Angie Dickinson Profile

Angie Dickinson

	(Angeline Brown)
30 September 31	is born in Kulm, North Dakota, into a devout Roman Catholic family, one of three girls, the others named Mary Lou and Janet. Her father, Leo Henry Browne, and his wife operate the weekly Kulm Messenger.
?	moves with her parents to Edgeley, North Dakota. There they own the Edgeley Mail.
c. 42	moves with her family to Burbank, California, at age 10, where her mother works as a proofreader for the Burbank Review
?	attends parochial school in the San Fernando Valley
?	is educated at Glendale College, where she meets her future husband, Gene Dickinson, the campus football hero
?	attends Immaculate Heart College
?	studies to become a secretary
52	marries Gene Dickinson in Burbank after ten months of dating. Dickinson will go into the electronics business.
?	works as a secretary for a Burbank, California, airplane parts factory
Late August 53	is among six T-Venuses chosen in Hollywood by Groucho Marx, Jimmy Durante and Howard Rose, NBC casting director. The others are Dawn Oney, Susanne Ames, Sue Casey, Mary Ann Edwards, and Dona Cole. The girls will appear on major NBC variety shows during the upcoming season.
?	is on NBC’s “Colgate Comedy Hour”
c. 55 / 56	meets Frank Sinatra while performing on “The Jimmy Durante Show.” In 2008, she’ll say that Sinatra was “the most important man in my life.”
c. 55 / 56	she and Dickinson separate after four years of marriage
June 57	the press tells that she has eight dogs with names beginning with W: Wonder, Whisker, Watcher, Whippersnapper, Woof, Willy, Wiggles, and Whoople.
April 58	is pictured getting her first screen kiss in Gun the Man Down from James Arness
May 58	is signed for the leading feminine role in Rio Bravo after Howard Hawks noted her in a “Perry Mason” segment
?	with the money from Rio Bravo, she buys a small house in Brentwood
59 / 60	divorces Dickinson
59	says she won’t return to her native North Dakota if she can help it
April 59	the press tabs her the biggest star of the future
June 59	she and director Richard Brooks take Hedda Hopper to the races. Hopper writes: “Lucien Ballard, who photographed Angie in The Bramble Bush, tells me she’s going to be a big star.”
August 59	tells the press: “I won’t be any good for a husband now. A husband needs tender love and care, and I’m too busy caring for my career. When it’s more settled, then I think I’ll make a better wife.”
September 59	the Protestant National Council of Churches opposes her part in The Sins of Rachel Cade for “over-emphasized sex for sex’s sake.” She plays an unmarried missionary left pregnant in the Belgian Congo.
	her constant companion is “intellectual film maker Richard Brooks.” When Brooks marries Jean Simmons, Angie starts “to play the field like a girl who was determined to not take any man seriously again.”
24 November 59	George Jessel squires her to the formal dinner party given by Dr. and Mrs. George Griffith before the Ben Hur premiere
Late December 59	becomes the winner of the first annual Golden Calf Award because “the perfect calf measures 12 and-a-half inches”
60	has to star in The Bramble Bush against her will because Howard Hawks sold her contract to Warner Brothers. In 1963 she’ll remember: “It was done without my knowledge or approval. Even my agent didn’t know about the deal. But it was perfectly legal.”
Late January 60	columnist Louella Parsons reports that “a romance that is going on quietly is that of Vincent Minnelli and Angie Dickinson...”
	leaves for a tour of USO camps in the Orient with the Johnny Grant Troupe
?	President Kennedy is at his best with her
March 60	is named Argosy magazine’s “Miss April”
4 April 60	is noted at the Academy Awards “stunning in a fitted gold brocade”
c. July 60	is introduced to the future president when Sinatra takes her to a party at Peter and Patricia Lawford’s beachfront home in Santa Monica shortly before the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles
August 60	the press reports that Director Fred de Cordova often dates her
	is a frequent date of Richard Gully, “Anthony Eden’s cousin, who has an executive position at Warner Brothers”
	columnist Louella Parsons knows: “Having finished Fever in the Blood, Angie Dickinson will visit the High Sierras for the first time, camping out all by her lonesome in a sleeping bag...”
