UPDATED 5/3/2024
There’s no question that Angie Dickinson is the true embodiment of the classic Hollywood star, launching her career in television, shifting to the big screen, and moving back and forth between the two depending on the flow of things. In between, she found herself connected — in an organic, not cloying or opportunist way — with some of the biggest names out there.
Back in 1982, Sylvia Lawler, the Television Editor of Pennsylvania’s The Morning Call, profiled the actress, asking the question, “Angie Dickinson — an enigma surrounded by a glow. What has she got?” And without missing a beat, she answered her own question: “In the beginning — that would have been 1954 when the native North Dakotan made her first movie — she was known more for her terrific legs and that sexily wholesome glow than she was for her acting ability. Her movie roles were never standouts. Nobody ever called her the new Katharine Hepburn, but she was competent enough and the parts kept coming.”
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And so did the leading men, Angie figuratively pole-vaulting over many more experienced actresses to find herself working early on with the likes of John Wayne, Richard Burton, Kirk Douglas, Peter Finch, Gregory Peck, Marlon Brandon, and Frank Sinatra. How’s that for a who’s who list of Old Hollywood? And beyond that, she impressed the Kennedys and everyone around them when she campaigned for JFK during the 1960 presidential election (triggering rumors to this day of an affair). One of those people was writer James A. Michener, then-Democratic chairman in his native Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who chronicled the campaign in his 1961 book, Report of the County Chairman.
That “report” included an assessment of Angie, which read, in part, “She was a strikingly beautiful young woman with golden hair, dark eyes and a truly gamin manner. A delightful girl to have aboard an airplane. The soul of patience, a model of good sportsmanship, source of constant hilarity. She had a low, raucous, tantalizing laugh, a touch of Carole Lombard about her, a divine irreverence … But Angie was deceptive. I liked to talk with her, because I sensed that young as she was, here was an old pro who had knocked round Hollywood without getting anywhere and then, suddenly, everybody wanted her.”
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And that appeal has never gone away, leading her from John Wayne’s Rio Lobo in 1959 to perhaps her most popular role in the 1970s TV series Police Woman, to a nuanced and acclaimed performance in Brian DePalma’s 1980 thriller Dressed to Kill, with dozens of roles in between. It’s certainly what connected with biographer James Stratton, who has written Angie: The Life and Films of Angie Dickinson.
“There were two major reasons for writing this book,” James explains in an exclusive interview. “My respect for her as an actor began with Rio Bravo, and then when I saw The Killers and Point Blank, I just realized there was really something there. She has some amazing gifts: the eyes, the voice, the body and how she controls them all so appropriately. I just thought that she was certainly a great pop culture figure, but also an underrated and really good actress. The second reason is that there just hasn’t been enough written or said about her. She needed to have books written about her and people talking about her. She needed to have a presence more than she had up to that point.”
Oftentimes when writing a book, an author has a certain perception going into the project and emerges from it with an altered one, but that wasn’t the case in this situation. That being said, he points out, “The one thing I did come to realize was just how popular she was with everyone she had worked with. Not that I was actively looking for negative comments, but nobody had a negative thing to say about her. Overall, the experience was just a confirmation of her skills as an actress and the revelation that people really seemed to like her a lot.”
In a 1959 profile, The Los Angeles Times nicely summed up her early road on the way to stardom: “She was born Angeline Brown 25 years ago [on September 30, 1931] in Kulm, North Dakota. Her parents owned a newspaper, the Kulm Messenger, and later published the Mail in nearby Edgeley. When she was 10, they moved to Glendale. Angie attended parochial schools, Immaculate Heart College (one semester), and then Glendale College, where she took typing and shorthand. It was the urging of fellow workers in the airplane-seat plant that caused her to enter a couple of beauty contests.” Which, not surprisingly, she won.
That same year Angie would tell journalist Philip K. Scheuer that she only participated in those contests for the prizes, one of which turned out to be a small part in the Doris Day film Lucky Me, produced by Warner Bros — where she had landed in Rio Bravo. “This is what led to my interest in acting,” she said. “I had to study dramatics to find out if I could act.” Those studies were paid for by continuing to work in secretarial jobs. “I was one of six TVenus Girls on the Colgate Comedy Hour, I did Westerns, live television, small parts in pictures.”
