by The Killing of the Unicorn- Dorothy Stratten, 1960-1980 (epub)
Dorothy herself, at the age of eighteen, probably would not have spoken of the Jacuzzi encounter in these terms, but knowing the circumstances and the principles involved, it is difficult to call her experience anything else. Soon after, Dorothy wrote a poem about the mansion, a place where everything was available but love: 'This Disneyland,' she called it, 'where people are the games.'
***
After the initial weekend, Dorothy went back to Vancouver and tried unsuccessfully to save her B.C. Telephone job by saying she needed a couple of weeks off for urgent family problems. She told her brother and sister (her mother was still in Europe) that she had received a modeling job in Los Angeles, and returned immediately. Playboy had said she was needed for three or four days, but after a week, they told her another few days would be necessary. In her careful memoir, she wrote,
. . . My visit extended to three weeks. Paul was getting more and more nervous every day. He would call the photographer in Vancouver and yell at him. He would call the photographer in L. A. and ask him questions. He called the studio, and he called the mansion three or four times a day. He couldn’t figure out why I was staying so long.
It was at this time that Dorothy often used the key Patrick Curtis had given her to his house: Whenever the pressure from Hefner or Caan or any of the others became too strong. She left this kindness of Curtis’s out of her memoir because it would lead to questions about the mansion she dared not touch: Patrick would understand, as one of only a handful of people who knew the real reason why Dorothy needed refuge and protection. Dorothy wrote of these circumstances:
. . . Sometimes I cried before I went to sleep. A lot of men were entering my life all of a sudden and a lot of them wanted me. No one was ever pushy or forceful—but talk can be very powerful—especially to a mixed-up little girl. And I was getting confused. . . . I was getting lonely and I was getting depressed!
One night there was a huge pajama party.. . . I got drunk and danced and ate and had a good time, and the next day I was in bed sick. Paul called me in the morning about ten o’clock. I told him I had to see him and that it was so important that he fly down. He understood. I met him at five p.m. at the airport and we stayed at a hotel for the weekend.
I knew I had to see Paul because I felt something was starting to go wrong. . . . I knew I could only be strong for a certain amount of time and I was getting too depressed. In trying to get over my depression I had to think of Paul less and start enjoying myself with other people. I knew eventually that wouldn’t work either.
With those words, she broke off her memoir and never resumed.
For Dorothy to call for help, the sexual pressure must have been intense. She needed an outlet for the guilt and outrage caused by the encounter in the Jacuzzi, and she no doubt poured out her heart to Snider, telling him everything that had happened. He was probably paternal and understanding that weekend, and encouraged her to stay at Patrick’s if she felt safer there. He would soon wrap things up in Vancouver and fly down to stay with her permanently and make sure no one ever bothered her again. He would also tell her not to alienate Hefner. No matter what he had done, he was still their bread and butter. Eventually, Dorothy moved in with Curtis, and Patrick became the platonic watchdog.
By the end of October, Dorothy and I had been introduced, and Snider had moved permanently to Los Angeles. He took Dorothy to Playboy’s Halloween costume party. Hefner and Curtis, and everyone else at the mansion, hated him on sight, though they spoke pleasantly enough to his face. The dress and manner of the street pimp conflicted harshly with the mansion’s classier-looking clientele. Snider was as out of place as a carnival barker at the ballet. In the photographs taken that night, posed between Stratten and Snider, Hefner looked older than I had ever seen, and more dispirited. His efforts had failed. He had given her his best shot, and lost Dorothy to a sleazy pimp from Canada—his dreamgirl preferred a petty racketeer from the streets. The mansion’s sex orgies continued, along with Hefner’s requests for more naked footage of Stratten. Hefner customarily projected this material on the giant TV screens of his bedroom.
When Molly Bashler met Dorothy, soon after Snider’s arrival, she could tell almost immediately that Dorothy was not happy in the relationship. While Dorothy worked long and exhausting hours at the Playboy Club, and still rose for an exercise class with Molly (she had moved in by December 1978), Snider slept late and stayed around the tiny Westwood apartment watching television all day. Soon Molly noticed that Dorothy would look for excuses to get away from the apartment and Snider. She had been reticent at first to tell Molly that she had posed for Playboy: Molly had made her position on me magazine clear—she had little more than contempt for it. Later, Molly and Snider would have several heated arguments on the subject. He wanted Molly to pose too.
