Angie Dickinson
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Angie Dickinson (born September 30, 1931) is a Golden Globe-winning American television and film actress, perhaps best known for her role as Sergeant Leann "Pepper" Anderson in the 1970s crime drama "Police Woman".
Biography
Early life
Dickinson, the second of three daughters, was born Angeline Brown in Kulm, North Dakota, the daughter of Frederica and Leo H. Brown, who was a small-town newspaper publisher and editor. Dickinson's first job was selling Hershey's Kisses for five cents, so her sisters could buy ice cream cones. In 1942, her family moved to Burbank, California. She graduated from Bellamarine Jefferson High School in 1947, at 15 years of age. The previous year, she won the Sixth Annual Bill of Rights essay contest. She studied at Glendale Community College and in 1954 graduated from Immaculate Heart College with a degree in business. Taking a cue from her publisher father, she originally intended to be a writer. While a student from 1950-52, she worked as a secretary at the Burbank Airport (now Bob Hope Airport) and in a parts factory.
Early career
In 1953, she placed second in a beauty pageant. Soon after her first marriage to Gene Dickinson, she decided to pursue an acting career under the name Angie Dickinson. She was approached by NBC to guest-star on a number of variety shows, including The Colgate Comedy Hour. She soon met Frank Sinatra who became a lifelong friend. She played Sinatra's wife in the film Ocean's Eleven.
On New Year's Eve 1954, Dickinson made her acting debut in an episode of Death Valley Days. This led to other roles in such productions as Buffalo Bill Jr, eight episodes of Matinee Theatre, General Electric Theater, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Broken Arrow, Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, Meet McGraw, The Restless Gun, Perry Mason, Mike Hammer, Wagon Train, Men Into Space, and a memorable turn as the duplicitous murder conspirator in a 1964 episode of the classic The Fugitive series with David Janssen and fellow guest star Robert Duvall. In 1965, she had a recurring role as Carol Tredman on Dr. Kildare.
Leading lady
Though Dickinson enjoyed a moderately successful movie career for nearly two decades, and worked with many major directors and top leading men of the 1950s and '60s, she did not rise above the status of attractive, reliable working actress - real stardom came later.
Her film career began with small roles in Lucky Me (a 1954 cameo) with Doris Day, The Return of Jack Slade (1955), Man with the Gun (1955), and Hidden Guns (1956). She had her first starring role in Gun the Man Down (1956) with James Arness, and the Sam Fuller cult film China Gate (1957) which depicted an early view of the internal conflicts in Viet Nam. Rejecting the Marilyn Monroe/Jayne Mansfield style of platinum blonde because she felt it would narrow her acting options, Dickinson at first allowed studios to lighten her naturally-brunette hair to only honey-blonde.
She appeared mainly in B-movies early on, westerns, including Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend (1957) co-starring with James Garner.
Dickinson in Rio BravoIt was another western that finally propelled her into Hollywood's A-list: Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo (1959), in which she played a flirtatious gambler named Feathers who is almost locked up by the town sheriff played by her childhood idol John Wayne. The film co-starred Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan. When Hawks sold his personal contract with her to a major studio without her knowledge, she was understandably upset and her hopes that the legendary director would mould her into the next Lauren Bacall seemed dashed.
In the early 1960s, Dickinson starred in numerous movies, making her one of the more prominent leading ladies of the decade, co-starring in The Bramble Bush with Richard Burton and Ocean's Eleven with Frank Sinatra, both released in 1960. These were followed by the political potboiler A Fever in the Blood (1961); a Belgian Congo-based melodrama The Sins of Rachel Cade (1962), in which she played a missionary nurse tempted by lust; and the European travelogue Rome Adventure (also known as Lovers Must Learn) in 1962, where Dickinson gets to deliver relatively wicked seductress dialogue; and Jean Negulesco's Jessica (1962) with Maurice Chevalier, in which she plays a young midwife who is resented by the married women of the town. Angie would also share the screen with friend Gregory Peck in the comedy-drama Captain Newman, M.D.
In The Killers, a film originally intended to be the very first made-for-TV movie but sent to the theatres due to its violent content, Angie, reaching the apex of her skills as a great femme fatale, is slapped by a villainous boyfriend, played by future U.S. President Ronald Reagan in his last movie role.
Dickinson co-starred in the so-so comedy The Art of Love (1965), in which she plays the love interest of both James Garner and Dick Van Dyke. She enjoyed moderate success in a string of movies made during the later 1960s and early 1970s: the Arthur Penn/Sam Spiegel production, The Chase (1966), flooded with present-and-future stars like Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Miriam Hopkins and others.
