by The Killing of the Unicorn- Dorothy Stratten, 1960-1980 (epub)
At 9:00 A.M. on Sunday, August 10, Mr. Tuck, the owner of the shotgun that would be used to kill Dorothy Stratten, arrived at the Clarkson house to show the weapon to Paul Snider. Dr. Cushner answered the door and checked, but Snider was out. Tuck was annoyed. He had driven all the way from the San Fernando Valley because Snider had said he would be there in the morning. It was about a shotgun he had for sale.
Less than half of the people who had been invited to the barbecue at Clarkson that afternoon showed up. To maintain his bravado, Snider had cocaine in the bathroom. Dorothy had said she would call him, but as the hours went by and she didn’t call, he believed her less, taking more coke to keep his cool. Every hour increased the rage inside him; every minute clicked off another imagined lie, one more moment of deceit. They were all against him. At one point he told a friend: 'Maybe this deal has just got too big—maybe I just ought to go back to Vancouver for a while.' No, he mustn’t give up, he must fight for his rights.
There had been barely a moment’s peace for Dorothy from the time she had awakened. When the Playboy limousine arrived at Spalding, the driver loaded the sisters’ bags in the trunk, they piled into the back, and started off on the three-hour drive to the Mojave Desert.
Paul Snider had ended the night in a fury because Dorothy had not called him as promised. But he would show her. He would have his gun tomorrow.
At the mansion, the staff had been making jokes about the fact that the Playmate of the Year hadn’t been there in nearly three months. Otherwise, it had been just the end of another typical weekend for Hefner, nothing very unusual. But it would be Dorothy Stratten’s last weekend alive.
Her final Monday, August 11, began very early in the desert. They were shooting by six; the heat meant they’d have to quit by eleven. The shoot would start again at 3:00 and then continue until the sunlight was gone. The result would be a print advertisement for an eyeglass-frame company owned by Playboy. No naked pictures were involved. The money was the usual five hundred dollars a day, no matter how many hours. For a normal eight-hour day, a top model of the time, such as Patti or Shawn Casey, would have made close to four times that amount, and neither of them was starred in two forthcoming features, nor had the media attention Dorothy had generated in less than a year. But Playboy Models kept it all in the family. Why pay Dorothy more just because she had earned it?
The first thing Paul Snider did that morning was to call Mr. Tuck about the shotgun. He would drive out to the Valley in the late afternoon and they could exchange cash for weapon. Tuck filled out a purchase-order, dating it 8/11/80.
When they broke from shooting, Dorothy and Louise went swimming in the small pool at the motel and the Playboy crew joined them. Everyone must have noticed how happy Dorothy seemed, despite lack of sleep and five hours of hard work in the sweltering heat. She and her kid sister were like two seals. Three times in less than a month Dorothy had been deliriously happy. Louise could never remember seeing Dorothy laugh the way she did that day.
She had reason to laugh: Peter loved her, Hefner wasn’t going to hold it against her, and Paul understood. In a year she would be free of Playboy forever, and maybe Paul and Patti would get married and they would be happy. Life and love were possible, after all. Dorothy could have children and be happy with the father. She had always wanted a big family, and already there were two prospective stepchildren she loved. The money she would make in movies would give her mother freedom too, a freedom Nelly had never known. She was sure that Nelly and Peter would get along, and Peter and John. Finally they could both have their families in order.
But what would become of this happiness? Would the love and fulfillment of New York, London, Bel Air, and now Mojave bring something equally terrible? If her joy was this great, would the punishment be, as well?
Dorothy excused herself to place a long-distance call to Clarkson Street in Los Angeles. She had promised to phone yesterday. When Snider answered, the first thing Dorothy said was how sorry she was not to have called; she had had to go to Mojave for Playboy . . . But Snider cut her off with a storm of abuse on a level so fierce it made her tremble. It is safe to assume, based on what I now know about Snider’s previous behavior, that he used the harshest words he could conceive of to frighten Dorothy into coming back to see him again. Why would she have been so upset unless he had called her every name imaginable, and told of the night he had waited with the .38, of the gun he had ordered to blow her brains out? And Hefner’s, and Bogdanovich’s, and his two children’s, and her sister’s, and then he was going to blow out his own brains. She was a lying, scheming, conniving cunt and he was going to blow everybody off the face of the earth. Dorothy began to cry. She begged him to calm down and explain what had made him so angry. Surely it could not be only because she had been twelve hours late in calling. And Snider started to scream again, so viciously she had to hold the phone away from her ear: She could stop playing dumb! He knew what she was doing! He was on to her! She was a lying, scheming bitch!
