Sexy Sgt Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson (Angie Dickinson) was an undercover vice cop for the Criminal Conspiracy Department of the LAPD.
Working on a team that also included detectives Joe Styles (Ed Bernard) and Pete Royster (Charles Dierkop), she was called on to pose as everything from a prostitute to a gangster’s girlfriend.
The team reported to Lieutenant Bill Crowley (Earl Holliman) who was the coordinator of its operations.
Although not seen on a regular basis, Pepper’s autistic younger sister Cheryl (Nichole Kallis) was also visited occasionally at the Austin School for the Handicapped during the first season.
Pepper was a sensual, brassy, compassionate, sincere, and beautiful divorcee. She resided at 102 Crestview Drive and was certainly a woman of her time – very open-minded about things such as marriage and sex.
Angie Dickinson (real name, Angeline Brown) got a taste of the risks involved in real police work when she visited a Hollywood precinct to take some publicity photos and departed just before a shootout that took a man’s life.
“We had just left that station and were eating lunch across the street when we heard gunfire,” she said. “That’s as close as I want to get to being a real policewoman.”
The pilot for Police Woman aired as an episode of Police Story titled ‘The Gamble’, in which Angie Dickinson appeared as an officer named Lisa Beaumont.
The series debuted on NBC on Friday 13 September 1974.
Sgt. Suzanne ‘Pepper’ Anderson
Angie Dickinson
Lt. Bill Crowley
Earl Holliman
Det. Joe Styles
Ed Bernard
Det. Pete Royster
Charles Dierkop
Lt. Paul Marsh
Val Bisoglio
Cheryl (Pepper’s sister)
Nichole Kallis
