John Forsythe of ‘Dynasty’ dies at 92

John Forsythe, the suave actor with the silvery hair and mellifluous voice who was familiar to millions of TV viewers for starring roles in the popular television series “Bachelor Father,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Dynasty,” died Thursday. He was 92.

Forsythe, who had heart bypass surgery in 1979 and was hospitalized for colon cancer in September 2006, died at his home in Santa Ynez from complications of pneumonia, according to publicist Harlan Boll.

Skilled at both comedy and drama, the actor began his long career in acting on Broadway, where he stepped in for Henry Fonda in “Mister Roberts” and later originated the lead role in the hit comedy, “Teahouse of the August Moon.” He also appeared in many movies, including Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Trouble With Harry” and “Topaz.”

But he was best known for three roles: Bentley Gregg, a bachelor uncle who finds his social life curtailed by the arrival of a young niece put into his care; the unseen Charlie, who gives three sexy young detectives their next assignments in ABC’s “Charlie’s Angels” and, most notably, Blake Carrington, the oil tycoon around whom life revolves in one of TV’s most successful prime-time soap operas, “Dynasty.” More than the others, Carrington was his signature role.

As the man whom Forsythe once described as “ruthless, powerful, cruel, selfish, kind, loving, tender, passionate,” Carrington inspired catfights between his vengeful ex-wife (Joan Collins) and melancholy second wife (Linda Evans), all the while fending off nonstop crises set off by his business, his gay son and his long-lost daughter. He was always impeccably dressed and so dashing that he inspired the men’s cologne dubbed Carrington.

The part came to Forsythe partly because he had starred against his good-TV-dad type as a sadistic judge in Norman Jewison’s “And Justice for All,” which starred Al Pacino.

“To be seen in so unredeemable a part was a revelation to some people,” Forsythe told The Times in 1980. “Had I not played the evil Judge Fleming, I don’t think they would have thought of me for this tycoon, who can be very rough on occasion .”

“Dynasty” ended in 1989 after more than eight years on the air.

Forsythe was born John Lincoln Freund on Jan. 29, 1918, in Penns Grove, N.J., the son of Samuel Freund and his wife, Blanche. When John was 6, the family moved to New York City, where his father worked on Wall Street.

A baseball player in high school and college, Forsythe attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and spent summers as a public address announcer at Ebbets Field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

“Even then he had this caressing, mellifluous voice, dark wavy hair and drop-dead good looks that would make him a show business staple for half a century,” Times sports columnist Jim Murray wrote of Forsythe in 1990.

Forsythe dropped out of college as a junior and, to make money during baseball’s offseason, got roles on radio soap operas such as “Helen Trent” and “Stella Dallas.”

Some minor roles got him his first film roles in two 1943 war-related movies, most notably “Destination Tokyo” with Cary Grant. That same year, he joined the Army Air Forces and continued his acting as Private John Forsythe in Moss Hart’s “Winged Victory,” the Broadway play produced by the Army Air Forces.

After the war, Forsythe returned to the stage, taking over a role as one of the progeny in Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons,” directed by Elia Kazan. He also studied at the Actors Studio, where he stood out for his gentlemanly clothes.

“[Marlon] Brando and Montgomery Clift and all those were in torn T-shirts, and I had my button-down collars,” Forsythe told The Times. “They called me the Brooks Brothers Bohemian.”

He toured with “Mister Roberts” for a time before taking over Fonda’s lead role on Broadway for nearly three years.

By then, Forsythe was already dabbling in television on such live dramas as “Studio One” and “Kraft Television Theatre,” although he was back on Broadway in 1953 with “The Teahouse of the August Moon.” His performance in the comedy, which won a Pulitzer Prize for writer John Patrick and ran for more than 1,000 performances, was compared to Fonda’s in its genial style.

“It’s still the highlight of my career,” Forsythe told TV Guide in 1981, when he was just beginning his long stint in “Dynasty.” “It gave me a sense of worth as an actor.”

The 1950s also found him in many starring roles in films, including “The Ambassador’s Daughter” 1956 with Loretta Young, “Everything But the Truth” 1956 with Maureen O’Hara and “The Trouble With Harry,” which marked the film debut of the young Shirley MacLaine. 1955

But by then, Forsythe, a family man, was looking for work that would keep him closer to home. In 1943, he had married singer-actress Julie Warren and they had daughters Page and Brooke, in addition to his son, Dall, by a brief marriage to actress Parker McCormick.

In 1957, he switched to television with “Bachelor Father,” an amiable family show. The show’s basic triumvirate was Forsythe as Bentley Gregg, Noreen Corcoran as his niece, Kelly, and Sammee Tong as their houseboy, Peter Tong. Although the show switched networks twice, it endured for five years.

“The real joke is not that I, a bachelor, am the girl’s father,” he told TV Guide in 1960. “The funny part is that Sammee Tong behaves in all our family crises as if he were her mother.”

“Bachelor Father” was followed by “The John Forsythe Show,” a 1965-66 show with a similar format that he later called “a disaster” and said he hoped people would forget.

He kept his hand in films, including “Kitten With a Whip” 1964 opposite Ann-Margret as a teenage delinquent, “Madame X” with Lana Turner 1966 and the 1967 dramatization of Truman Capote’s chilling book, “In Cold Blood,” in which Forsythe plays the detective. Also, in 1964, he made a bit of television history by starring in the first made-for-TV movie to be broadcast: NBC’s “See How They Run.”

In 1969, he was back in a TV series with “To Rome With Love,” another take on bachelor fatherhood, this time as a widowed college professor with three daughters who accepts a teaching assignment in Italy’s capital.

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During the 1970s, he narrated “The World of Survival,” a nature and geography show, and in 1976 took the role of the avuncular Charlie Townsend — the disembodied voice in the hit ABC series that always began with these words: “Once upon a time, there were three little girls who went to the police academy … ” The show made a star of Farrah Fawcett and also featured Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd, among other actresses. Though Forsythe was uncredited for his vocal contribution on the actual series (though not the pilot for the series), his voice was universally recognizable.

Before “Charlie’s Angels” ended in 1981 after five seasons, Forsythe was ensconced in ABC’s “Dynasty,” with its bigger-than-life characters and over-the-top story lines.

Forsythe said his model for Carrington was then-MCA Chairman Lew Wasserman, who, he said, was “strong and tough, but a man of great integrity.”

“When he said something was going to happen, it did happen,” Forsythe told The Times in 1991.

At that point, the by-then-canceled program was returning for a four-hour sequel in which Carrington was sent to prison for murder and his company was lost to foreign takeover, among other misadventures.

After “Dynasty” ended, Forsythe was the star of “The Powers That Be,” a short-lived NBC series produced by Norman Lear.

Though he had a long and respectable career in Hollywood, Forsythe said he “never had an illusions about being an [Laurence] Olivier.”

“I’ve had an interesting life for a guy who stumbled into the whole acting business,” Forsythe told The Times in 1992.

For many years, Forsythe was deeply involved in horse racing and owned and bred horses at his ranch north of Santa Barbara. He was the national spokesman for the Breeders Cup and was on the board at Hollywood Park for several years.

Forsythe’s wife Julie died in 1994 after more than 50 years of marriage. In 2002, Forsythe married Nicole Carter, who survives him as do his son, Dall, his daughters, Page Courtemanche and Brooke Forsythe; as well as six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.