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Early credits included appearances on Death Valley Days, General Electric Theater, Broken Arrow, Northwest Passage, Gunsmoke, The Virginian, Cheyenne, Have Gun, Will Travel; Mike Hammer, Wagon Train, The Fugitive, and so on. Bottom line, it wasn’t an easy process, especially for a woman, back then, to carve out a significant career for herself. “It was tough in those early days doing the TV shows,” James concurs, “and those early films, which were all Westerns: Tennessee’s Partners, Man with a Gun, Hidden Gun — Larry King told her once in an interview she made a lot of films with guns and knives, and they were certainly not memorable. She was just one of the chorus girls, part of the supporting cast, and it was very tough to break through. And there were so many young actresses in the same position as she was, working either in New York or Los Angeles, trying to get a foothold and being seen and valued more for their physical attractiveness than their acting skills.”
Where she really made her mark was in the previously-mentioned Rio Bravo, the 1959 film that not only starred John Wayne but saw Angie costarring with Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Walter Brennan. It was also the first film under her exclusive contract with director Howard Hawkes, who, without her knowledge, sold that contract to the studio, which in the end actually put her into play in a wider variety of films (all of which you are looked at below). One positive is that for a time her contract restricted her to the big screen, which really wasn’t a problem as far as she was concerned. As Angie noted to The News and Observer in 1960, “It’s easy to get over-exposed on TV. Look at Marlon Brando. He does one picture a year and people wait in line to see him. They wouldn’t do that if he were doing it all the time. I like acting in pictures. It’s so nice and easy to get used to.”
James emphasizes that even when she had a contract with Warner Bros, though, it wasn’t that unique a situation. “There are a lot of people who are getting contracts with Warner Bros at that time,” he points out. “There’s Connie Stevens, there’s Dorothy Provine and all these young ingénue types she’s, in a sense, grouped in with that Angie is struggling to make a different personality from. But then, by the mid-1960s you’ll see she’s showing up in television again, but that was out of necessity. She’s married and has a daughter, so there’s a desire to be close to Los Angeles and not always go on long shoots. TV shows certainly allowed for quick shoots over a week, maybe two weeks of work, and then she could come home at night. At first, she would go where the work was, but then after she has the family, she wants to stay close and takes jobs that are around that area.”
From 1952 to 1960 she had been married to former football player Gene Dickinson (whose last name she obviously decided to keep). In 1965 she married composer Burt Bacharach, with whom she gave birth to daughter Lea Nikki (usually referred to as Nikki) in 1966. Born three months prematurely, Nikki had pretty serious chronic health problems, including visual impairment, and would eventually be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. The marriage to Bacharach would end in 1981.
As the ‘60s led to the ‘70s, Angie’s career — like the vast majority of actors’ — had its ebbs and flows, but then there would be projects that would jump-start things again. Both sexually charged, one of them was 1971’s Pretty Maids All in a Row (produced by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry), in which she plays a teacher who seduces her student. It’s an awful film in so many ways, but Angie is electric in it. And then there’s 1974’s Big Bad Mama, a 20s-set gangster film co-starring William Shatner in which Angie appears nude and blew the audience away, reigniting things for her.
‘Police Woman’
In 1974, Angie appeared on the NBC anthology series Police Story, that was so popular that the network wanted to spin her off into a weekly series called Police Woman, which saw her playing undercover cop Sergeant Leann “Pepper” Anderson, who was part of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Criminal Conspiracy Unit. Running for four seasons from 1974 to 1978, it was a huge hit. “I wanted to be a star,” Angie offered an explanation at the time of why she wanted to do a series. “I made some good films — Rio Bravo, The Bramble Bush, Point Blank — and I had an interesting career going, but I was not a star. Nobody was talking about writing an Angie Dickinson picture. Anyway, the best things I had had in recent years were all on television — doing Thief with Richard Crenna, See the Man Run with Bob Culp. There were good parts in inconsequential films and inconsequential parts in good films. My trouble is I’m a Libra and I want it both ways, a good part in a good film. Burt encouraged me by pointing out that this [Police Woman] was not only the chance to be a star, but to show what I could do as an actress. It wasn’t a glamor part — glamor couldn’t get in the way. It was a chance as an undercover police woman to play many characters, do many kinds of parts. Of course, nobody knew it would be a hit. Police departments across the country tell me that applications for police women are way up — because of our show.”
