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Brett Halsey (born June 20, 1933, in Santa Ana, California), is an American film actor, sometimes credited as Montgomery Ford. He is best known as the original John Abbott on the soap opera The Young and the Restless, a role he held from May 1980 to March 1981, before being replaced by Jerry Douglas. Interested in acting since he was a child, Brett was employed as a page at CBS Television studios. Whilst there he met Jack Benny and his wife Mary Livingstone who introduced him to the head of Universal Pictures who placed him in a school with other aspiring actors for the studio. In 1958,... MORE

Brett Halsey (born June 20, 1933, in Santa Ana, California), is an American film actor, sometimes credited as Montgomery Ford. He is best known as the original John Abbott on the soap opera The Young and the Restless, a role he held from May 1980 to March 1981, before being replaced by Jerry Douglas. Interested in acting since he was a child, Brett was employed as a page at CBS Television studios. Whilst there he met Jack Benny and his wife Mary Livingstone who introduced him to the head of Universal Pictures who placed him in a school with other aspiring actors for the studio. In 1958, Halsey guest starred in the episode "The Imposter" of Richard Carlson's syndicated western television series Mackenzie's Raiders, a fictional account of cavalry Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. Also in 1958, Halsey had the lead role of a life-saving sailor in an episode of Highway Patrol. Halsey also guest starred in Wendell Corey's Harbor Command, a military drama about the United States Coast Guard. In 1959, he had a co-starring role in the science-fiction film The Atomic Submarine with Arthur Franz and Dick Foran. From 1961–1962, Halsey starred with Barry Coe and Gary Lockwood in the ABC television LESS