Dickinson has appeared in more than 50 films, including China Gate , Cry Terror! Her last performance to date was in the Hallmark Channel film Mending Fences She was raised Roman Catholic. In , when she was 10 years old, the Brown family moved to Burbank, California , [ 6 ] where Angie attended Bellarmine-Jefferson High School , graduating in at age The previous year, she had won the Sixth Annual Bill of Rights essay contest.
Taking a cue from her publisher father, she had intended to be a writer. While a student during β, she worked as a secretary at Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank now Bob Hope Airport and in a parts factory. She became Angie Dickinson in , when she married football player Gene Dickinson. Dickinson came in second at a local preliminary for the Miss America contest, and that got the attention of a casting agent, who landed her a spot as one of six showgirls on The Jimmy Durante Show.
She studied the craft and a few years later 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. Western series, Colt. That year, she also played the role of defendant Mrs. She had a role as the duplicitous murder conspirator in a episode of The Fugitive series with David Janssen and fellow guest star Robert Duvall.
She played an unfaithful wife and bank robber in the "Wild Blue Yonder" episode of Rod Cameron's syndicated television series State Trooper.
In the crime drama Cry Terror! Dickinson's big-screen breakthrough role came in Howard Hawks ' Rio Bravo , in which she played a flirtatious gambler called "Feathers", who becomes attracted to the town sheriff played by Dickinson's childhood idol John Wayne. When Hawks sold his personal contract with her to a major studio without her knowledge, she was unhappy. Dickinson nonetheless became one of the more prominent leading ladies of the next decade, beginning with film The Bramble Bush with Richard Burton.
