Dorothy Ruth Hoogstraten (February 28, 1960 – August 14, 1980), known professionally as Dorothy Stratten, was a Canadian model and actress, primarily known for her appearances as a Playboy Playmate. Stratten was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for August 1979 and Playmate of the Year in 1980, and appeared in three comedy films and in several episodes of television shows broadcast on American networks. Stratten was murdered shortly after co-starring in the movie They All Laughed, at the age of 20, by her estranged husband and manager Paul Snider, whom she was in the process of divorcing and breaking business ties with. Snider committed suicide after he killed Stratten.

Stratten's death inspired two movies, a book, and several songs: the TV movie Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story (1981), the theatrical motion picture Star 80 (1983), and the book The Killing of the Unicorn (1984).

Life and career

Dorothy Stratten was born in Grace Maternity Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on February 28, 1960, to Simon and Nelly Hoogstraten, who had emigrated from the Netherlands. In 1961, her brother John Arthur was born; her sister Louise followed in May 1968.

In 1977, Stratten was attending Centennial High School in Coquitlam. Centennial classmates remember Dorothy as "sweet and kind." One friend, Leslie Buchanan, recalls: "The crowd that Dorothy hung out with were party people. They weren't the sports crowd, just kind of a very cool group." Concurrently, she was working part-time at a local Dairy Queen, where she met 26-year-old Vancouver-area club promoter and pimp Paul Snider, who began dating her. Snider later had a photographer take professional nude photos of Stratten which were sent to Playboy magazine in the summer of 1978. She was under the age of 19 (the legal age of majority in British Columbia), so Snider forged her mother’s signature on the model release form. This would be Stratten's fifth movie in a career that had only begun the year before and represented her first substantial role in a big-budget picture, playing the unhappily-married love interest of John Ritter, one of the film's stars. Bogdanovich, who also wrote the screenplay, said in an interview that he had based the backstory of Stratten's character on what he had learned about her marriage to Snider. Stratten and Bogdanovich began an affair during the production. With several months of filming left to be completed in New York, this was the last time that she would live with Snider in their Los Angeles–area home.

thumb|upright|Newspaper clipping, April 30, 1980

On Wednesday, April 30, at a luncheon held on the grounds of the Playboy Mansion, Stratten was presented to the assembled entertainment press as the 1980 Playmate of the Year. In his introductory remarks, Hefner noted that Stratten was from Canada and had received $200,000 in cash and gifts in addition to the title. In a fleeting comment, he also acknowledged the effect that Stratten's charming combination of beauty, intelligence, and sensitivity had on many who knew her when he said, "...and she is something rather special. They always are, but Dorothy is really quite unique." After taking the lectern, Stratten thanked Mario Casilli, the photographer who shot both her Playmate of the Month and Year pictorials, several Playboy executives, and finally Hefner, whom she declared "has made me probably the happiest girl in the world today." Later that evening, Stratten appeared as a guest on NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

By mid-July, principal photography on They All Laughed was completed and the New York production wrapped. On Wednesday, July 30, Stratten and Bogdanovich returned to Los Angeles after having spent a ten-day holiday together in England. Stratten's official Los Angeles residence was now at the address of a newly rented Beverly Hills apartment, but in actuality she had quietly moved into Bogdanovich's mansion in Bel Air. Snider made several morbid remarks to his companions related to the problems at Playboy magazine caused by Jennings' death, including a comment about how the editors would pull nude photos of a dead Playmate from the next issue if there was time.

By 8:00 that evening, both of the roommates had returned to the house. They saw Stratten's car parked out front and noted that Snider's bedroom door was closed.

Upset that what would be his only project with Stratten did not have a nationwide release, and determined that her last screen performance have a chance to be seen by a broader audience, Bogdanovich bought the theatrical rights to the picture. Out of his own pocket, he paid for a re-release of They All Laughed in nearly a dozen large markets across North America beginning in late 1981 and rolling into the following year. Despite generally favorable reviews and strong attendance in some theaters, Bogdanovich ultimately sank more than five million dollars, his entire net worth at the time, into the project to properly promote and distribute the movie and rescue Stratten's film legacy.

Bogdanovich declared bankruptcy in 1985. In the process, he lost his Los Angeles home where Stratten had lived for the last few weeks of her life.

In the years since its inauspicious debut, They All Laughed has been recognized by filmmakers, critics, and others as being one of Bogdanovich's best pictures. One Day Since Yesterday, a documentary about the making and cultural importance of Bogdanovich's romantic comedy, which includes interviews with the director and his remembrances of Stratten, premiered in 2014.

The Killing of the Unicorn

In August 1984, four years after Stratten's death, the publisher William Morrow released a book by Bogdanovich titled The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten 1960–1980.

The Killing of the Unicorn is, by turns, a biography of Stratten, a memoir of Bogdanovich's affair with the married Playmate who was half his age, and a scathing, feminist attack on Hefner, his Playboy philosophy, and the hedonistic sexual mores he celebrated in his magazine and practiced at his mansion, and the entire Playboy organization. By far the most controversial part of the book is the director's claim that Hefner had sexually assaulted a then eighteen-year-old Stratten in August 1978. According to Bogdanovich's allegation the assault occurred while the two were alone in a secluded area of the Playboy Mansion at the end of Stratten's first day of posing for the magazine's photographer. (Bogdanovich chose to use the word "seduced" to describe Hefner's behavior in the book; however, he originally used the word "raped" in the drafts of his manuscript. Bogdanovich and the publisher made the change after being threatened with a lawsuit by Hefner and his lawyers.)

Among the other allegations that Bogdanovich made in his book, the most significant are: 1) That Stratten had not married Snider out of love, but rather used her marriage as an excuse to block the advances of Hefner who, Bogdanovich claimed, pursued Stratten as a sexual partner after the purported assault, 2) That Stratten loathed nude modeling and dealing with Playboy in general, and only tolerated the humiliating work in order to promote her acting career, and 3) That Hefner was responsible, in part, for enabling Snider's killing rage when he was banned from entering the Playboy Mansion just days before the murder. The review that appeared in the Chicago Tribune, for instance, had its tone concisely summarized in the blunt headline that led off the piece, "Shabby little shocker." Film critic Roger Ebert, writing for the crosstown Chicago Sun-Times, managed to express empathy for Bogdanovich and the tragedy of Stratten's death, but was no less critical, stating that he could understand why Bogdanovich felt the need to write the book, "but I wish he hadn't published it."

In an article that appeared shortly after the murder, Hefner, who was 33 years older than Stratten, used the word "friendship" to describe his relationship with her and was said to see himself as a "father figure" to the Playmate. They divorced in 2001 after being married for 13 years.

Singer-songwriter Bryan Adams, along with co-writer Jim Valance, wrote the song "The Best Was Yet to Come" as the closing track for Adams' 1983 LP Cuts Like a Knife as a dedication to Dorothy Stratten. Adams also co-wrote with Lindsay Mitchell of the Canadian band Prism the track "Cover Girl" for their greatest hits collection All the Best From Prism (1980), which had not appeared on any prior album.

Bush's song "Dead Meat" is written in her memory. "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers makes reference to her.

Actress Nicola Peltz portrays Stratten in the 2022 Hulu miniseries Welcome to Chippendales.

See also

  • List of people in Playboy 1970–1979
  • List of people in Playboy 1980–1989

Notes

References

  • Dorothy Stratten.com