Angie Dickinson is a legendary performer best noted for her role as Pepper Anderson during four seasons of the TV drama Police Woman. But she had a rather lucrative career both before and after that series which ran from 1974-78. Starting out in a handful of TV dramas and westerns, the first major role which interests me came along in 1959 when she starred in Rio Bravo opposite John Wayne, Rick Nelson, and Dean Martin. She went on to star as a leading lady in numerous films throughout the 60’s, including Ocean’s Eleven.
Angie Dickinson has somewhat of a Presidential connection too. Although the assertions that she was romantically linked to John F. Kennedy are only rumors, she did in fact receive the only ‘onscreen’ slap from a future President when she took it on the chin from Ronald Reagan in The Killers in 1964.
But as in my previous posting about Nancy Allen, Dickinson’s most memorable role to me was in Brian DePalma’s classic thriller Dressed to Kill in 1980. Okay, so her shower scene (that parallelled Janet Leigh’s in the film’s primary inspiration Psycho) employed a body double. Still Angie Dickinson was quite the sex symbol of the year – at nearly the age of 50!
I had acquired Angie Dickinson’s autograph through the mail in 1998 when I wrote her a letter and she responded by sending me the signed photo at the top of the page. Meeting her though didn’t come until over ten years when she appeared at the Chicago Celebrity Collector’s Show on March 21, 2009. I brought along my signed photo, but it was all for naught as she had an agent who was charging the exorbitant price of $20 to be photographed with her. I figured that since I had gotten her autograph for free, it evened itself out, so I went ahead and paid to get a photo with her.
This concludes the celebrity encounters from the Chicago Collectors Show. Return to the Chicago posting here…
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