Elaborates James, “What attracted her was the fact that she was going to get to play all these different parts out of being undercover on Police Woman. Yet when she went undercover, she was going undercover as models and hookers and escorts and airline stewardesses and things that were just cheesecake parts. So she was kind of fighting against that. There were some episodes where she breaks through that and has a good dramatic scene here or there, but it really did become cheesecake and action and she complained about that a lot.”
At the same time, it needs to be pointed out that, in a sense, Police Woman was the first in a wave of female-centric shows like Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, and Charlie’s Angels. “It was the first action-drama show with a major woman anchor to it,” James suggests. “It wasn’t like Barbara Stanwyck on The Big Valley where it was an ensemble and they would trade off who would be the focus of the episode each week. Every episode, every week, Angie was the star, the anchor.”
‘Dressed to Kill’
Although Angie would do well in the 1978 TV miniseries Pearl, it was in Brian DePalma’s 1980 Hitchcockian thriller Dressed to Kill which would reawaken audiences to her gifts on the big screen, including not only her acting skills but her sexuality. Angie appeared fully nude in a shower despite the fact she was intercut with a body double. The actress was surprised by the “controversy” surrounding the latter. “Why?” she posed to the Tucson Citizen in 1980. “How many people do you know who take a shower with their clothes on? It was my choice to remove my clothes, with full awareness that a lot of my fans, many of them fine, churchgoing people, will not approve. I don’t ignore my fans, but I can’t expect everyone to like or approve of everything I do. I have to express myself.”
James enthuses, “I think she certainly should have been nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for Dressed to Kill. That performance is really quite amazing, especially the kind of hide-and-seek game through the art museum that’s almost silent. She is so good in that.”
‘Wild Palms’
In 1993, Angie was one of the stars of producer Oliver Stone’s Wild Palms, a five-hour miniseries dealing with, as Wikipedia describes it, “the dangers of politically motivated abuse of mass media technology, virtual realities in particular.” Created and written by Bruce Wagner, it sees Angie playing Josie Ito, a celebrated interior decorator with numerous connections and secrets.
“Josie is a lady not to mess with,” she related to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Oliver Stone was reluctant to cast me, but Bruce Wagner felt I had a nice mix of glamour, sensuality and strength that the character certainly needed. Great roles like Josie don’t come along very often, especially on television. The script allowed me to show different things I could do. I’m not good enough an actress to take average material and make it all that unique, but I can take good material and make it better. I’d like to think that’s the case with Wild Palms.
“There are fewer roles, so your garden grows better and you do work less,” she added, “but then a Wild Palms comes along every so often and you realize you don’t have to be young, firm and blond to be appealing in a project.”
More Recent Years
After Wild Palms, Angie, who has become somewhat reclusive, appeared as a guest star in a number of shows, in TV movies and feature films (the latest, respectively, being 2004’s Judging Amy, 2009’s Mending Fences and 2004’s Elvis Has Left the Building). In January 2007, she and Burt Bacharach suffered the pain of Nikki committing suicide, the couple issuing this statement: “She quietly and peacefully [did so] to escape the ravages to her brain brought on by Asperger’s. She loved kitties, earthquakes, glacial calving, meteor showers, science, blue skies and sunsets, and Tahiti. She was one of the most beautiful creatures created on this earth, and she is now in the white light, at peace.”
In looking back at Angie Dickinson’s life as a whole, James has a couple of different views of it, both on a personal and professional level. “She had so many tragedies in her life,” he says, “and she certainly was resilient and just kept going. She handled the marriage problems, the tragedies of her daughter and her sister’s Alzheimer’s disease, and just kept going. She never really spoke badly about it. She had connections with a lot of people and many men, always remaining loyal to them afterward. Stayed friends with Gene Dickinson, said how much she loved Frank Sinatra, with who she had an affair with. So I think she embraced her life.