October 60	columnist Joanne Walters tells that “Troy Donahue and Angie Dickinson are getting along just fine...”
Mid-December 60	will leave shortly for Sicily to film Apple Pie Bed with Maurice Chevalier and Vittorio de Sica
19 January 61	is among the guests at John F. Kennedy’s pre-inauguration gala thrown by Sinatra at the Washington National Guard Armory. Jimmy Durante, Shirley MacLaine, Ella Fitzgerald are among the guests. Her escort is Paul “Red” Fay, Jr., a friend of Kennedy who served with him in WWII. That night starts the rumor of an affair with the president.
20 January 61	Kennedy concludes his first day as president partying with her, Kim Novak and architect Fernando Parra
Early April 61	is hurt when a motor scooter she rides crashes into a wall during filming of Jessica in Forza D’Agro, Sicily. She suffers a cut on her left knee, bruised hands and right hip, and shock. She is ordered to bed for two days.
19 November 61	is among the guests of Peter and Patricia Lawford’s luncheon given at their Santa Monica beachfront home to entertain visiting President John F. Kennedy. The press notes him chatting and laughing with director and Mrs. Billy Wilder, actress Angie Dickinson, and Alvin Cluster. “He talked mostly about movies,” Angie says. “He seemed to be interested in what we were doing. He didn't talk much about politics or the world situation.”
December 61	columnist Walter Winchell writes: “Lovely, leggy Angie Dickinson and Arthur Loew are a conflagration...”
62	is honored with the Golden Garter Award for “Hollywood’s Greatest Gams”
March 62	is expected to fly to India “at her own expense, next month. Ambassador John Kenneth Gailbraith has arranged her tour of the film studios there. She’ll take a print of her new film, Jessica...”
April 62	she and actor Anthony George are reported being a “candlelight for two”
Early April 62	columnist Earl Wilson writes: “Angie Dickinson, now very hot, due partly to her derriere pictures in Jessica, was at La Scala with constant escort Charlie Feldman. Angie, like Jackie Kennedy, is traveling in the Middle East...”
	is among the guests at Lydia Lane’s cocktail party for Count Alberto Moreno Cinzano at Romanoff’s penthouse. Betty Bloomingdale and Joan Collins attend, too.
Mid-April 62	columnist Hedda Hopper tells that Angie has seen “ a great deal of agent Charlie Feldman - very quietly. While everyone in town thinks Capucine is his favorite girl, Angie’s proving them wrong. I asked if she’s marry him. She said: ‘I don’t know but it’s not impossible. He may go to India with me.’”
?	travels India for ten days as a guest of Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith and Mrs. Galbraith. She stays at the U.S. consulate in New Delhi. In his 1969 book, Ambassador’s Journal - A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years, Galbraith will reveal that he asked Angie to accompany him to Honolulu, but she refused.
May 62	columnist Harrison Carroll reports that Angie saw admirer Charles Feldman at Cannes but declared: “After he took a look at my schedule - showings, interviews, press luncheons - he said, ‘I’ll see you later,’ and went to Paris.”
June 62	columnist Earl Wilson remembers having seen her in Palm Springs with Jimmy Van Heusen ”when the Kennedys were there”
	signs for The Perfect Setup, a play destined for Broadway. She’ll play opposite Bob Cummings.
	pulls out of The Courtship of Eddie’s Father because it conflicts with her assignment in The Perfect Setup
July 62	columnist Dorothy Manners writes: “Angie Dickinson and disk-jockey Johnny Grant are spinning - and not disks...”
October 62	Earl Wilson reports from New York: “Angie Dickinson, here for her B’way debut, got a call from a tremendously important REPUBLICAN...”