Out by the pool, Louise was becoming concerned: Why had Dorothy gone away so suddenly? And been away so long? Maybe she was sick in the bathroom. Louise walked to their room. As she raised her hand to the doorknob, she could hear Dorothy’s voice. It sounded as though she were crying. Her tone was pleading. Louise moved close to the door. The sun was hot and the asphalt burned her bare feet. Now she could understand the words quite clearly: 'Please, please, Paul!' Dorothy cried: 'Don’t be like that! Don’t do this to me!'
Louise felt both afraid for Dorothy and guilty for eavesdropping, though she hadn’t really been able to help it. Anybody walking by would have heard through the thin walls (and several among the Playboy crew did). She put her hand on the knob but didn’t turn it. Dorothy’s voice rose again, half sobbing, half angry: 'I will come to see you! But please! Please don’t say those things!' Louise tried to turn the knob but it was locked, which somehow frightened her more. She called out Dorothy’s name and knocked on the door. There was quiet for a moment, and then she heard, 'Just a second,' and when the door opened, she could tell Dorothy had been crying. Her eyes were bloodshot. Louise felt tears come to her own eyes and she asked what the matter was, but Dorothy said it was nothing. She returned to the floor between the two beds, where she had been sitting with the phone. She told Snider her sister was waiting and she would have to go now, but Louise could hear the angry sound of Paul’s voice, though the words were not clear and she tried not to listen. Dorothy attempted to cut the conversation short. She would be back in a few days and she would definitely come to see him, she promised, but only if he did not talk that way anymore. She would call him soon from L.A.
Louise had been with her sister through marital arguments before, and Dorothy always had been able to put away the miseries afterward, but this time was different. D.R. threw some water on her face, put on her new sunglasses again, and took Louise back to the pool. Everyone noticed how different her mood was. A couple of guests had overheard some of the conversation, and Dorothy volunteered to several of the crew that she had had a difficult phone call. She would tell me over the phone that night that she had had 'a very unpleasant conversation with Paul.'
The obviously potent effect Snider’s anger had on Dorothy only encouraged him further. Now she was begging him; wait till she saw his gun! With Patti, he drove out to Richard Brander’s acting studio in the Valley, ranting about Hefner and Bogdanovich and Dorothy, his duplicitous wife. But he would show them. The drugs he took only increased the fever pitch. On the way out to Tuck’s however, Snider got lost, which made him angrier and more lost. Eventually he gave up and furiously drove back to Clarkson. Why should he have to drive around anyway? Let the shotgun be brought to him. He wouldn’t be needing it until later in the week—maybe not until Thursday. Let Tuck meet him someplace tomorrow or the day after; that would be soon enough. Snider and Tuck made an appointment at a construction site for Wednesday afternoon, August 13.
On Monday afternoon, I left another messag
e at the mansion. Would it be OK if I dropped by to see Hefner on Tuesday afternoon?
Louise had a bad dream that night, and then woke up to find she hadn’t been dreaming: Dorothy was in the next bed crying quietly into her pillow. Sad and frightened at once, Louise said: 'Dorothy?' The crying stopped immediately and there was silence. Louise said her sister’s name again but received no response. Eventually Louise decided it must have been a dream after all, and soon fell asleep again.
By the time I got up on Tuesday, August 12, D.R. and Louise were already off in the desert shooting. I was anxiously looking forward to seeing Dorothy, and had a surprise for her: We were preparing another movie to shoot very soon, and she had the leading female role.