“She always talked about how lucky she was,” he continues, “and that she had a great career. She felt lucky to get the parts that she did and didn’t feel many regrets about the choices she made or the things could have been. She constantly defended the fact that she was seen as a sex symbol; embraced it, ran with it. She never denied that it was part of what made her career successful.”
Please scroll down for a visual guide to Angie Dickinson’s film and TV career. Which was your favorite Angie Dickinson TV/film appearance?
1. ‘Tennessee’s Partner’ (1955 Film)
Tennessee’s Partner, from left: John Payne and Angie Dickinson. This was Angie’s first film and the part was a small one. (Everett Collection).
2. ‘It’s a Great Life’ (1965 TV Guest Star)
It’s a Great Life guest starred Angie in “The Voice,” aired March 4, 1956. Prior to this, in 1964 Angie appeared in episodes of I Led 3 Lives, The Mickey Rooney Show and Death Valley Days; in 1965 City Detective, Buffalo Bill, Jr. (1955) and seven episodes of Matinee Theatre; in 1956 a different role on It’s a Great Life, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Chevron Hall of Stars, Four Star Playhouse, The Millionaire and The Schlitz Playhouse of Stars.
3. ‘Down Liberty Road’ (1956 Short Film)
Down Liberty Road, from left, Charles Maxwell, Angie Dickinson. Describes IMDB, “On a cross-country Greyhound bus, passengers give historically dubious summaries of major landmarks. Riders include a grieving father of a fallen soldier and C-list celebrities of the 1950s (Everett Collection).
4. ‘Broken Arrow’ (1956 TV Guest Star)
Broken Arrow, Angie Dickinson, ‘The Conspirators,’ (season 1, episode 11, aired December 18, 1956). The series stars Michael Ansara (the former Mr. Barbara Eden) as Chief Cochise, working with “blood brother” Tom Jeffords (John Lupton) to fight white schemers and renegade Indiana (Everett Collection).
5. ‘Hidden Guns’ (1956 Film)
A sheriff is forced to act alone to bring down corrupt officials in his Western town (Everett Collection).
6. ‘Tension at Table Rock’ (1956 Film)
Richard Egan, Angie Dickinson. A reluctant gunfighter attempts to change his identity and slip into normalcy. Fat chance. (Everett Collection)
7. ‘Gun the Man Down’ (1956 Film)
Having served time in prison, a robber, upon release, seeks revenge against the men who betrayed him. James Arness, who had just started on Gunsmoke the year before, stars with Angie (Everett Collection).
8. ‘The Black Whip’ (1956 Film)
Two brothers rescue four dance-hall girls, and encounter trouble from a villain wielding a wicked whip (20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection).
9. ‘Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend’ (1957 Film)
Angie Dickinson, Randolph Scott. More corruption in the Old West involving the plan of a businessman to raid and steal approaching wagon trains.
10. ‘China Gate’ (1957 Film)
Angie is female smuggler named Lucky Legs (seriously), who works with French Foreign Legion mercenaries in an attempt to destroy and arms depot (20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved. Courtesy: Everett Collection).
11. ‘Calypso Joe’ (1957 Film)
Angie Dickinson, Ed Kemmer. It’s her first musical drama romance, with Angie playing a airline hostess intent on marrying a South American millionaire, but being pursued by a former boyfriend. The film features 14 songs — we’re not sure any film should feature 14 songs (Everett Collection).
12. ‘Have Gun, Will Travel’ (1957 TV Guest Star)
In 1957 Angie was also seen on The Gray Ghost, Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, Alcoa Theatre, The Lineup (three episodes), M Squad and two episodes of Meet McGraw; in 1958 on The Restless Gun, Perry Mason, Tombstone Territory, State Trooper, Colt. 45, Studio 57, The People’s Choice, Mike Hammer, Target, Northwest Passage and Man With a Camera; in 1959 on Wagon Train and Men Into Space; in 1960 on Lock Up and 1962 on Checkmate.
