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Classic TV Heroines: Angie Dickinson as Pepper Anderson in Police Woman
Character: Sgt. Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson
Terms like equal-opportunity employer had barely been invented when Sgt. “Pepper” Anderson was working for the LAPD’s criminal-conspiracy division in the mid ’70s.
Sure, her blond good looks made her versatile–she could go deep, deep undercover as a prostitute or tone it way down to play a smack-smuggling gangster’s sex kitten.
But put a gun in Pepper’s hands, and she was all cop. We can assure you her vice-squad partners Joe Styles (Ed Bernard) and Pete Royster (Charles Dierkop) would attest to that.
Spun off from the proto-’70s cop drama Police Story, Police Woman failed a bit in its political correctness–Pepper stopped visiting her younger autistic sister, Cheryl (Nichole Kallis) at the Austin School for the Handicapped after the first season.
But, hey, give her break. She was fighting crime.