Charlie’s an Angel Now: John Forsythe Dies at 92

His gift as an actor was that he never made it seem like acting–just like being the handsome, reassuring exemplar of something akin to American royalty. As the genial Bachelor Father in his early sitcom, as the authoritative chief of Charlie’s Angels in the 1970s and as put-upon plutocrat Blake Carrington in the ’80s prime-time soap opera Dynasty, John Forsythe, who died of pneumonia April 1 at 92, wore his sedative masculinity like the subtlest cologne.

The Forsythe saga began in Penns Grove, N.J., in 1918. The son of a Wall Street stockbroker, John Lincoln Freund parlayed his prematurely rich baritone into a job as an announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers and then into radio acting. In 1943, when Hollywood saw that he looked as good as he sounded, Forsythe was launched on his 60-year career in filmed entertainment. He might have been a suave star in films–Alfred Hitchcock cast him as the male lead in the 1955 comedy The Trouble with Harry–but by then danger, not comfort, had become the prerequisite for movie men, and Forsythe was less a hot date than the ideal dinner guest. That made him perfect for the small-screen, living-room medium, which he wore as elegantly as a Savile Row suit for nearly a half century.

He was the doting uncle (in Bachelor Father) or unseen boss (Charlie’s Angels) anyone would be happy to have. But it was the role of the oil tycoon in Dynasty that truly tested the actor’s sangfroid. Did the show’s writers hand Blake so many catastrophes–all the murder trials, kidnappings, bouts of amnesia–just to see if Forsythe would blow his cool? He never did.

Having survived a quadruple heart bypass in 1979, Forsythe must have been aware that time on earth is precious. And suddenly, his was up. Charlie’s an angel now.