13. ‘The Bob Cummings Show’ (1958 TV Guest Star)
Angie guest-starred on the “Bob and Automation” episode of The Bob Cummings Show (aka Love That Bob), which aired on February 25, 1958.
14. ‘I Married a Woman’ (1958 Film)
John Wayne has an uncredited role in this comedy drama co-starring Angie and George Gobel (Everett Collection).
15. ‘Cry Terror!’ (1958 Film)
Supporting role for Angie in this film about a family being held hostage by someone with a time-bomb in New York (Everett Collection).
16. ‘Rio Bravo’ (1959 Film)
This Howard Hawks Western was proof that Angie was moving up the Hollywood ranks, starring alongside John Wayne, Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, among others (Everett Collection).
17. Angie Dickinson (1959)
18. ‘I’ll Give My Life’ (1960 Film)
Angie Dickinson Ray Collins, this family drama is also known as The Unfinished Task (Everett Collection).
19. Angie Dickinson (1960)
20. ‘The Bramble Bush’ (1960 Film)
21. ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ (1960 Film)
One of the great caper films, ever, featuring, from left, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Angie (Everett Collection)
22. ‘A Fever in the Blood’ (1961)
A governor’s race is threatened the sensational trial of the murderer of a socialize. Besides Angie, the film stars Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. Written by Roy Huggins, creator of Maverick, The Fugitive and The Rockford Files.
23. ‘The Sins of Rachel Cade’ (1961 Film)
During World War II, Dr. Rachel Cade (Angie) is working in the Belgian Congo, where she finds herself the romantic object of both a wounded doctor (future James Bond Roger Moore) and a military administrator (Peter Finch) (Everett Collection)
24. ‘Jessica’ (1962 Film)
Angie is a widowed midwife whose arrival in a small Sicilian village triggers jealousy in the local women who are fearful their husbands will be drawn to her (Everett Collection).
25. ‘Rome Adventure’ (1962 Film)
A romantic drama set in Italy, starring Suzanne Pleshette Troy Donahue and Angie (Everett Collection).
26. ‘The Alfred Hitchcock Hour’ (1962 TV Guest Star)
Angie co-starred with James Mason in an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, “Captive Audience,” which aired during season one on October 18, 1962 (Everett Collection).
27. Angie Dickinson (1963)
28. ‘Captain Newman, M.D.’ (1963 Film)
The challenges of dealing with patients — and doctors — in an Army Air Corps hospital in Arizona. Starring Angie, Gregory Peck, Tony Curtis and Eddie Albert.
29. ‘The Killers’ (1964 Film)
From IMDB, “Surprised that their contract victim didn’t try to run away from them, two professional hit men try to find out who hired them and why.” Angie stars with Lee Marvin and future President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. Shot as a TV movie but, because of its violence, released theatrically instead.
30. ‘The Fugitive’ (1965 TV Guest Star)
Angie guest starred on David Janssen’s The Fugitive in the second season episode “Brass Ring,” which aired January 5, 1965.
31. ‘The Art of Love’ (1965 Film)
This comedy stars James Garner as a struggling artists who decides that faking his own death is the best way to increase the value of his work. But dead men can find love — enter Angie (Everett Collection)
32. ‘Dr. Kildare’ (1965 TV Guest Star)
Angie Dickinson Richard Chamberlain in the “She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not” Season 4 episode of Dr. Kildare (Everett Collection).
33. ‘The Chase’ (1966 Film)
When prisoner Bubber Reeves (Robert Redford) escapes, the impact on a small Southern town is almost immediate. Marlon Brando is Sheriff Calder, Angie is his wife, Ruby; with Jane Fonda as Bubber’s wife (Everett Collection).
34. ‘Cast a Giant Shadow’ (1966 Film)
In the aftermath of the UN decision to split British Palestine into Palestine and Jewish states, Colonel David “Mickey” Marcus (Kirk Douglas) is brought in by Jewish officials to reorganize the Haganah. Angie is Emma Marcus (Everett Collection).
35. ‘The Poppy is Also a Flower’ (1966 Film)
Angie and E.G. Marshall are United Nations narcotics agents tracing heroin from the Afghanistan-Iran border to European distributors (Everett Collection)
36. ‘The Virginian’ (1966 TV Guest Star)
Angie Dickinson in ‘Ride To Delphi’ (Season 5, Episode 2, aired September 21, 1966) (Everett Collection).