Eventually, Dorothy told Molly how Snider had pressured her into the Playboy business. Though Dorothy rarely complained, Molly would remember how angry with herself Dorothy had been on a number of occasions for having done the Playboy photos. She had tried to get straight modeling jobs and was turned down repeatedly because she had posed nude.
When Molly asked why she stayed with Paul if she wasn’t happy, Dorothy had difficulty expressing herself. She felt she owed Paul something, though Molly didn’t agree: Snider clearly was living off her. But Molly didn’t know what had happened with Hefner, or of Snider’s solicitude at that time, though eventually he would begin to use the information over Dorothy in order to make her feel guilty, responsible for the encounter. It was just something else he could tell her she owed him: If the Hefner incident had only sickened and humiliated Dorothy, as she claimed, didn’t she owe it to Snider to prove her abiding gratitude for his help and guidance? to return the love and attention he had showered on her?
Yet Dorothy found excuses to be away from him and the apartment. She would take Molly with her to the mansion for a few pinball games or dinner and a movie, an afternoon swim or lunch. Dorothy never went alone and they always left early. Also, they usually kept their visits a secret from Snider, who would have insisted on going along. With Molly now as guardian and friend, Dorothy used the mansion’s facilities to get away from the watchdog she had married to protect her from the mansion’s men. It didn’t take her very long to realize she was caught in a vicious cycle that seemed to have no escape, except in men who were not much of an improvement on Paul Snider.
Though Dorothy never mentioned to Molly the pressures she had suffered from men at Playboy, Dorothy did tell her that a number of women at the mansion had made passes at her. It was another reason why she never went there alone.
After nearly a year with Dorothy and Paul, Molly moved out. She was fed up with Snider and the situation, from her viewpoint and Dorothy’s. It was during this period that Dorothy called out to me in the mansion foyer and we met a second time.
***
Hefner’s pressure on Dorothy continued. Beginning with her, Playboy made color movies of all Playmates for their cable and videocassette operations. So Hefner asked his photographers and cameramen for more shots and footage of more explicit poses. Dorothy would break down and cry, and Mario Casilli would feel badly, she later told me, but he was just doing his job. Hefner continued to admonish his staff to get 'sexier' stuff from Stratten—more raunchy, indecent poses. Maybe he thought she would eventually come to him for help. The secretaries and assistants spoke repeatedly of how much Hef cared about her and how he even wanted her to be his 'new lady.' But then Dorothy had seen photos of a spread-eagled Sondra Theodore. The magazine’s contest staff confided that her lack of cooperation could lose her both the Twenty-fifth Anniversary prize and the chance for Playmate of the Year. And the insiders kept whispering kindly: Speak to Hef.
When he discovered that Dorothy had moved into Patrick Curtis’s house, one of Hefner’s personal secretaries, Mary O’Connor, was dispatched to express the boss’s dismay. Curtis was summoned to the mansion and asked of his intentions toward Dorothy.
&nbs
p; She and Patrick were just friends, he explained. Then why was she staying at Patrick’s house? Because she had no money and needed a place to stay. But she was welcome at the mansion. She didn’t want to stay at the mansion, Curtis told Mary. Would Hef prefer Dorothy to stay at a cheap motel? Yes, he was told, if she didn’t want to stay at the mansion, Hef would prefer she live in a cheap motel.
Like many aspiring models and actresses who arrive in Los Angeles courtesy of Playboy, Dorothy’s own resources and contacts were few. This was even more apparent in her case because, being an alien, she was only allowed to work in the U.S. for Playboy, and required their assistance in contracting for any other employment. She had lost her job at the Canadian phone company and had been advised to stay in Los Angeles to pursue modeling and film possibilities. As if to emphasize her lack of cooperation with Hefner and his photographers, and the degree of her dependence on Playboy, Dorothy was given a morale-breaking job at the L. A. Playboy Club. Here she could wait on tables in six-inch heels and a humiliating costume, breasts and buttocks halfexposed, bunny ears flopping with every painful step. And endure with a smile the endless passes. She met Dr. Steve Cushner there—he had won a night at the club on TV’s Dating Game—and he made the usual moves. Later, Cushner was to become a lodger at the house Dorothy shared with Snider, and a confidant of Snider’s.
