A couple of years ago, a very good friend and colleague of mine had the distinct pleasure of a lunch date with that magnificent Hollywood legend, Miss Angie Dickinson, at the infamous Polo Lounge at The Beverly Hills Hotel. Over highballs and Waldorf Salad, this Grande Dame of Hollywood Royalty enchanted him with a bevy of delightful stories from her amazing life, including the time she was approached to star in a project and asked to attend a subsequent meeting in Burbank to discuss the particulars. As the story goes, her driver delivered her to the address they were given, and when they arrived, she recalled thinking it rather odd that the meeting was not only being held in a high school auditorium, but that it was in the auditorium of the very same high school that she herself had attended many years before. She shrugged her glamorous, padded shoulders, and opened the door.

Once inside, instead of finding a few entertainment executives gathered around a conference table, she found lights, camera, a film crew, and an auditorium full of people — many of whom she recognized. Suddenly she found herself face to face with an enthusiastic gentleman in a tuxedo who stuck a microphone in her face and announced for all to hear, “Angie Dickinson — THIS IS YOUR LIFE!” She blinked, looked around the room, and then back at him, and with a face like granite, said:

“THE FUCK IT IS…”

She then turned on her shapely heel and walked out.

Now that, my friends, is a BADASS.