age sixteen, John attended the University of North Carolina. With a life long love of baseball John took on a job as an announcer at Ebbet’s Field Stadium in Brooklyn.
With the persuasion of his father John entered the acting profession and began with a small time career as a bit player for Warner Brothers. In 1939 while beginning his career he met and married his first wife, also an actress, Parker MacCormick and the couple had a son together within two years but the marriage failed and they divorced in 1942.
During World War II John put his acting career on hold while he served in the war recovering injured soldiers with speech impediments. In the same year as he left the army he met the woman who would become his second wife in the early 1950s, another up-and-coming actress, Julie Warren. They had two daughters, Brooke and Page.
In the 1940s and 50s Forsythe worked at the Actors Studio and he met up with other promising young actors such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, and the British starlet Joan Collins.
In 1955 John caught the eye of writer and producer Alfred Hitchcock and he was hired to star in The Trouble with Harry, along with a young Shirley MacLaine.
John’s next big move was into television where he landed the part of Bentley Gregg in the situation comedy Bachelor Father in 1957 with his niece Kelly being played by Noreen Corcoran. On that particular series he was to work with other up and coming stars such as Linda Evans, Mary Tyler Moore, Barbara Eden, and Donna Douglas.
John Forsythe tried a television series of his own titled The John Forsythe Show and To Rome With Love, but both efforts failed. But fame was just around the corner as a result of his thirteen year friendship with Aaron Spelling. His big break came in Spelling’s new series Charlie’s Angels, where John played the mysterious millionaire and private detective who employed three very young attractive girls who had been to police academy and were now transformed into private detectives, Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and later, Cheryl Ladd.
Once John gained fame and fortune, he began investing his money into thoroughbred race horses and served on the Board of Directors at the Hollywood Park Racetrack since 1972.
After heart problems in 1979, which were successfully treated with surgery, John carried on with his acting career and although Charlie’s Angels was on the decline John still had many good years of acting left in him. Again, with the persuasion of Aaron Spelling, John went on to play the sophisticated property millionaire Blake Carrington in Dynasty, beating George Peppard to the post for the slot. With the spin-off series of The Colbys, John was kept gainfully employed for eight years. During that time he was reunited with Linda Evans, who played his much younger and beautiful wife and Joan Collins who played his meddling ex-wife. Other Hollywood handsome and beautiful actors on the show included Heather Locklear, John James, and Catherine Oxenberg. The part played by Evans was originally earmarked for Angie Dickinson, but Evans was the final choice. In his own life John celebrated a forty-five year marriage to his second wife Julie Warren.
With all the charm, sex appeal, and sophistication of a millionaire in his part as Blake Carrington, John earned himself two Golden Globe Awards and three nominations for Emmy Awards.
Sadness hit John’s life in 1994 when he lost his wife of fifty-one years when she slipped into a coma after suffering breathing difficulties.
In 2002 happiness returned to John’s life when he married Nicole Carter, a woman twenty-two years younger than him.
Even though John was well past retirement age he still jumped at the chance to reprise his role as Charlie in the 2002 film version of Charlie’s Angels starring Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu, Cameron Diaz, Matt Le Blanc, Demi Moore, Luke Wilson, and British actor John Cleese.
On 2006, Forsythe appeared alongside his Dynasty co-stars Linda Evans, Joan Collins, Pamela Sue Martin, Al Corley, Gordon Thomson, and Catherine Oxenberg in Dynasty Reunion: Catfights & Caviar. The one-hour reunion special aired on CBS.
It was announced that John was being treated for colorectal cancer in 2006, but was discharged from hospital within a month and was reported to be in good health.
YUDDY
