“It looked like it was a horror movie. A staged horror movie — like mannequins and fake blood.”
- Patti Laurman, roommate of Dorothy Stratten.
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NEARLY FORTY YEARS AGO, a heinous crime rocked Tinseltown. Playboy Playmate turned actress Dorothy Stratten was raped and sodomized by her estranged husband in a fit of rage, who then shot her in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun. He then soon after, turned the gun on himself and blew his brains out.
Little did she know when she hooked up with the human monster in this case, Paul Snider, a "low-life nobody", that he was a psychotic charmer who turned out to be jealous and possessive. The naive Stratten finally got the picture and left him to live with director Peter Bogdanovich. Snider caught wind of the arrangement, bought the shotgun and hunted her down.
Born February 28, 1960, the Vancouver B.C. native Dorothy Ruth Hoogstraten was just 18 when she posed as the centerfold in the August 1979 issue of PLAYBOY. In 1980 she was crowned Playmate of the Year and had barely begun a film career playing in her only starring role as the titular character in the science-fiction spoof, GALAXINA, when her lifeless nude body was found by her former roommates. The film had been released only two months before her death.
It's hard to say what might have happened had Miss Stratten been spared. One thing for sure is that she was possessed by a beauty and innocence that was rare in Hollywood. The accompanying photos are a testament to her near-perfect depiction of the famed, "Girl Next Door" so coveted by Hugh Hefner for his magazine.
A statement made by her in her "Playmate Data Sheet" was at the time, prophetic -- she lists one of her turn-offs as "jealous people."
The following article from the New York Post recounts details in the life and tragic death of Dorothy Stratten. It comes with the announcement of a new ABC News documentary about Miss Stratten, "The Death of a Playmate".
Dorothy Stratten’s murder: From Playboy to real-life ‘horror movie’
By Rob Bailey-Millado |October 18, 2019
She was 20 years old. Snider, 29, then turned the gun on himself.
Nearly 40 years later, the stunning blonde is trending again thanks to the new ABC News documentary “The Death of a Playmate.”
The two-hour true-crime tale retraces Stratten’s whirlwind life — from scooping ice cream in Vancouver, British Columbia, to being a Playboy Bunny in Los Angeles, to her short time as a burgeoning big-screen star opposite Audrey Hepburn.
Dr. Stephen Cushner and Patti Laurman — the couple’s former housemates in LA — knew a guilt-ridden Stratten was going to the home she once shared with Snider to negotiate a divorce settlement. Worried about the scorned man’s increasingly erratic behavior, they went to check on the model-actress.
Cushner knocked to no avail before opening the door to “a picture that never goes away, a mental picture that’s stuck in here forever,” Laurman recalls in the “20/20” production. “It looked like it was a horror movie. A staged horror movie — like mannequins and fake blood.”
But it was instead a very real tragedy some who knew them considered almost inevitable. By many accounts, this centerfold was an angel.
“She didn’t believe that everybody lied, and all the liars came to [Los Angeles],” recounts actor pal Max Baer Jr., best known as Jethro Bodine on “The Beverly Hillbillies.”
“I said, ‘Do you care about her?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Well, if you really care about her . . . take her back to Vancouver. She doesn’t belong here.’ I said, ‘She’s nice. She’s got a great figure, got a beautiful face and this town will destroy her.’ ”
How a ‘Jewish pimp’ lured a ‘babe in the woods’
Dorothy Ruth Hoogstratten was an introverted 17-year-old helping her single mom make ends meet by working at a Dairy Queen in 1978 when sleazy Snider first spotted his raw ticket to the big time. Teresa Carpenter, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1980 Village Voice cover story about Stratten’s life and death, recounts how Snider earned a “decent living” promoting auto shows.
“But it wasn’t enough to accommodate his extravagant taste, so he began to procure girls and pimp them on the side,” Carpenter says in the new doc. “He didn’t keep a low profile in that he drove a black Corvette, wore a mink coat and a Star of David encrusted with jewels that he hung on his chest. He was called the Jewish pimp and he cultivated that.”
But his new girl was different, and Snider set about “grooming” his “class merchandise.” Stratten’s friends detail how the opportunistic hustler was the first man to tell the high school student with no father figure she was beautiful — and escorted her to her senior prom.
When Playboy launched its “Great Playmate Hunt” to discover the cover model and centerfold for its 25th-anniversary issue, Snider pushed his discovery, then 18, to pose for nude photos without telling her mother.
“It took him a little while to talk me into agreeing to taking some test pictures,” says Stratten in a clip from a local Canadian talk show. “I had never taken my clothes off for anyone I didn’t know . . . It took me about two weeks to agree.”
