Angeline Brown never thought she'd grow up to be a household name.
Born in 1931, Angie lived a small-town life in Kulm, North Dakota. She grew up to be a smart and beautiful woman, with a savvy sense of business that helped her land key roles in acting and avoiding mistakes that killed the careers of other women.
Angie has a very wide background in acting, with a surprisingly long and varied list of roles over on IMDB. There are a couple of those roles that propelled her to stardom.
Her first big break that got her noticed by the public was appearing in Rio Bravo with John Wayne. She played Feathers, and was the love interest for Wayne's tough character. She did her best to avoid the platinum blonde stereotyping that she felt would limit her roles. She made quite a splash, and she could be seen regularly on the best shows of the late 1950's and all of the 1960's, such as Perry Mason, Wagon Train, Mike Hammer, and The Fugitive.
Because she liked characters who could fend for themselves, she appeared in a lot of westerns. Her first starring role was opposite of James Arness in Gun The Man Down in 1956. She also played Frank Sinatra's wife in the original Oceans 11, and was a lifelong friend of Frank and Dean Martin.
The biggest role Angie ever played was the lead in a new 1970's series called Police Woman. She was the very first female lead in an hour-long dramatic television role, and it opened the doors up to other female-lead shows like Charlie's Angels, Wonder Woman, and The Bionic Woman. The show ran for three years and co-starred Earl Holliman. Angie's character, Sargeant Suzanne "Pepper" Anderson, was such a hit that the police academys were inundated with applications from women.
The theme music from Police Woman is still recognized by many folks, particularly when it was used by Quentin Tarentino in his film, Kill Bill.
Angie was married twice, once to footballer Gene Dickinson, and once to Burt Bacharach. She had one daughter, whom she lost to suicide in 2007. She won two Golden Globes and a Saturn award, and has a whole slew of nominations.
Additional information, including an extensive list of her roles, is available over on IMDB