|
|
 "If people bring so much courage to this world, the world has to kill them to break them so of course it kills them. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry."
Ernest Hemmingway
Dorothy Stratten (February 28, 1960 – August 14, 1980) was a Canadian model and actress. Stratten found fame as the Playboy Playmate of the Month for August 1979 and subsequently Playmate of the Year for 1980. She was the second Playmate (after Lee Ann Michelle) to be born in the 1960s. However, Stratten is remembered for the circumstances of her murder at age 20 by her estranged husband, an act that was the basis of two motion pictures.
Stratten was born Dorothy Ruth Hoogstraten in a Salvation Army hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, to Simon and Nelly Hoogstraten, Dutch immigrants. In 1961, her brother John Arthur was born, and her sister Louise Stratten followed in May 1968.
She attended Centennial High School in Coquitlam. In 1977, while working part-time in a local Dairy Queen, she met a Vancouver-area promoter and pimp named Paul Snider (then 26), who had nude photos taken of her and eventually sent them to Playboy. Because she was underage, she had to obtain her mothers signature to have the photos taken.
In 1979, after having her surname shortened to Stratten, she became Playboys Miss August, and found work as a Bunny at the Los Angeles Playboy Club. She also played the role of Miss Cosmos in the Buck Rogers television series.
In June 1979, she married Snider in Las Vegas, Nevada. The couples relationship quickly deteriorated, as Snider became prone to fits of jealousy and controlling behavior.
In 1980, she became Playboys Playmate of the Year. Her original pictorial was photographed by Mario Casilli.
Hugh Hefner reportedly encouraged Stratten to sever ties with Snider, calling him a "hustler and a pimp". Rosanne Katon and other friends warned Stratten about Sniders behavior. By August 1980, Sniders grandiosity gave way to obsessive jealousy as he lost control of Strattens "rocket to the moon". Around this time Stratten began an affair with the director of her first major film, Peter Bogdanovich. Snider hired a private detective to follow Stratten and report back to him everything she did. Snider and Stratten separated, and Stratten moved in with Bogdanovich. Stratten had also made plans to file for divorce from Snider.
On 14 August 1980 around noon, Snider and Stratten met at Sniders house, in which the couple had once lived in Los Angeles, along with their friend, Dr. Stephen Kushner. They met to discuss a financial settlement regarding the divorce.
Shortly after 11:00 p.m., Kushner entered Sniders room after receiving no response from knocking. There he discovered Stratten dead from a gunshot wound to the head and Snider from a self-inflicted gunshot.
Dorothy Stratten is buried at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California. Stratten and Carol Willis are the only two Playmates to die within a year and a half of their Playboy appearances. At 20 years of age, they were also the youngest.
Jamie Lee Curtis portrayed Stratten and Bruce Weitz played Paul Snider in the 1981 television film Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story.
Strattens story was portrayed in Bob Fosses 1983 film Star 80 starring Mariel Hemingway (Stratten) and Eric Roberts (Snider). The movie was filmed in the very same house and room where the actual murder/suicide occurred.
Peter Bogdanovich wrote a book about her titled The Killing of the Unicorn that was released in the summer of 1984. Four years later, at the age of 49, he married Strattens sister, Louise, who, at age 20, was 29 years younger than Bogdanovich, who had earlier, following her sisters death, paid for Louises private school and modeling classes. They divorced in 2001 after 13 years of marriage.
Bryan Adams co-wrote two songs about Stratten. The first, titled "Cover Girl", became a hit for the band Prism in 1980. The second was titled "The Best Was Yet to Come" and was written with Jim Vallance; it appeared on Adams 1983 album Cuts Like a Knife and was later covered by Laura Branigan.
Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park %26 Mortuary
www.dignitymemorial.com
1218 Glendon Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90024-4914
(310) 474-1579 |
|