Two months after Dorothy’s arrival at the mansion, shortly before the Halloween party, she and I met for the first time. I had returned from Singapore and, after the breakup of my eight-year relationship with Cybill Shepherd, had embarked on a series of brief, meaningless affairs. By that Sunday at the mansion, at age thirty-nine, I had become fair game for nearly anything. But I was profoundly unhappy, all the more so because I loathed the cynicism I began to feel for almost everything I had once held sacred. It was this world-weariness that stopped me from following my instincts when I saw Dorothy that first time, and immediately realized she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. I was just leaving the mansion when one of Hefner’s live-in pals introduced us. He said she was from Vancouver, and I could tell by her quick, strikingly open smile that she was quite young, though I would have guessed twenty rather than eighteen. The woman with her was Candy Loving, and though she was a rangy, attractive brunette, I glanced at her only occasionally so as not to stare at the blond beauty.
Obvious attention to any woman at the mansion, I knew by then, was carefully monitored and reported to the chief. Clearly, both Dorothy and Candy were physically too stunning not to be deeply enmeshed in the Playboy machinery. Hefner’s buddy mentioned that Candy had won the magazine’s Twenty-fifth Anniversary Contest, and that Dorothy was the only runner-up and would be a centerfold next year. My choice would have been different, I thought, as we chatted amiably for a few moments. I was trying to figure out how best to signal my interest in Dorothy without appearing ridiculous. After two years of dropping by, I had learned that the most beautiful women either were spoken for or soon would be, unless considerable time off the grounds could be devoted to the pursuit. And time was something I didn’t have much of in those days. Nor did Dorothy. Events were crowding in on top of us without a moment to pause for reflection. We were too busy trying to survive.
Only the most routine signal seemed a good idea under the circumstances, so I wrote my name and phone number on a piece of Playboy note paper and handed it to her. I said we were casting a picture—no doubt the oldest line in the business. Candy’s smile was far more knowing than Dorothy’s, and I could sense that Candy hadn’t been insulted by my obvious preference for Dorothy. If anything, she seemed relieved, even pleased—as though she agreed that Dorothy was lovely—which made me like her immediately. Dorothy’s own smile was so radiant at that moment that I couldn’t look at her for more than a few seconds. Her freshness gave me, ironically, a certain respect for Playboy: If such an obviously charming, intelligent woman could work with them, maybe they weren’t so bad after all.
Long after Dorothy was killed, I heard that she had asked about me. When Laura Bernstein interviewed Molly Bashler after the murder, Molly remembered telling Dorothy that night a version of the Cybill/Peter story. Anyone around the mansion could have reiterated. a similar version of the tale: He broke up his marriage with a loyal wife and two kids; made a couple of flop pictures with Shepherd and ruined both their careers; she left him for a hometown man younger than she; he hadn’t had a hit in five years, his new movie was a cheapie shot in Singapore. Dorothy decided she wouldn’t call me (though she made note of the number). When Molly had finished talking, Dorothy said: 'I bet he’s a fake.' And I thought she was taken. We were both half-right.
At the same time Dorothy was dealing with the deadly trap into which she had fallen, and trying to find a way out, I was looking for something too. We were searching for each other, it would turn out, but the year we lost could never be recaptured, nor did the wounds we suffered during those months heal sufficiently not to affect our time together. Though I had a series of affairs, I was not using the women as a form of revenge against the one who had caused me pain. I understood why Cybill had left. Going from one woman to another, having concurrent affairs and trying to remain friends by giving them all a good time with no strings attached, was in truth a search for one woman, played out with the constant ache of loneliness and the overriding desire to find both true love and continuity. With two women, Colleen Camp and Patti Hansen, I had tried for a permanent relationship but failed miserably.