37. ‘Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre’ (1966 TV Guest Star)
This comedy TV special starred, clockwise from left, Jill St. John, Eleanor Parker, Kathryn Grant Crosby, Bob Hope and Angie (Everett Collection).
38. ‘Point Blank’ (1967 Film)
Lee Marvin is Walker, a man left for dead who is far from it and is determined to get the money stolen from. This marked a reteaming of Lee and Angie who previously worked together in The Killers (Everett Collection).
39. ‘The Last Challenge’ (1967 Film)
Glenn Ford and Chad Everett are dueling gunslingers in the Old West. Angie is a character named Lisa Denton.
40. ‘Sam Whiskey’ (1969 Film)
Widow Laura Breckenridge (Angie) hires ex-gambler Sam Whiskey (Burt Reynolds) to recover and return gold bars stolen by her dead husband which are in a sunken river boat, and then return them to the Federal Mint. This Western is a comedy.
41. ‘Some Kind of a Nut’ (1969 Film)
A satire on conformity with Dick Van Dyke as businessman Fred Amidon, who is fired for growing a beard to cover up a bee sting. Angie is his wife, Rachel.
42. ‘Young Billy Young’ (1969 Film)
Robert Mitchum is Deputy Marshal Ben Kane, who is in pursuit of the title character. Angie is Lily Beloit.
43. ‘The Love War’ (1970 TV Movie)
Angie stars with Lloyd Bridges as aliens from a pair of planets who arrive on Earth, take human form and continue their battle.
44. ‘Pretty Maids All in a Row’ (1971 Film)
While Angie’s teacher character seduces students, Police Captain Sam Surcher (Telly Savalas) is assigned the murder of a number of teenage girls. Rock Hudson also stars.
45. ‘The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler’ (1971 Film)
Angie stars with Bradford Dillman and Leslie Nielsen (before he was funny) in a sci-fi thriller that unveils a medical plot connected to eternal life.
46. ‘See the Man Run’ (1971 TV Movie)
When kidnappers call the wrong number, a struggling actor decides he’s going to get a piece of the action out of the crime. Robert Culp stars with Angie.
47. ‘Thief’ (1971 TV Movie)
Tell us if you’ve heard this one before: a thief tries to go straight, but is forced into pulling off one more job due to a gambling debt. Richard Crenna and Angie star.
48. ‘The Outside Man’ (1972 Film)
When a French hit man in Los Angeles finds out that a hit has been put out on him, he attempts to cut through potential assassins to return home. Angie is cast along with Ann-Margret, Roy Scheider and Jean-Louis Trintignant.
49. ‘The Norliss Tapes’ (1973 TV Movie)
Roy Thinnes from the TV series The Invaders is investigative reporter David Norliss who finds himself drawn into the world of the supernatural. Definitely sounds like The Night Stalker. Angie is Ellen Sterns Cort.
50. ‘Big Bad Mama’ (1974 Film)
A mother (Angie) and her daughters find themselves on the run after committing bank robberies. William Shatner co-stars.
51. ‘Pray for the Wildcats’ (1974 TV Movie)
Andy Griffith is a business exec who takes some coworkers out in the desert to race dirt bikes, but starts hunting them down. William Shatner, Robert Reed and Marjoe Gortner are his intended targets. Angie and Lorraine Gary also star.
52. ‘Police Woman’ (1974 to 1978 TV Series)
Angie is Sgt. Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson in her biggest TV hit. The show, despite everyone’s intent to get Angie as naked as possible, is credited with paving the way for other strong female-centric shows of the period.
53. Angie Dickinson (1975)
54. ‘A Sensitive, Passionate Man’ (1977 TV Movie)
A reunion for Angie and David Janssen who play a couple whose marriage is threatened by his alcoholism.
55. ‘Overboard’ (1978 TV Movie)
A couple (Cliff Robertson and Angie) sail their yacht to Tahiti to help their marriage, but things go disastrously wrong.