?	is on the Broadway stage opposite Gene Barry and Jan Sterling in The Perfect Setup. The show will be an “awful flop,” getting very bad reviews.
63	signs with Universal-International
31 March 63	arrives in Tucson, Arizona, for location filming of Captain Newman, M.D.
July 63	is sworn in as chief executive of 408-acre Universal City by outgoing Deputy Mayor David Niven
September 63	the press tells that she urges cheesecake in the movies
October 63	goes backstage to congratulate Albert Finney on Luther
Late October 63	Earl Wilson notes her at Sardi’s in a flesh-colored sequin blouse
Early November 63	is escorted to plush places by Emmett Hughes, former speech writer for President Eisenhower. They start with El Morocco.
20 November 63	columnist Walter Winchell reports: “Hollywood’s Angie Dickinson is quite candid with New York interviewers about her favorite flame. Confirming the columns from coast-to-coast for over a year. Nachelly the newsmen merely chuckle but do not print - so famed and ‘attached’ is he...”
22 November 63	while filming The Killers, she faints in the arms of director Don Siegel when word comes over the radio of President Kennedy’s assassination
January 64	one of Hollywood’s bachelor girls, she fashions a list of “the ten biggest catches of the movie world:” Warren Beatty, Richard Chamberlain, Alain Delon, Vincent Edwards, Albert Finney, Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.
c. January 64	is voted “The Most Exciting New Star” by the Theater Owners of America
March 64	the press tells that she insured her legs for $1 million with Lloyds of London
May 64	attends Tony Bennett’s opening at the Cocoanut Grove with Eddie Fisher
Late May 64	columnist Mike Connolly reports: “Midnight was the bewitching hour at the Watusi party tossed by Denise and Vincente Minnelli to signal the opening of the new backroom discotheque at P. J.’s. That was when Rosalind Russell, Pat Boone, Nancy Sinatra and Angie Dickinson serenaded department store mogul Tom May with ‘Happy Birthday (his 71st) while ten waiters took his huge birthday gift to the table: Lolita, the strip-tease artiste at The Body Shop, a Sunset Strip nightclub - and beautifully gift-wrapped...”
June 64	is Sinatra’s date at the three-hundred-guest party thrown by him to celebrate the finish of None But the Brave on Stage 17 at Warners, which is converted into a nightclub set
End June 64	is expected to accompany Sinatra, Jilly Rizzo, and Yul Brynner to the Machen-Patterson fight in Stockholm, Sweden
July 64	gets a special hair shade designed for her upcoming The Art of Love, “sunswept blonde”
August 64	Walter Winchell tells: “Frankee, supposedly in a trance about lovely leggy Angie Dickinson, is on the ‘horn’ daily with former steady-dates J. Prowse and J. St. John...”
September 64	columnist Dorothy Kilgallen writes: “The hot rumor in Cortina, Italy, is that Angie Dickinson will be Frank Sinatra’s house guest soon, to liven up the action when he’s not before the cameras in Von Ryan’s Express - if she’s not already checked in. The pad is romantically called the ‘Hotel Cristallo.’”
2 October 64	performs at Senator Hubert H. Humphrey’s Democratic fete at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles
Late November 64	she and Richard Gully are among the guests at Arthur Cameron’s dinner at the Bistro to honor columnist Bert Bacharach and his wife Irma. Others are Elizabeth Allen, Kathie Browne, Sonja Henie and Niels Onstad, Dee Hartford Hawks and Efrem Zimbalist.
March 65	Troy Donahue takes her to hear the jazz at Eddie Condon’s
15 May 65	at 3:30 a.m., she marries New York composer and ace songwriter Burt F. Bacharach at the Silver Bell Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. He’s 37; she’s 33. The brief and simple ceremony is performed by the Reverend James Whitehead. Best man is actor David Nelson; his wife, June Blair, is the bridesmaid. Charles K. Feldman attends, too. They don’t announce plans for the honeymoon. Angie is “scheduled to report for work Monday at Columbia Studios, where she is playing Marlon Brando’s wife in The Chase.”