That afternoon, driving out of the parking lot of the Cafe Rodeo in Beverly Hills, Patrick Curtis stopped at the curb and pointed out to his passengers the young man on roller skates coming toward them. It was Paul Snider, and quite obviously he was zonked out on something: coke, Quaaludes—probably Quaaludes, Curtis guessed. (Journalists Riley and Bernstein would later report that at Dorothy’s wedding reception, Dr. Cushner had handed out Quaaludes, which he kept in the glove compartment of his Rolls-Royce.) Snider skated up to the car but didn’t seem to recognize Patrick. He put his hands on the car for a moment, barely taking in Curtis, his friend Richard Johnson in the passenger seat, or the two young women in the back. After a moment, Snider skated around the car and continued on his way up toward Santa Monica Boulevard.
Curtis would remember thinking: What a coincidence. The last time he had taken Dorothy to lunch, back in May, they had been to the Cafe Rodeo, and now, coming out of the same place, he had nearly driven into her husband. Did it mean something? Snider certainly looked out of it. Maybe Curtis had better call Dorothy tomorrow to see how she was. But Patrick would never again see or speak with either of the two people about whom he had been troubled on that warm Tuesday afternoon.
Later the same day, I drove over to the mansion for the last time. I had no idea as I drove east on Sunset to Charing Cross Road that almost exactly two years before, the man I was going to visit had traumatized the woman I loved.
By the end of that Tuesday meeting, I realized things were not right between Hefner and me. There was a chill and stiffness in his manner I had not experienced before. I had told him at length about the glories of his Playmate of the Year—how extraordinary she was in the picture, how conscientious and cooperative she had been. How much more Hefner thought I knew! And the more I talked, the more irritated he appeared. The room turned frosty as I went on to explain how difficult the professional and personal circumstances on the movie had been: the New York streets, the producers, the two other women on the picture with whom I had once been involved, and how well Dorothy had handled everything.
The mentions of Patti Hansen and Colleen Camp might have been the coup de grace. Colleen had given Playboy a hard time about naked pictures; and hadn’t Hefner called me in New York to ask if Patti would pose nude for Playboy? When I had asked her, she replied: 'Only if the rest of the cast does it with me.' Hadn’t I repeated those words with a laugh to Hefner less than two months before? Heftier had covered his irritation at the time by offering a big layout on the movie if I could indeed arrange a shot of all the girls nude. While I had thought he was kidding, he had probably thought what the hell was I laughing at? Was I laughing at Hefner?
Now, in his living room on August 12, it seemed I was secretly laughing at him again as I extolled my fond association with women who had rejected him. Not realizing how guilelessly I spoke, he became more affronted when I asked if he would like to come up the block to my place in a couple of weeks and see a rough cut of the picture D.R. and I had made. To his way of thinking, it seemed a gross insult even to suggest he leave the 'Vatican West' to see his very own Playmate of the Year, especially this one. Hefner stood up abruptly. 'I doubt I’ll have the time right now,' he said with an air of dismissal.
Did I care to take a look at the remodeling work Hefner had had done to the private rooms upstairs? He made the invitation as though it were merely a formality; he didn’t really expect me to accept, but his mood seemed to brighten after I agreed. I was surprised at what a difference this appeared to make to Hefner. It was a privileged tour of his Wonderland Paradise—not to be taken lightly.
He showed off the brass pulls that had been specially made for his built-in clothing drawers: small reclining nude nymphs for him to admire as he dressed himself for the day or evening revels. I smiled as much as possible in admiration. But Hefner wasn’t kidding. There were brass naked women on every one of the many drawers, and three desk areas to work on his scrapbook. He wasn’t kidding about his scrapbook either: He conscientiously updated it. I had never seen it, but it had to be many tomes by now. Evidently every little thing about Hefner or Playboy from the very beginning was in there, nearly thirty years—a record reportedly more thorough than a Pharaoh’s.
The upstairs looked quite a bit fancier than it had the one other time I had been there, more than four years earlier, just after Playboy’s whatever-feels-good philosophy had curdled Hefner’s relationship with Barbi Benton. The notorious Hefner bed was as large as ever, low to the ground, with two giant television screens at the foot, and numerous shelves stocked with video cassettes built into the surrounding walls.