Dickinson's best movie of this era was arguably John Boorman's cult classic Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin as a betrayed thief and convict escaped from Alcatraz (and the first movie ever filmed at the infamous prison) out for revenge and the money he believes is due him. Epitomizing the stark mood of the period, the film did not acquire an audience or much critical appreciation until years later. In 1969, she starred in another Western, Young Billy Young with Robert Mitchum and Jack Kelly, and in Sam Whiskey where she gave young Burt Reynolds his first on-screen kiss. In 1971, she played a lascivious high school teacher in the dark comedy Pretty Maids All in a Row with Rock Hudson, and a scary doctor in the sci-fi flick The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler. One of her best-remembered movie roles is the tawdry widow Wilma McClatchie in the Depression romp Big Bad Mama (1974) with William Shatner and Tom Skerritt.
Police Woman
Dickinson returned to the small screen in March 1974 to play a character on an episode of the critically-acclaimed hit anthology series Police Story. That one guest appearance proved to be so popular that NBC had decided to turn it into a weekly detective series to be called Police Woman, which would make her the first successful female TV police officer. (Beverly Garland and Anne Francis had actually done it first, but their shows had been short-lived). Dickinson played Sgt. Leann "Pepper" Anderson, a cool, sexy, classy blond member of the Los Angeles Police Department's Criminal Conspiracy Unit. A tough but lovely woman, Pepper adopted a number of undercover guises to lure thugs to justice.
The role consolidated Dickinson's star status and as an over-40 sex symbol. She became a pop icon of the 1970s. Police Woman was shown in more than 70 countries, becoming the number one show in many. It was essentially NBC's feminine answer to other successful, male-dominated 1970s crime drama series Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, The Streets of San Francisco, McMillan and Wife, The Rockford Files and Baretta (later that same season) airing concurrently on three different networks.
Co-starring on the show was a familiar actor, Earl Holliman (who replaced Bert Convy, who had portrayed Crowley in the pilot episode), as Sgt. Anderson's half-Italian commanding officer and long-time friend, Sergeant Bill Crowley, and Ed Bernard and Charles Dierkop as Investigators Joe Styles and Pete Royster, respectively. On the first day of shooting, both Dickinson and Holliman realized their chemistry worked very well, and the writers quickly began tailoring scripts to this.
On occasion, Dickinson gave her boss's daughter a chance to play the role of her autistic young sister, Cheryl, during the 1974 season; the role lasted only a few episodes.
During its first season (generally regarded as its best year) Police Woman became a quick and sizeable hit. But by the end of its fourth season in 1978, Police Woman had had by far its most difficult year, with the ratings dropping due to increasing schedule changes by NBC and a level of crispness mostly missing from the program--it was now far from the dynamic series it had originally been. The scripts seemed now to lack the bite they'd had at the outset.
Subsequently, NBC decided to cancel the series after four seasons and 91 episodes. But by all accounts, Dickinson enjoyed playing the alluring cop on one of television's most influential cop shows ever, and will likely always be fondly remembered for it. (The same year the show came to an end, she reprised her Pepper Anderson role on the television special, Ringo, co-starring with Ringo Starr and John Ritter; she also parodied the part in the 1975 and 1979 Bob Hope Christmas Specials for NBC; she would do the same years later on the 1987 Christmas episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live.)
The impact of Police Woman resulted not only in a rash of sexy-but-strong female-driven series (mostly of a more fanciful nature) like Charlie's Angels, The Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman during the late '70s, but Angie Dickinson's show reportedly inspired a spate of applications from women for employment to police departments around the country. Journalists say they have been surprised by how often the Police Woman series has been referenced when asking long-time female law enforcement officials about what inspired them to join the force.
In 1987, the Los Angeles Police Department awarded Dickinson an honorary Doctorate, which led her to quip, "Now you can call me 'Doctor Pepper.'"
The 1980s
After appearing in TV mini-series like Pearl (1978), Dickinson returned to the big screen in Brian De Palma's thriller Dressed to Kill (1980), which earned her a 1981 Saturn Award for Best Actress. Loved by some and derided by others (largely for its violence and a certain crassness), the film featured Dickinson in a 35-minute role early in the film which ends with her character's brutal murder in an elevator. Critics hailed her performance and today the film is viewed as a serious entry in the macabre genre, with her silent stalking through the maze of a New York City museum being one of the film's stylistic highlights.