16 May 65	she and Bacharach honeymoon in Palm Springs
July 65	flies to London to visit her husband
	complains: “I was home alone again the other night, and I figured that in 49 days of marriage I’d seen Burt only 21”
October 65	Earl Wilson reports from New York: “Angie Dickinson flew in from Nice to spend a few days with her bridegroom Burt Bacharach...”
?	is off to Rome to film Cast a Giant Shadow
Mid-February 66	is signed to star opposite David Janssen in Norman Mailer’s An American Dream
End February 66	asks Warner Brothers to release her from An American Dream because she is expecting a baby. A spokesman for her says doctors warned her the role might prove too strenuous for her.
March 66	poses for Esquire. The photo, showing her seminude up to the waist, will become legend.
2 July 66	her daughter, Lea Nikki, is born at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Hollywood three months prematurely. She weighs less than two pounds.
11 October 66	takes her daughter home from the hospital. She was in an incubator most of the time since her birth.
July 67	Earl Wilson tells: “Angie Dickinson, who wasn’t happy about doing those bare scenes in Point Blank, refused to allow Playboy to print the stills...”
September 67	the Bacharachs look for a New York apartment. “They’ll be here three months while he composes the score for The Apartment...”
October 67	she and her baby go to New York where her husband works for Marlene Dietrich
	she and her husband are among the celebrity guests at the opening of the Subterranean Esplanade, the underground garage of Lincoln Center Philharmonic Hall
Early December 67	bursts into tears at the March of Dimes “Men of the Year” dinner for Bert and Burt Bacharach when asked about her daughter, “who was ill but is now very healthy”
December 67	is expected to stay with Bacharach in New York until February
	there are rumors that she’s completely nude in the European version of Point Blank
January 68	she and Gig Young raise 126Gs auctioning off the jewels and furs she was wearing at the SHARE party at the Plaza
February 68	is noted sporting a new hair-do, medium short and unshaped
March 68	attends Paramount’s Half a Sixpence gala sendoff at Grauman’s Chinese Theater with her husband
April 68	she and Bacharach are among the guests at Richard Gully’s party at the Bistro to fete the de Vogues. Denise and Vincente Minnelli, Caroline and Stuart Whitman, Baron Raadewitz and Nancy Kovack, and Jill St. John attend, too.
June 68	is spotted at Ah Fong’s in the Valley
October 68	flies to New York to be with her husband who’s out of the hospital after a pneumonia siege
	she and Bacharach charter a bus to haul a premiere party to their new Dover House in Westbury, Long Island
November 68	tells Walter Winchell at the Golden Room that her ailing husband mended quickly when the out-of-town notices for Promises, Promises were sugary
July 70	her daughter celebrates her fourth birthday. Bacharach sings for her “A House Is Not A Home.”
November 70	the press tells that the Bacharachs prove that “a couple of sex symbols can live happily together”
December 70	she and Bacharach move into a spacious house in Beverly Hills
January 71	Mr. Blackwell puts her on his annual ten “worst-dressed” list
June 72	takes a few days off from her starring role in The Outside Man to accompany her husband to Montreal
73	the failure of Lost Horizon, for which he composed the music, puts a stop to Bacharach’s career
June 74	is signed by NBC and Screen Gems for “Police Woman,” which will become a smash hit
May 75	will return to the big screen opposite Yves Montand in Le Sauvage, produced by Paris-based Liza Films
June 75	threatens to walk out from “Police Woman” unless her bosses “give her the raise they have been promising”
76	is named “Woman of the Year” by the Hollywood Radio and Television Society
	attends the Academy Awards
12 September 76	the Bacharachs separate
July 77	she and Robert Blake are the hosts of the Emmy Awards, held at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium
?	she and Bacharach reunite in Las Vegas
October 77	columnist Marilyn Beck reports that “Angie Dickinson and Burt Bacharach want us to know their relationship has warmed up again - and that, if things continue at the present rate, it won’t be long before they’re back together as man and wife....”
