John Forsythe (born Jacob Lincoln Freund; January 29, 1918 – April 1, 2010) was an American stage, television, and film actor. Forsythe starred in three television series, spanning four decades and three genres: as single playboy father Bentley Gregg, in the sitcom Bachelor Father (1957–62); as the unseen millionaire, Charles Townsend, on the crime drama Charlie's Angels (1976–81); and as patriarch Blake Carrington on Dynasty (1981–89). He hosted World of Survival (1971–77).

Early life

The eldest of three children, Forsythe was born as Jacob Lincoln Freund on January 29, 1918, in Penns Grove, New Jersey, to Blanche Materson (née Blohm) and Samuel Jeremiah Freund. Blanche was born in Pennsylvania, to David Hyat Blohm, a Russian Jewish immigrant, and to Mary S. Materson, who was born in Maryland, to Jewish immigrants from Prussia. Samuel was a stockbroker born in New York to Polish Jewish immigrants.

He was raised in Brooklyn, where his father worked as a Wall Street businessman during the Great Depression of the 1930s. He graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn at the age of 16, and began attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1936 at the age of 18, he took a job as the public address announcer for Brooklyn Dodgers games at Ebbets Field, confirming a childhood love of baseball.