Although my nature is essentially monogamous, I nevertheless found myself on the kind of sexual merry-go-round that very much caught the beat of the time: The commitmentless, shallow gratification of profound needs and desires. But I genuinely felt sympathetic with each woman, and found it impossible to be completely casual. There were perhaps a score of women in that year, only two of whom I met at the mansion. The women’s situations touched and troubled me; the majority of them, I discovered, rarely experienced much pleasure from their lovers. Yet wasn’t the Playboy mansion the most elaborate temple of sexual promiscuity in the western world? Why would anyone go there in search of a love that could last forever? The terrible irony was that not only did I find her there, but that I found her almost immediately and was too muddled to realize it until a year later.
Even then, Dorothy recognized the truth before I did—though, long afterward I would learn that in ancient courting customs, it was the woman who pursued the man. Hadn’t the Hefners of the world reversed the natural order of things to such a degree that our roles and impulses were confused?
Why else did I go to the mansion? Curiosity, information, and a certain undeniable fascination with its popular and expensive bad taste. Hefner, Playboy, the mansion, the Bunnies, the Clubs, the whole setup, were grotesque fifties kitsch. This cultural phenomenon was part of a world I knew I could never belong to or be comfortable in, but one I wanted to understand more than superficially.
Rather quickly, however, the boys’ camp atmosphere began to bore me. There was more beneath the surface, I knew. But to discover the layers meant joining in sexually, and group sex held a special repugnance for me. Once, I was tricked into a compromising situation at the mansion Jacuzzi by a Hefner buddy using a young woman as bait; the incident sickened and estranged me further. I had also come to realize that the men of Playboy pursued women only for sex and rarely even had conversations with them. My visits to the mansion became briefer and more infrequent. By the time I first met Dorothy, I had already tired of the routine. Ironically, my disenchantment helped to keep us apart for a year.
Dorothy’s diminishing feelings for Snider frightened her, even as his presence gave her a sense of protection. But she felt caged, exhausted, lost: She collapsed and lost twenty pounds. Her body would never recover its youthful bloom. Hefner saw the results in subsequent photo sessions and became anxious: What had happened to Dorothy?
It took her several months to regain her strength. Playboy had decided she didn’t have enough experie
nce with the press to be the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Playmate, and scheduled her instead for the August ‘79 centerfold. The Playmate of 1980 was a possibility, but she would have to be more cooperative in the photo sessions and pay more attention to Hefner; he could help her in so many ways.
Soon after Dorothy’s illness, an offer came from Winnipeg to star in the leading role of a small Canadian film to be called Autumn Born. The story’s basic theme is a metaphor for her own emotional state at the time: A strong-willed young woman is kidnapped by an institution practicing mind control. Brainwashed for hours, she is alternately beaten, humiliated, starved, and raped by men and women. When she finally submits, she is fondled, then beaten and tortured again. Dorothy, worried about the many scenes requiring nudity, asked Curtis to read the script for her. He suggested she do the picture; she would be able to control the nudity, and it would be easier and more gratifying than Playboy. At least it was a lead role in a movie—how bad could it be?
I didn’t see the picture until four years after she made it, nearly three years after she was killed. I once asked her if it was any good, and she said: 'I wouldn’t think so. We spent most of the time in a big house. None of the people involved behaved as though they had ever made a movie before.' She was right: The picture is hopelessly amateurish on every level. Yet Dorothy is considerably more than believable, and lovely beyond measure. Her hair had already been destroyed by a Playboy-recommended hairdresser; it was now bleached nearly white, just the way Hefner had wanted it. When she had cried and threatened to sue, she was told it was an accident. She was much thinner than she was when we met the first two times, with her ribs protruding from her chest and back. Filmed six months after her nineteenth birthday, Dorothy’s skinny body makes her look years younger.
Her performance is never off-key; it is clear she could identify with the situation. Though the scenes of her torture are meant to be titillating, the intensity of her feelings makes them touching, even heartbreaking. When she plays happily with the toy rat her jailers send her, her behavior is extraordinarily realistic. The other players seem to treat her with a deference that veers from the plot—they can get past neither her star quality nor her innocence. The sex scenes are shot as though she is a visiting celebrity. Yet Dorothy’s acting is so pure and clean that the suffering of the character merges with her own.