August 80	the press heralds that she will disrobe for Filmway’s upcoming Dressed to Kill
19 November 80	files for divorce from Bacharach in Los Angeles Superior Court citing irreconcilable differences. She seeks only custody and child support for their 14-year-old daughter, Nikki.
May 81	will get her own sitcom soon
81	is voted the actress with “the most beautiful legs in Hollywood” by the Los Angeles County Podiatry Association
	her divorce from Bacharach becomes final. Bacharach will marry composer Carole Bayer Sager in April 1982.
c. 81	her daughter is hospitalized by Bacharach and will spend the next ten years in a psychiatric hospital in Minnesota
October 81	is off to New York to plug her still-to-be-named NBC series
October 82	is off to Paris to film “Perry Como’s Christmas in Paris” special
Summer 84	the London Sun reports that she and Edward Moore “Teddy” Kennedy had been slipping away alone for “romantic strolls down rambling paths” and are “embroiled in a new romance.” Her spokesman says she just posed for some pictures with the senator, an old friend from the days when she knew his brother, the late president.
October 84	the press claims that she and Senator Kennedy “are currently playing the field”
November 85	advertises for her native North Dakota. “Come into my state - North Dakota!”
September 87	receives the 1,853rd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is cheered by hundreds of fans
May 88	attends a fund-raiser for Democrat Governor George Sinner held at the Grand Forks Country Club in North Dakota
89	returns a six-figure advance from a major publisher for her autobiography
March 89	she and Dick Clark are masters of ceremonies at the “Miss USA” contest held at the Mobile Civic Center in Mobile, Atlanta
3 April 90	testifies at a congressional hearing of the House Select Aging Committee and the Senate Aging Subcommittee in Washington, D.C., as to how her sister Mary Lou came down with Alzheimer’s disease five years ago at age 55 and now needs constant care at home
?	her daughter is diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a neurobiological disorder marked by a higher I.Q., deficiencies in social skills, and an extreme sensitivity to noise
Fall 93	her daughter enrolls at Cal Lutheran University to study geology and wants to become a seismologist
30 May 98	is among the celebrity guests gathering on the Las Vegas Strip for a black-tie gala to honor the late Frank Sinatra, “Chairman of the Board”
September 02	is reported spending most of her time caring for her autistic daughter
4 January 07	her daughter commits suicide at age 40 at her condo in Thousand Oaks, California. She dies of suffocation, using a plastic bag and helium. "She quietly and peacefully committed suicide to escape the ravages to her brain brought on by Asperger's," a statement by a spokeswoman for the family says.

Sources: "A Legend with Legs? by Sam Kashner in Vanity Fair, "The Man Hollywood Trusted" by Amy Fine Collins in Vanity Fair, "The Pleasure of his Company" by Paul B. Fay at Oakland Tribune, The American Weekly, Austin Daily Herald, Waterloo Daily Courier, The Billings Gazette, The Odessa American, Parade, The Daily Globe, The Lima News, Tucson Daily Citizen, Oakland Tribune, Star-News, Reno Evening Gazette, The Galveston News, The Morning Herald, Reno Evening Gazette, Denton Journal, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Pacific Stars & Stripes, The Times Recorder, The Evening Standard, The Daily Record, The Albuquerque Journal, The Vidette-Messenger, Pasadena Star-News, The Cedar Rapids Gazette, Cumberland Sunday Times, Van Nuys News, The Coshocton Tribune, The Pharos-Tribune, Northwest Arkansas Times, The Sheboygan Press, Tri-City Herald, The Record Newspapers, Humboldt Standard, Mansfield News-Journal, Moberly Monitor-Index, Register and Post-Herald, Des Moines Register, The Valley Independent, San Mateo Times, The Lowell Sun, Wisconsin State Journal, Daily Capital-News, Winnipeg Free Press, The Tribune, The Gallup Independent, Aiken Standard, Constitution-Tribune, American Profile
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