John Forsythe (born
John Lincoln Freund;
January 29,
1918) is an
American stage, television and film
actor. Forsythe starred in three television series, spanning three decades, as single playboy father Bentley Gregg in the 1950s
sitcom Bachelor Father (1957–1962); as the unseen millionaire Charles Townsend on the 1970s
crime drama Charlie's Angels (1976–1981), and as ruthless and beloved patriarch
Blake Carrington on the 1980s
soap opera Dynasty (1981–1989). He hosted
World of Survival during the 1970s. Forsythe currently appears each year to read children's fiction during the annual Christmas program near his retirement home at the rural resort community of
Solvang, California, north of Los Angeles.
Early life
Forsythe, oldest of three children, was born
John Lincoln Freund in
Penns Grove, New Jersey, the son of Blanche Materson (née Blohm) and Samuel Jeremiah Freund, who was a stockbroker.
[www.filmreference.com/film/43/John-Forsythe.html][Borough of Penns Grove, Salem County, New Jersey. Accessed December 11, 2007.] He was raised in
Brooklyn,
New York where his father worked as a Wall Street businessman during the
Great Depression of the 1930s.
At only sixteen years of age, Forsythe graduated from
Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn and began attending the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
[Staff. "Biography for John Forsythe", Turner Classic Movies. Accessed September 23, 2009. "Attending Brooklyn's Abraham Lincoln High School, he came of age, like countless Brooklyn youngsters, a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers and devoted his extracurricular activities to sports."] In 1936 at the age of eighteen, he took a job as the announcer at
Ebbets Field Stadium in Brooklyn, New York, confirming a childhood love of
baseball.
