Angie Dickinson

Angie Dickinson, born Angeline Brown on September 30, 1931, in Kulm, North Dakota, is a retired American actress whose career spanned film, television, and Broadway. She was the middle of three daughters born to Fredericka and Leo Henry Brown, both of German descent, the family surname having originally been Braun. Her father worked as a publisher and editor on the Kulm Messenger and the Edgeley Mail, and also served as projectionist at the town's only movie theater until it burned down. In 1942, when Dickinson was ten years old, the family relocated to Burbank, California, where she attended Bellarmine-Jefferson High School, graduating in 1947. The year before graduation, she won the Sixth Annual Bill of Rights essay contest. She subsequently studied at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles and at Glendale Community College, completing a business degree in 1954. During her student years from 1950 to 1952, she worked as a secretary at Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank and in a parts factory. She took the surname Dickinson in 1952 upon marrying football player Gene Dickinson.

Her path into entertainment began when a second-place finish at a local Miss America preliminary attracted the attention of a casting agent, who placed her as one of six showgirls on The Jimmy Durante Show. That exposure led to an introduction to a television-industry producer who encouraged her to pursue acting. She made her television acting debut on New Year's Eve 1954 in an episode of Death Valley Days. Throughout the 1950s she accumulated guest appearances across numerous anthology and dramatic series, including Matinee Theatre, Gunsmoke, General Electric Theater, Broken Arrow, Cheyenne, and The Restless Gun, among many others. In 1958 she was cast as Laura Meadows in the Colt .45 episode "The Deserters" and appeared as defendant Mrs. Fargo in the Perry Mason episode "The Case of the One-Eyed Witness." She also starred in two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "Captive Audience" with James Mason, which aired October 18, 1962, and "Thanatos Palace Hotel" with Steven Hill, which aired January 31, 1965. In 1965 she held a recurring role as Carol Tredman on NBC's Dr. Kildare.

Dickinson's film career began with a small uncredited role in the 1954 Doris Day vehicle Lucky Me, followed by The Return of Jack Slade and Man with the Gun in 1955 and Hidden Guns in 1956. Her first starring film role came in Gun the Man Down (1956) opposite James Arness, and she followed that with Sam Fuller's China Gate (1957), which offered an early cinematic treatment of the Vietnam War. She co-starred with Randolph Scott and James Garner in the Western Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend (1957) and appeared opposite James Mason and Rod Steiger in the crime drama Cry Terror! (1958). Her breakthrough in film came with Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo (1959), in which she played a flirtatious gambler known as Feathers who becomes drawn to the town sheriff, played by John Wayne, whom Dickinson had idolized since childhood. The film also starred Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Walter Brennan, and earned Dickinson the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year.

Over the following decade she appeared in more than fifty films and established herself as a prominent Hollywood leading lady. Her credits from this period include Ocean's 11 (1960), The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961), the title role in Jessica (1962) alongside Maurice Chevalier, Captain Newman, M.D. (1963) with Gregory Peck, and The Killers (1964), in which she played a femme fatale opposite Ronald Reagan in his final film role. That picture, directed by Don Siegel and based on an Ernest Hemingway story, was originally produced as a television movie but released theatrically due to its violent content. Additional credits include The Art of Love (1965) with James Garner and Dick Van Dyke, The Chase (1966) alongside Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, and Robert Duvall, Point Blank (1967), Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971), The Outside Man (1972), Big Bad Mama (1974), and Brian De Palma's erotic crime thriller Dressed to Kill (1980), for which she received the Saturn Award for Best Actress.

In 1962, at the height of her film career, Dickinson appeared on Broadway in The Perfect Setup, bringing her stage presence to New York audiences. That same year she also appeared in the film Jessica, reflecting the breadth of her activity across multiple performance platforms during that period.

From 1974 to 1978, Dickinson starred as Sergeant Pepper Anderson in the NBC crime series Police Woman, a role that brought her the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama and three Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. In her later career she appeared in the television miniseries Hollywood Wives (1985) and Wild Palms (1993), and took supporting roles in films including Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1994), Sabrina (1995), Pay It Forward (2000), and Big Bad Love (2001). Her final screen performance to date was in the Hallmark Channel film Mending Fences (2009).