Movie Career and Army Service
Despite showing initial reluctance, Forsythe began an acting career at the suggestion of his father. He met actress, Parker McCormick (December 1918 – July 1980), and the couple married in 1939; they had a son, Dall (born in 1943), and divorced in 1943. As a bit player for Warner Brothers, Forsythe successfully appeared in several small parts. As a result he was given a small role in Destination Tokyo (1943). Leaving his movie career for service in World War II, he appeared in the U.S. Army Air Forces play and film Winged Victory, then worked with injured soldiers who had developed speech problems.
Also in 1943, Forsythe met Julie Warren, initially a theatre companion, but later a successful actress in her own right, landing a role on Broadway in Around the World. Warren became Forsythe's second wife and in the early 1950s the marriage produced two daughters – Page and Brooke. In 1947, Forsythe joined the initial class of the soon-to-be prestigious Actors Studio, where he met other promising young actors including Marlon Brando and Julie Harris. During this time he appeared on Broadway in Mister Roberts and The Teahouse of the August Moon.
In 1955 Alfred Hitchcock cast Forsythe in the movie The Trouble with Harry, with Shirley MacLaine in her first movie appearance, for which she won a Golden Globe.
Read more about this topic: John Forsythe
Famous quotes containing the words movie, career, army and/or service:
“I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)
“That’s what an army is—a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“O good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for meed!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)