Despite the career highs of Police Woman in the '70s and Dressed to Kill in 1980, Dickinson's focus as an actress now had begun to wane somewhat; in the 60s and early 70s, no one questioned her ability.
She had a less substantial role in Death Hunt with Charles Bronson in 1981, as well as Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen. She won the 1981 Saturn Award for her role as Kate Miller in the Brian De Palma film Dressed to Kill. Earlier that year, she had been the first choice to play 'Krystle Carrington' on the Dynasty TV series, but turned down the role (which went to Linda Evans). After nixing her own Johnny Carson-produced prospective sitcom, The Angie Dickinson Show, in 1980 (after only two episodes had been shot) because she didn't feel she was funny enough, the private eye series Cassie & Co. became the resultant, unsuccessful attempt at a TV comeback. She then starred in several TV movies such as, One Shoe Makes it Murder (1982), Jealousy (1984), A Touch of Scandal (1984), Hollywood Wives (1985), and Stillwatch (1987).
On the big screen, she reprised her role as Wilma in Big Bad Mama II (1987), and completed the TV movie Kojak: Fatal Flaw, in which she was reunited with Telly Savalas. She co-starred with Willie Nelson and numerous old buddies in the 1988 TV western Once Upon a Texas Train.
Dickinson also hosted the December 12, 1987 Saturday Night Live.
In 1982, when she was 50 and yet to undergo any surgery, a panel of Hollywood designers and make-up artists ranked her first in a list of Best Female Star Bodies.
1990s and later
In 1993, Dickinson appeared in the futuristic shocker TV-miniseries Wild Palms, produced by Oliver Stone, in which she played the sadistic, militant sister of a Political Figure Tony Kruetzer. The same year, she starred as a ruthless Montana spa owner in Gus Van Sant's bizarre Even Cowgirls Get the Blues; Uma Thurman and a cast of stellar cameos could not save the picture, which has been called the Single Worst Movie of the 1990s. In 1995, she played Burt Reynolds's wife in the thriller The Maddening, appeared in the remake of Sabrina with Harrison Ford, and played the mother of Rick Aiello and Robert Cicchini in the comedy National Lampoon's The Don's Analyst. In 1997, she seduced old flame Artie (Rip Torn) in an episode of HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show" called "Artie and Angie and Hank and Hercules."
During the first decade of the new millennium, Dickinson played an alcoholic homeless mother to Helen Hunt in Pay it Forward (2000) with Kevin Spacey; grandmother to Gwyneth Paltrow in Duets (2000); and as Arliss Howard's mother in the critically well-received though little-seen Big Bad Love (2001) with Debra Winger.
Having appeared in the original Ocean's Eleven (1960) with good friends Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, she four decades later made a brief cameo in the 2001 version with George Clooney. Dickinson is often referred to as an honorary member of the Rat Pack.
An avid poker player, Dickinson during the summer of 2004 participated in the second season of Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown. After announcing her name, host Dave Foley said "Sometimes, when we say Celebrity, we actually mean it."
Dickinson is a recipient of the state of North Dakota's Roughrider Award.
Personal life
Angie was married to Gene Dickinson, a former football player, from 1952 to 1960.
She was romantically linked to Frank Sinatra, whom Dickinson called "the most important man in my life" (because of the power he held when they first met in the mid-1950s) and with whom she shared "a very comfortable relationship" on and off for ten years. They remained friends until his death in 1998. She was also linked to actor David Janssen, and allegedly to President John F. Kennedy, although she has chosen not to address those rumors.
She was married to musician/composer Burt Bacharach between 1965 and 1980. Dickinson temporarily put her career on hold, although she still appeared in the occasional picture such as the western The Last Challenge (1967) with Glenn Ford, and the comedy Some Kind of Nut (1969).
Their daughter, Lea Nikki, known as Nikki, was born three months prematurely in 1966 and was eventually diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. Her problems caused Dickinson to decline many roles as Dickinson focused on caring for her daughter. Nikki spent several years at the Wilson Center, a psychiatric residential treatment facility for adolescents located in Faribault, Minnesota. Although Nikki had earned a degree in geology, poor eyesight resulting from her premature birth made it impossible for her to pursue a career in that field. Unable to cope with the effects of Asperger's, Nikki ultimately committed suicide in her Los Angeles condo in January 2007.
- For a complete filmography, see [ Angie Dickinson ] at the Internet Movie Database
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