Biography

John Forsythe

Jump to

John Forysthe was born Jacob Lincoln Freund in Penns Grove, New Jersey, the son of Blanche Materson (Blohm) and Samuel Jeremiah Freund, a Wall Street businessman. He chose to pursue acting over the objections of his father. He did some work in radio soaps and on Broadway before signing a movie contract with Warner Bros. His early career was interrupted by World War II. During the war, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps appearing in the Air Corps show "Winged Victory". After the war, he helped found the Actors Studio. He has had the most success on television, with healthy runs on Bachelor Father (1957), Dynasty (1981) and as the unseen voice of Charlie Townsend on Charlie's Angels (1976). John Forsythe died at age 92 of complications from pneumonia on April 1, 2010 in Santa Ynez, California.
- IMDb mini biography by: Gustaf Molin <gumo@hem2.passagen.se>

Was the only actor to appear in all 220 episodes of Dynasty (1981).
Before he was a successful actor, he once worked as a waiter in the same restaurant with Kirk Douglas.
Forsythe's lines for an entire episode of Charlie's Angels (1976) would be recorded in a sound studio in a matter of minutes, after which he would have lunch in the network's commissary and then head for the track.
At least nine actors named him as their favorite actor: Billy Dee Williams, Richard Hatch, Rock Hudson, John Saxon, Pat Crowley, Carole Cook, Barbara Stanwyck, Charlton Heston and Kerry Armstrong, all nine worked with him on Dynasty (1981).
As an acting teacher, he taught up-and-coming actors Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Julie Harris and Patricia Neal at the same school. He even taught his future Dynasty (1981) co-star Joan Collins acting when she was just a teenager.

I am an amiable fellow with no mind of my own.
I like to be what I am, a reasonably simple happy kind of fellow.
[His father's reaction when John told him he wanted to be an actor] His idea of an actor was John Barrymore. He could never understand why I wanted to act. "You're a good boy, a fine boy", he told me. "But I don't see anything about you that could make an actor. No flamboyance.".
[on his long-running marriage to second wife Julie Warren] And it turned out to be a marriage that lasted 50-some-odd years. Not bad!
[In 1981 about being himself as an actor] When I was down in Atlanta, about 3 or 4 weeks ago, a little lady walked up to me and she circled me, 3 to 4 times, and she looked at me and she said, "Didn't you used to be John Forsythe?". And I freely confessed you used to be. But that meant, too, that not enough people really began to know me as an actor; they never know me as a voice and thought I'd do something about it.