Dorothy Stratten Wiki, Age, Bio, Height, Husband, Career, and Net Worth

Dorothy Stratten was a model, actress, and Canadian Playboy Playmate. Dorothy Stratten was born on February 28, 1960.

Wiki, Bio, Family, Siblings, Childhood & Education

Dorothy Stratten was born on February 28, 1960. Unfortunately, she died when she was just 20 years old. She is originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and was born in Grace Maternity Hospital. Her father, Simon, and mother, Nelly Hoogstraten, are her parents.

They are Dutch immigrant workers. She also has two younger siblings. They are a 1961-born brother and a May 1968-born sister. Her brother’s name is John Arthur, and her sister is Louise Stratten.

She was a student at Centennial High School in Coquitlam, British Columbia, in 1977. She was also working part-time at a Dairy Queen near her home. There she met Paul Snider, a 26-year-old Vancouver-area club promoter and pimp who began dating her.

Later, Snider hired a photographer to take professional nude shots of her. In the summer of 1978, he forwarded them to Playboy magazine. She was under the age of 19, so she convinced her mother to sign the model release form.

Dorothy Stratten’s Husband, Marriage & Relationship

Dorothy Stratten dated Paul Snider, a 26-year-old Vancouver-area club promoter and pimp. She and Paul married in June 1979 and shared a home in West Los Angeles.

She then began dating Peter Bogdanovich. Unfortunately, after agreeing to formalize their divorce, Paul murdered his young wife and committed suicide with the same shotgun he used to murder her.

Dorothy Stratten’s Profession & Career

Stratten was a model, actor, and Canadian Playboy Playmate. She was the August 1979 Playboy Playmate of the Month and the 1980 Playmate of the Year. She also appeared in three comedy films and at least two episodes of US network television shows.

Unfortunately, her estranged husband and manager Paul Snider murdered her at the age of 20. On the same day, Paul committed suicide. Her death sparked the creation of two films.

They are the 1981 TV movie Death of a Centerfold and the 1983 cinematic production Star 80, as well as the novel The Killing of the Unicorn and the songs “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“The Best Was Yet to Come” by Bryan Adams and “Cover Girl” by the Canadian rock band Prism are two more films.

Beginnings of a Career

She relocated to Los Angeles in August 1978, where she was named as a finalist for the 25th Anniversary Great Playmate Hunt. Paul Snider joined her in October, and they married the following June.

She modified her surname to Stratten and was also named Miss August 1979 by Playboy. She then started working as a Bunny at Century City’s Playboy Club.

Hugh Hefner hoped she would have significant crossover success as an actress. She appeared in episodes of the TV shows Buck Rogers and Fantasy Island.

Dorothy also had minor appearances in Americathon and the roller disco comedy Skatetown, USA in 1979, as well as a main role in the exploitation film Autumn Born.

She was named Playboy’s Playmate of the Year in 1980, with pictures by Mario Casilli. She also played the title character in the science fiction satire Galaxina. Hefner allegedly pushed her to end her relationship with Paul Snider, referring to him as a “hustler and a pimp.”

More information

Rosanne Katon and other friends had warned her about Snider’s actions. While Peter Bogdanovich was directing They All Laughed (1981), her first major studio film, she began an affair with him.

Snider hired a private investigator to track down Stratten. They divorced, and Stratten moved in with Bogdanovich, intending to divorce Paul Snider.

Stratten was quite bashful and naive when she arrived at the Playboy Mansion for the 25th Anniversary Playmate Hunt. She was really uneasy with the casual nudity and sex.

Many of Hefner’s contemporary playmates, including Pamela Bryant, Gail Stanton, and Marcy Hanson, befriended Stratten and shielded her from some of Hefner’s pals who they regarded as predators.

To compete with Bob Guccione, who routinely featured in layouts with naked Penthouse Pets, a photo shoot featuring Stratten and Hefner was shot. However, it was withdrawn following her death and only a few days before publication.

August of 1980

Paul Snider discovered his estranged wife was living with Bogdanovich on the night of July 31, 1980. He crept through the shadows close outside the director’s Los Angeles estate, carrying a borrowed weapon and preparing to shoot anyone who emerged at the property’s door.