56. Angie Dickinson (1978)
57. ‘Pearl’ (1979 TV Miniseries)
Miniseries about the people around Pearl Harbor whose lives are changed forever in the aftermath of the attack by the Japanese on December 7, 1941. In addition to Angie, the cast includes Dennis Weaver, Robert Wagner, Lesley Ann Warren and Adam Arkin.
58. ‘Jigsaw’ (1979 Film)
In this French murder thriller, Angie is ex-convict Karen.
59. ‘The Suicide’s Wife’ (1979 TV Movie)
When her husband commits suicide, his wife is left to pick up the pieces and deal with their son, who blames her for the man’s death.
60. ‘Klondike Fever’ (1980 Film)
Adaptation of Jack London’s tale of an 1898 journey from San Francisco to the gold fields of the Klondike. Angie stars with Rod Steiger and Jeff East.
61. ‘Dressed to Kill’ (1980 Film)
Brian DePalma’s Hitchcockian (though considerably bloodier than Alfred Hitchcock wold have done) thriller about a blonde woman on a killing spree. Angie stars with Michael Caine, Nancy Allen and Keith Gordon.
62. ‘Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen’ (1981 Film)
Peter Ustinov is Charlie Chan who is attempting to take down Angie’s evil Dragon Queen.
63. ‘Death Hunt’ (1981 Film)
Third time’s the charm for Angie and Lee Marvin in this film set in 1938 Canada and involving a man wrongly accused of murder (Charles Bronson) the subject of a police manhunt in the wilderness.
64. ‘Dial M for Murder’ (1981 TV Movie)
In this remake of the Hitchcock thriller, Tony Wendice (Christopher Plummer) decides to kill his unfaithful wife, Margot (Angie), for her money.
65. ‘One Shoe Makes it Murder’ (1982 TV Movie)
Robert Mitchum is a private eye in the closing days of his career, hired by a criminal to find his missing wife, though it becomes obvious that she (Angie Dickinson) isn’t who she was made out to be.
66. ‘Cassie & Co.’ (1982 TV Series)
Cassie Holland (Angie) is a police officer turned private eye in this short-lived series, which was hoped to connect with the Police Woman fans (unfortunately, it didn’t).
67. ‘Jealousy’ (1984 TV Movie)
An interesting concept: three stories involving jealousy with Angie playing different characters in all of them.
68. ‘A Touch of Scandal’ (1984 TV Movie)
Councilwoman Katherine Gilvey (Angie) sees her bid to become Attorney General becoming threatened when others intend on revealing deadly secrets.
69. ‘Hollywood Wives’ (1984 TV Miniseries)
A three-part, six-hour adaptation of Jackie Collins’ book of the same name about a group of very wealthy, attractive, snobbish women (Angie, Suzanne Somers, Candice Bergen, Joanna Cassidy, among others) who are caught up in the low life and high society of Hollywood.
70. ‘Big Bad Mama II’ (1987 Film)
Following a land baron foreclosing on their home, Wilma McClatchie (Angie) and her daughters hit the crime-filled road again, along with a reporter (Robert Culp) promising to turn them into folk legends.
71. ‘Stillwatch’ (1987 TV Movie)
Lynda Carter is television journalist Patricia Traymore, who returns to the home she grew up in to face her demons while also planning on dong a interview with Senator Abigail Winslow (Angie), a vice presidential hopeful who has a mysterious past of her own.
72. ‘Police Story: The Freeway Killings’ (1987 TV Movie)
Remake of a classic Police Story episode produced while a huge Writers Guild of America strike was going on and the networks had to dip into the past for “new” programming.
73. ‘Once Upon a Texas Train’ (1988 TV Movie)
A Texas Ranger and an outlaw have to put their 20-plus year feud aside to take on a new generation of outlaws. Angie stars with Willie Nelson and Richard Widmark.
74. ‘Fire and Rain’ (1989 TV Movie)
A 1985 plane crash in Forth Worth results in 137 fatalities and this explores what happened and who the passengers were.
75. ‘Kojak: Fatal Flaw’ (1991 TV Movie)
Telly Savalas returned as his popular character of Kojak in a number of made-for-TV movies, and Angie co-starred in this one.
