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Angie Dickinson is just ivhat Hollywood has been hunting for a long time, a star who acts like a star By LIZA WILSON Hollywood Editor most see the steam rising. She strode back before the cameras and, on the next take, fetched the astounded Mr. Finch a clout that left the side of his face stinging red. Douglas, wide-eyed, almost forgot to yell "Print it!" Afterwards, when she calmed down, Angie admitted, "Sure I was mad. But not at Peter or Gordon.

I was mad at me. for not getting it right the first time." Small consolation for Mr. Finch, who must wonder what it would have felt like if she had been mad at him. After seeing a rough cut of The Bramble Bush, movie tycoon Jack Warner called in his studio brass for a summit "meeting. "That Angie Dickinson," he said, "she's got it.

Find a property for her right away. We'll make her another Bette Davis." Many of the staff, still licking wounds given them by the tempestuous Miss Davis, whom Bob Hope periodically introduced as "the Fourth Warner Brother" at the Academy Award dinners, muttered a "God forbid." But they hurriedly looked through their properties. They came up with Sin of Rachel Cade, a screen play based on the controversial best seller by Charles Mercer. "But we could get practically any big-name star in Hollywood for that part." said an executive hopefully. "Susan Hayward.

Audrey "Angie Dickinson," said Jack Warner firmly. "We'll make her another Olivia de Havilland." That started a few old wounds bleeding, too. Anyway, when Sins of Rachel Cade was completed and shown to Mr. Warner and his executives, there was no more talk of "another Bette" or "another Olivia." In Angie Dickinson they knew they had a new star, and better still, one who could act like a star. Angie is a most welcome throw-back to a group the movie industry respected and admired and somehow lost.

The more's the pity. Ambitious and career-minded, she is loaded with talent, temper and temperament, the requisites of a star. Furthermore, she has what a lot of the big stars of yesterday lacked a handsome pair of legs. "Angie is a perfectionist," groaned a girl in the hairdressing department. Perfectionists are not popular with hairdressing, make-up and wardrobe departments.

"She's bucking for queen of the lot," said an assistant cameraman. "She'll make it, too." looking guy, who was the campus football hero at that time. "Not only football but every campus sport. My love of sports today stems from his being such a great athlete." (Angie "is a Dodger fan. attends tennis matches and football games whenever she can, and is often seen at the $2 windows at the local race tracks on Saturdays.

1 She and Gene started dating right after she met him, and 10 months later they married in Burbank. When he graduated he went into electronics, where he is today. Four years after their marriage they separated, and they are now in the process of getting a divorce incompatibility. Thanks to Gene, Angie is one of the best of the young poker players in Hollywood though she insists she is in the "small kitty" class. "He's a grand guy." Angie says of Gene, but we were a wrong twosome." Early in 1958 Howard Hawks was searching for someone to play Feathers, the sultry, provocative young lady with a past in Rio Bravo.

He tested any number of actresses for the role. The day after he tested Angie, Hawks (who also discovered Rita Hayworth and Lauren Bacalll signed her to a contract and then made a deal with Warner Brothers. With her money from Rio Bravo, plus the bank's money, she bought a small house in Brentwood, where a lot of movie stars live before they make Bel Air. But Angie hasn't had much time to make like a movie star except on rare nights such as the Academy Awards when she was acclaimed by many the most glamorous and beautifully gowned star on the show. Her life is lessons, lessons, lessons.

Recently her voice coach suggested she have a piano. "So now I am taking up piano after 15 years. I hated it as a child. I played Trees like it was never played. But now I find I like it.

Sometimes I play five hours at a time." She also recently added French lessons from the Berlitz school. "Most stars knit between scenes." she says. "I expect to study my verbs." With her busy selt-improvement program, Angie has little time for dating, but when she does it's with Fred de Cordova or Richard Gully (Anthony Eden's cousin, who has an executive position at Warner Brothers Gully says of her, "Angie has great warmth of heart, spontaneity, and an eternal femininity. Unlike most American women, she has an endearing desire to please a man she is fond of; in spite of this, she always remains a challenge." The publicist at Warner Brothers, assigned to write her studio biog, wasn't quite so ecstatic. He wrapped her up rather quickly with: "She has a warm heart, friendly personality and a voice to match, and she's good to her mother." A mixture like that coupled with talent, temper and temperament is dynamite.

Or Angie Dickinson, which is to say, the same thing. Let Angie tell how she broke into show business: "Some years ago. when I was a secretary" at Warners, I appeared in a bathing suit on a TV show and answered questions from the panel. I was told the answers in advance." Needless to say, Angie won "I like to think it was my personality." Perhaps it was her legs. Anyway, there were no prizes, no money.

But it encouraged her to try out for the Colgate Comedy Hour at NBC. She was one of the six long-stemmed showgirls chosen to back up Jimmy Durante. Angie wasn't too impressed. What did impress her was the guest star appearance on the show of Frank Sinatra, who had just made a comeback in From Here to Eternity, and on whom Angie had a mad crush; still does. "Did I ever think then that one day I'd co-star with him in Oceans Angie Brown was born in Kulm, North Dakota, where her parents owned the Kulm Messenger.

Later they moved to nearby Edgeley, where they owned the Edgeley Mail. She was named Angeline. "My mother was sick," says Angie in the current vernacular, "to give me a name like that. My sisters, Marylou and Janet, got nice normal names." When Angie was 10, she moved with her family to Burbank, California, only a few blocks from the studio where she was later to become a star. She went to parochial school in the San Fernando and had no ambition, despite the proximity of Warner Brothers, to become a movie star.

At least she thought she didn't. But recently she received a letter from Sister Mary Rose. Manor "St. Joseph, which read in part, "One day, when I was asking each of the girls what she would like to be, you smiled and said, 'I'm going to be a movie star No arrogance, just the assurance that that was what you were going to work for." Work Angie did. and does.

The Comedy Hour had been stimulating. "I was hooked," she says. Holding on tight to her secretarial job the practical sort" Angie enrolled in dramatic school, and started singing and dancing lessons. She did small parts in three movies, and in TV shows. She met Gene Dickinson while she was attending Glendale College.

He was. and is, a big good Fred de Cordova, popular Hollywood director, who often dates Angie, explains her, "She is the only girl in recent years I've met who fits the pattern of the old-time glamour stars. She's as career-minded as a Crawford or a Stanwyck, and she doesn't think or act like a member of the currently fashionable sweat-shirt gang. Her appearances in public always display her as a personality, and certainly not as the girl next door, thank God." Gordon Douglas, who directed Angie in Sins of Rachel Cade, is another of her Hollywood boosters. "She never makes mountains out of molehills.

You never have to call Angie on a set just whisper, she's at your elbow. I like to direct that kind." In filming Rachel, however, Douglas got a good look at Angie's burgeoning temper. After two fruitless takes of a scene in which she was to slap Peter Finch, the director called her aside. "Look," he said. "He's insulted you is that how you hit him? Pattycake?" Angie's eyes, began to smolder.

You could al The American WeeklyAugust 21, 1960 1 15.