After several hours of idleness, Paul Snider became irritated and drove up into the hills overlooking the city, saying later to a friend that he had suicidal thoughts.

On Friday, August 8, at noon, she and Paul saw each other for the first time in nearly three months at Paul’s house in West Los Angeles. Paul had already convinced her to pose for Playboy before marrying him. As a result, Paul Snider felt optimistic before the meeting that he could persuade his wife to accept him back.

However…

His dreams for reconciliation were dashed when Stratten revealed that she had fallen in love with Bogdanovich and wanted to formalize their divorce. a pessimist Paul Snider agreed to meet with Stratten again the following week to arrange a financial settlement.

Snider had to return the borrowed gun to its owner later that day, less than a week before Stratten’s murder. He got preoccupied with getting another over the next five days.

The day after meeting with Stratten, Paul Snider, and the private detective he’d hired, he went to a local gun store on August 9th. After the retailer refused to sell him a pistol due to his Canadian citizenship, Paul asked the detective to purchase the gun Snider desired for him.

When Paul tried to persuade him again the next day, the detective tried to talk him out of it. On August 11th, Paul went in search of the man whose gun was advertised in the newspaper but couldn’t find the address.

The Murderous Day

Paul Snider purchased a used 12-gauge pump-action shotgun from a private seller he found in a local classified ad on August 13, 1980.

Later that evening, in a conversation with friends, Paul related how he had bought a gun that day, concluding his story by cryptically stating that he was “going to take up hunting.”

During the same chat, not more than 12 hours before the murder, the generally upbeat Paul casually mentioned Playmates who had died unexpectedly.

Paul specifically mentioned Claudia Jennings. Jennings is a past Playmate of the Year who died in a vehicle accident the previous year.

Furthermore, Paul Snider made a number of sad remarks to his friends about the troubles at Playboy magazine created by Jennings’ death. It also mentioned that if the editors had time, they will pull naked images of a deceased Playmate from the next issue.

That day…

Later, Jane arrived at Snider’s rented West Los Angeles home for their meeting. It was around noon on Thursday, August 14. She talked with her business manager all morning.

The amount of the property settlement the Playmate would offer her estranged husband that afternoon was one of the things the duo discussed.

The police also discovered $1,100 in cash among Stratten’s possessions in the residence, which she had brought as a down payment for Snider.

The company manager made a fateful discovery near the end of her morning meeting: his young client could avoid spending any more time with her husband by delegating the remaining separation and divorce proceedings to her lawyer.

Stratten said that dealing with Snider personally would make the process go more smoothly, emphasizing that he was being courteous about everything and eventually adding, “I’d like to remain his friend.”

However, Paul Snider’s two roommates had left in the morning, leaving the couple alone when Stratten entered the residence.

Stratten appeared to have spent some time in the living area, where her handbag was discovered open before she and Snider walked into his bedroom.

The breakthrough

Both roommates had returned to the residence around eight o’clock that evening. They noticed Stratten’s car parked in front, as well as Snider’s bedroom door being locked.

They imagined the couple had reconciled and desired seclusion. As a result, the roommates spent the next several hours in the living room watching television.

Paul’s roommates came in shortly after 11 p.m. that night. The roommates had been informed by the private detective. That’s how they found her and Paul Snider’s bodies. Both were killed by a single shot from Snider’s shotgun.

Both of their bodies were naked. According to the police timeline, Snider shot Stratten within an hour of her arriving at the house that afternoon. After the murder, Snider committed suicide about an hour later.

Afterward…

On August 15, shortly after midnight, the private detective dialed the Playboy Mansion. He informed Hefner that Paul had murdered her. Hefner then dialed Bogdanovich’s number.

They sedated Bogdanovich when he collapsed at the news. Later that morning, an RCMP Mountie told her mother of her daughter’s death at her house in the Vancouver region.

They burned her body and buried her ashes in Los Angeles’ Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. They also buried the bones of Hefner (who died in 2017) and Marilyn Monroe (who died in 1962), his magazine’s first centerfold, at the same location.