76. ‘Empty Nest’ (1991 TV Guest Star)
Angie, seen here with series star Richard Mulligan, in the Empty Nest episode “Almost Like Being in Love,” the second episode of Season 4, which originally aired September 28, 1991.
77. ‘Treacherous Crossing’ (1992 TV Movie)
Taking a cruise in 1947, Lindsey Thompson Gates (Lindsay Wagner) insists that her husband has disappeared, but there is no record of him ever being aboard. Angie plays Beverly Thomas.
78. ‘Even Cowgirls Get the Blues’ (1993 Film)
Describes Wikipedia, “The film is a transgressive romp, covering topics from homosexuality and free love to drug use and political rebellion to animal rights and body odor and religions.” Bringing all that to life are Angie, Tim Robbins, Uma Thurman, Loraine Bracco, Keanu Reeves, John Hurt and Roseanne Arnold.
79. ‘Wild Palms’ (1993 TV Series)
Oliver Stone produced this limited series about a multi-national corporation intent on taking over America using technology, particularly virtual reality, and a resistance rises to take them down. Stars Jim Belushi, Dana Delaney, Robert Loggia, Kim Cattrall and Angie.
80. ‘Daddy Dearest’ (1993 TV Series Guest Star)
Angie guest stars in this sitcom about a single father (Richard Lewis) whose own angry and cynical father (Don Rickles) moves in with him.
81. ‘Sabrina’ (1995 Film)
Angie has a supporting role in this remake focused on a romance between Harrison Ford’s Linus Larrabe and Julia Ormond’s Sabrina Fairchild.
82. ‘The Maddening’ (1996 Film)
Roy Scudder (Burt Reynolds) is a father who snaps psychologically and will do anything to keep his family’s secrets. Angie plays his wife, Georgina.
83. ‘Remembrance’ (1996 TV Movie)
A romance in the era of World War II between Serena Principessa di San Sibaldo Fullerton (Eva LaRue) and Colonel Brad Fullerton (Jeffrey Nordling). Angie is Margaret Fullerton.
84. ‘Deep Family Secrets’ (1997)
When JoAnne Chadway (Molly Gross) returns home, she discovers that the life her parents (Angie and Richard Crenna) convinced her of has turned out to be built on lies.
85. ‘The Don’s Analyst’ (1997 TV Movie)
Comedy about a retiring Mafia Don (Robert Loggia) who is worried about leaving the family business in the hands of his idiot sons. Angie is the Don’s sister, Victoria.
86. ‘Ellen’ (1997 TV Series Guest Star)
Louis Gossett Jr., Steven Gilborn, Ellen DeGeneres, Angie Dickinson in the “G.I. Ellen” episode of Ellen, episode six of Season 5, originally aired on November 15, 1997.
87. ‘George & Leo’ (1997 TV Series Guest Star)
Angie with Bob Newhart and Judd Hirsch in “The Witness” of George & Leo, a short-lived series aired in 1997.
88. ‘Sealed with a Kiss’ (1999 TV Movie)
Angie and Robert Stack are the parents of the younger leads in this romantic comedy starring John Stamos and Annabeth Gish.
89. ‘Duets’ (2000 Film)
A number of plotlines come together in this comedy about singing and karaoke, with Angie in a supporting role.
90. ‘Pay It Forward’ (2001 Film)
A young boy tries to change the world when his teacher demonstrates how an act of kindness can be paid forward to great effect. Stars include Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, Haley Osment, Jay Mohr and Angie.
91. ‘Big Bad Love’ (2001 Film)
Barlow (Arliss Howard) is an aspiring writer who constantly deals with rejection letters and is attempting to find some sort of purpose in his life. Also starring Angie, Debra Winger, Paul Le Mat and Roseanna Arquette.
92. ‘Mending Fences’ (2009 TV Movie)
A woman (Laura Leighton) attempting to rediscover herself, moves with her daughter (Shanla Caswell) to the home of her mother (Angie).
As seen by the visuals above, we last saw Dickinson in that 2009 film. At age 91, we hope she’s enjoying life to the fullest!
Check out our in-depth video about this phenomenal actress:
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