Hugh Hefner’s talent scouts, however, were instantly hot for the “innocence” of Stratten’s test shots.
“I wanted her on the next plane — she was a total babe in the woods,” recounts photo editor Marilyn Grabowski, who worked at Playboy for 43 years. “I cannot remember another Playmate being that — I don’t want to say naive, [but] inexperienced, unused to her surroundings and not used to thinking that she was really beautiful.”
Crippled by shyness, the newly christened Dorothy Stratten missed out on the 25th-anniversary Playmate gig but went to work — and earned her green card — as a Bunny at the Playboy Club West, where she wasn’t old enough to serve alcohol.
When she was fast-tracked to Playmate of the Month for August 1979, Snider tightened his grip on his asset. To prove her loyalty, and against Hef’s wishes, Stratten married Snider two months before her issue hit newsstands.
From Svengali to shooting star
“She was on the phone with him daily when we shot her,” says Grabowski. “She would call and tell him how great it was going. She thought that whatever success she was having — and it was embryonic at that point — was totally due to Paul.”
Soon, however, Stratten was booking mainstream acting roles, from a low-budget horror flick, “Autumn Born,” to guest shots on “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” and “Fantasy Island.” Meanwhile, her husband was blowing her earnings on a series of get-rich-quick male stripper showcases.
In 1980, she was named Playmate of the Year and headlined the Playboy-produced sci-fi spoof “Galaxina.” It was that year when she met Oscar-nominated director Peter Bogdanovich (“The Last Picture Show,” “Paper Moon”), newly single after a high-profile split from actress Cybill Shepherd — and cruising at the Playboy Mansion.
He fell “madly in love” with Stratten and wrote a wholesome, girl next door role for her in his next film, “They All Laughed,” starring opposite A-listers Audrey Hepburn and John Ritter.
Stratten was fast outgrowing her Svengali and seeing through his exploitation, “The Death of a Playmate” reports. An enraged Snider was banned by Hef from the Playboy Mansion — and his trophy wife stopped returning his calls.
When she and Bogdanovich returned from location shoots in New York City, they moved in together. Stratten informed Snider she wanted a divorce — but would meet to discuss splitting their marital assets.
Former Los Angeles homicide detective Richard DeAnda tells ABC’s crew how a desperate Snider scoured classified ads for a shotgun — and bought one on Aug. 13, 1980.
Cushner and Laurman discovered their former housemates’ dead nude bodies the next day. Strands of long blonde hair were clutched in Snider’s right hand, and Stratten had been sodomized, according to the autopsy report.
“He ultimately had to do what he did, and basically — to Hefner, to Bogdanovich, everybody else, to society in general — put up not one but two middle fingers and say, ‘That’s what you get for messing with Paul Snider,’ ” Cushner says.
“I think that if you look at the control factor of . . . forcing sex upon her, I think that’s all a part of his regaining his position of power,” DeAnda adds. “I think it was more realizing that he had no future without her and didn’t want anyone else to have a future [with] her.”
In a haunting twist of fate, Stratten was buried at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park — the same final resting place as inaugural Playboy cover model Marilyn Monroe.
“They All Laughed” was released on Aug. 14, 1981. It received mixed reviews at the time but is now referenced by auteur filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson. Stratten’s truncated life also inspired the Bob Fosse-directed biopic “Star 80,” featuring Mariel Hemingway and Eric Roberts, and the TV movie “Death of a Centerfold,” starring Jamie Lee Curtis.
“To be candid, I think I lost my mind a bit,” Bogdanovich wrote in his 1984 book about Stratten, “The Killing of the Unicorn.” The veteran filmmaker spurred controversy by marrying his murdered muse’s younger sister, Louise Stratten, in 1988 — they divorced in 2001 — but he admits he never got over Dorothy.
“I loved her dearly and deeply,” Bogdanovich told Fox News in 2017. “[I miss her] wisdom, her laugh, her warmth, her beauty, her humor, her charm, her elegance [and] her empathy. Everything about her I miss.”
[SOURCE: The New York Post.]
TRUE CRIME BONUS!
DOROTHY STRATTEN'S APPEARANCE IN THE AUGUST 1979 ISSUE OF PLAYBOY
FEATURE FROM PLAYBOY JUNE 1980 SHOWING PRIZES DOROTHY STRATTEN RECEIVED FOR WINNING PLAYMATE OF THE YEAR 1979.
See Dorothy Stratten's pictorial from PLAYBOY June 1980 HERE.
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