Dickinson retired from acting in 2009, but she has a slew of classics to her name.
On screen, she went toe-to-toe with the likes ofJohn Wayne,Marlon Brando, andLee Marvin.
And if nothing else, she and Sinatra counted each other as lifelong friends.
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The Western genre would dominate Dickinson’s early career on both the big and small screen.
Yet, despite all her time in Westerns, she wasn’t particularly at ease on a horse.
“They tried to scare me and did some tricks on their horses.
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I nearly fell off once.
It was terrible.”
She remembers Wayne as an ideal scene partner.
Angie Dickinson in 1959’s ‘Rio Bravo’.Everett Collection
“It was heaven,” she recalls.
“He was so respectful of my freshness.
He was very helpful by being patient with me.
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Once, we sat and talked for about 10 minutes about a scene.
That’s unheard of.
You don’t waste a second.
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But he was trying to relax me.
I got in a few binds because you’re able to tell when a scene’s not working.
He leaned on his rifle and waited, and then, I finally got the scene right.”
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“I liked them because they were not the normal Western duds,” she says.
“I did a lot of westerns for TV and B-movies, and they were not fun.
They either had hoops or something else.
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This was the first Western where I was able to relax because the clothes were not traditional.
Though, I hated the hat that I’m introduced in.
It looked bad on me or I looked bad in it.
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I hated it, but I didn’t win.
They put it on.
But once I was able to take that goddamn hat off, I relaxed a lot.”
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Off screen, the two were lifelong friends, which she credits to a mutual corny sense of humor.
“We just liked each other,” she says.
“I was crazy about him.
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He was absolutely the love of my life.
Though I would not have wanted to be married to him.
“I was thrilled to say the least,” she says.
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“I was always bitching about something, like ‘I don’t have much to do.
I’ve got such a small part.'”
“They were always monkeying around,” she adds.
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“He was the boss, so he could get away with it.
He loved to pull tricks.
They were kids at play.”
“That was a thrill beyond words.
We had about a five-page scene, which is a very long scene.
It was where I’m outside my cabin, and he passes by and he stops to say hello.
We tried to do the scene and we could not make it work.
So, he and I decided, let’s just do nothing.
So, instead he walks by and says ‘Good night,’ and I say, ‘Good night.’
And that was the scene.
The rest were just fancy frills.
We did more with four words than we could with a five-page scene.”
“The president was shot the day before we went to work,” she remembers.
“It was horrible to have to venture to act and get through the day.
Little did she know that she was sharing screen time with another future president.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry I had to slap you,'” she recalls.
“Which, of course, he didn’t.
It just looks like he did.
He couldn’t cut the mustard as a villain.
He was too gentle.”
“He couldn’t have cared less about the film,” she says.
“But he had stacks of paper, I mean like more than a foot tall.
We didn’t quite take it seriously.”
Garner, generally known to be a charming costar, didn’t gel with Dickinson.
“I don’t think I was appealing to him at all,” she reflects.
“It’s not the fault of anybody.
There wasn’t much chemistry between us, and it was a stupid movie.”
“I was excited as hell,” she says.
I think I said, ‘Is this a good script?’
And he said, ‘Shut up and get back here.’
Then I went to wardrobe, and Jane Fonda was in wardrobe picking out stuff for her part.
And I said, ‘Well, it’s not a very good part.’
And she said, ‘You know, Ruby’s a hell of a name.’
And that took care of it all.”
“He ad-libbed something.
It was fluffy and feminine and he made some joke, and I laughed and I ruined the take.
Talk about feeling stupid.
But it was my natural reaction.
But that doesn’t count in movies.
‘We don’t have natural reactions.
We have appropriate reactions.'”
She loved working with Marvin in spite of his gruff exterior.
“He was wounded in the war.
And he carried that wound with him,” she explains.
“He was not a friendly person.
He was what you think he was.
He didn’t have to act.
He was a tough bastard.
And a great guy.
But really no frills.
He was fairly warm, but you couldn’t see it.
You had to look for it.”
“I nicked him, I got him on the cheek,” she remembers.
“And you could’t cover up blood, so, you could tell I got him.”
Pepper Anderson, an undercover cop for the LAPD’s criminal conspiracy unit.
At first, Dickinson was proud to blaze a trail for women on television.
“It was part of the reason I took it,” she says.
“But we can all look back on everything we did and thinkI’m sorry I did that.
OrI wish I had done that over there.
Iamsorry I took the series, but I was proud of that.”
“It hurt my movie career,” she explains.
It’s the movies that counted, at least then.”
“It was scary because he’s a man of few words,” she says.
“That’s always difficult.”
Dickinson remembers a conflict between her and costume designer Ann Roth.
She won the argument, but that did prove complicated while shooting the explicit murder scene.
“You have to match what you did in the master,” she explains.
You do it many times now from different angles.
And so, I was afraid to get blood on my white coat [for continuity].
But Brian said, ‘I don’t care about the white coat!
Do it well!'"
Dickinson has a supporting part as the mother of the woman Kinnear’s David is engaged to marry.
“It was not a pleasant set,” she says.
“I don’t know why.
The whole idea of remaking it was not very good.
It didn’t feel quite right.
It just didn’t work.
And Harrison Ford was lovely, but he’s not fun.
He’s a businessman, doing his job.”