Bogdanovich used a phrase from Ernest Hemingway’s classic A Farewell to Arms for the epitaph on Stratten’s memorial plaque.

Three years after her death, the author’s granddaughter, Mariel Hemingway, portrayed her in Star 80, a Bob Fosse biopic about the doomed Playmate and her husband.

Following her death,

Her final picture, the romantic comedy They All Laughed, was released in the United States in August 1981. This was written and directed by Peter Bogdanovich. After a poor limited run in a few theaters in the southwest, upper midwest, and northeast, they quietly pulled the film.

Peter was disappointed that his only collaboration with Stratten did not receive a national release. He believed that her final cinematic performance deserved to be seen by a larger audience.

As a result, Bogdanovich purchased the film’s theatrical rights. He funded a re-release of They All Laughed in about a dozen major markets across North America, beginning in late 1981 and continuing into the next year, out of his own pocket.

Despite generally positive reviews and significant attendance at select cinemas, Bogdanovich eventually invested more than $5 million, his entire net worth at the time, in the vanity project in order to properly promote and distribute the film and save Stratten’s film history.

In 1985, Bogdanovich declared bankruptcy. He also lost his Los Angeles house, where Stratten had spent the last few weeks of her life.

They All Laughed has been hailed as one of Bogdanovich’s best films in the years since its inauspicious debut by filmmakers, reviewers, and others.

In 2014, One Day Since Yesterday, a documentary on the making and cultural significance of Bogdanovich’s romantic comedy, which includes interviews with the director and his reminiscences of Stratten, aired.

The Unicorn’s Assassination

Bogdanovich’s book The Killing of the Unicorn: She 1960-1980 was published by William Morrow in August 1984, four years after Stratten’s death.

This book is a Stratten biography, a memoir of Bogdanovich’s affair with a married Playmate half his age, and a caustic feminist attack on Hefner.

His Playboy worldview, as well as the hedonistic sexual mores he glorified in his magazine and practiced in his estate, as well as the entire Playboy company.

So far, the most contentious aspect of the book is the director’s assertion that Hefner sexually attacked Stratten, aged eighteen, in August 1978.

The assault, according to Bogdanovich, happened while the two were alone in a hidden section of the Playboy Mansion at the end of Stratten’s first day of posing for the magazine’s photographer.

Allegations

The following are the most serious claims made by Bogdanovich in his book: Stratten did not marry Snider because she was in love with him. She instead exploited her marriage as a pretext to avoid Hefner’s approaches. Bogdanovich said that following the alleged incident, Hefner pursued Stratten as a sexual partner.

Stratten despised nude modeling and, in general, interacting with Playboy. She put up with demeaning employment simply to advance her acting career.

Hefner was partly to blame for Paul Snider’s murderous anger. Just days before the murder, he barred Paul from attending the Playboy Mansion. Bogdanovich’s underlying claim for the final accusation is that Snider was barred because Hefner despised him. In his defense, Hefner stated that his intention was to encourage the lovers to appear as a couple at the estate.

In the United States, nearly every review of The Killing of the Unicorn was negative. While few criticized Bogdanovich’s attacks on Hefner and Playboy, many questioned his newfound feminism.

Legacy

Dorothy Stratten’s murder is depicted in two films, one of which is the made-for-television Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story (1981).

Jamie Lee Curtis played Stratten, while Bruce Weitz played Paul Snider in this. Star 80 (1983), directed by Bob Fosse, stars Mariel Hemingway as Stratten and Eric Roberts as Snider.

Later, in December 1988, at the age of 49, Bogdanovich married Stratten’s 20-year-old sister, Louise. Following Stratten’s death, Peter Bogdanovich paid for Louise’s private schooling and modeling classes. They were married for 13 years before divorcing in 2001.

The song “The Best Was Yet to Come” was written by Bryan Adams and Jim Valance. It was written for Adams’ 1983 album “Cuts Like a Knife” as the concluding track. This was also an homage to her. Bush also dedicated the song “Dead Meat” to her memory.

Dorothy Stratten’s Salary and Net Worth

She was also a professional model and actor. As a result, the majority of her earnings came from her modeling and acting careers. Furthermore, her anticipated net worth in 2023 is $5 million.

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