Early Life
He was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, where his father worked for Savage Arms. The family moved to Utica, N.Y. in 1926 where his father was now Treasurer of the Utica branch of the Savage Arms Corporation. In 1934 young John was sent to Europe for several weeks and this whetted his appetite for travel, and for photography.
MacDonald enrolled at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania but dropped out during his sophomore year, where he was not doing well. He worked menial jobs in New York City for a short time, and then was accepted at Syracuse University. While there he met Dorothy Prentiss. They married in 1937.
He graduated from Syracuse the following year. In 1939, he received an MBA from Harvard University. MacDonald was later able to make good use of his education in business and economics by incorporating elaborate business swindles into the plots of a number of his novels.
In 1940 MacDonald accepted a direct commission as a First Lieutenant in the Army Ordnance Corps. He later served in the OSS in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations during World War II. He was discharged in September 1945 as a Lieutenant Colonel.
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