Although Hefner still had a certain boyish charm, he was beginning to look more sinister that afternoon than I had noticed before. I knew what this second tour of the inner sanctum meant: Dorothy and I were welcome there anytime. Didn’t the opulence of its appointments tempt me for a moment? Hefner began to sense my discomfort, though I tried to be enthusiastic about all his new belongings. The tour had begun with an almost deliberate slowness, but I felt Hefner could see past my feigned expressions of admiration, especially since he now considered me a possible enemy. The speed of the tour accelerated as e seemed to read my attitude.
Hefner brought up Dorothy’s husband. He had sent word that Snider wasn’t to be admitted without Dorothy, so she and I could feel free to come over there anytime we liked, separately or together. Of course we would, I said, but, as I had told him over the phone, we didn’t want to be seen together in public. This wasn’t public, Hefner said, this was private. I laughed and said that if we were seen here together, it would be all over town the next day. That was exactly what we wanted to avoid. I told him the truth: Dorothy had a lot of traveling to do; in fact, she was coming back in just a few hours and, with my daughters and her sister staying with us, the two of us had little free time.
Hefner’s attitude became one of brisk formality, and we were soon downstairs at the main entrance. I tried to keep the spirit friendly and not appear anxious to leave, but Hefner by now had turned even chillier than he had been earlier. He didn’t bother to mince words: He didn’t have any more time to chat, he said, and put his hand out. We shook and I tried to pretend there was nothing wrong. Perhaps I was mistaken, I thought as I drove away; perhaps he was simply busy.
The more he thought about it, the more Hefner’s sense of indignation must have become aroused. Hadn’t he tolerated Stratten’s husband for two years and given her the top prize in his kingdom? Hadn’t she resisted him and his philosophy, and turned her new boyfriend against Playboy as well? Hadn’t Dorothy betrayed him, just as his wife had done thirty years before? Perhaps he smiled inwardly at the problems Snider was going to give us: Bogdanovich would now have to handle the phone calls and threats and attempted deals. It was a fair assumption that there would be plenty of other chances at Dorothy Stratten.
D.R. spent most of the last Tuesday of her life having her picture taken in various eyeglass frames and costumes in the midst of the Mojave. There were cowboy clothes and guns, and a small airplane. Louise hung around and watched. Back at the hotel during the break, they swam in the pool for a while; but it wasn’t the same as yesterday, Louise thought. Dorothy looked unhappy all day, and there didn’t seem to be anything to bring her out of
it. She laughed once or twice, but Louise could tell her heart wasn’t in it, though she had been sweet to her kid sister, anxious that the time shouldn’t be unpleasant for her. Yet Louise had seen Dorothy’s red eyes that morning, the skin around them puffy; they remained very sad for the rest of the day.
Riding back to Los Angeles in the limousine that night, D.R. kept the inside light on and looked through a stack of fan mail that a Playboy associate had given her. She read the letters of admiration, requests for autographed photos from her Playboy fans, and then she tore them up. One fan, Dorothy showed Louise, had written three different letters; she destroyed all of them. A few times she made a noise that sounded like a cross between a grunt and a laugh, but it was so cold that Louise wasn’t prompted to ask if something was funny. Her behavior frightened Louise. She had never seen Dorothy like that.
The sisters didn’t arrive at Copa de Oro until after nine. I could see that D.R. was tired, but at first I didn’t notice anything else was wrong; I was too happy to see her. Later, I perceived a slight distance from me and couldn’t figure it out. Perhaps she was annoyed because I had been short on the phone the previous night. I tried to compensate by being oversolicitous.
At one point Dorothy was starting up the staircase to her room as I was starting down to deal with the kids; I stopped halfway to tell her I had been over to Hefner’s. She slowed her steps but continued upward and passed me just as I said Hefner told me he had barred Paul from the mansion unless he was accompanied by her. Dorothy hesitated momentarily, did not change expression, and continued slowly up the stairs. I stood watching her, feeling slightly relieved that the news hadn’t appeared to upset her. Certainly no one could better gauge her husband’s reactions than Dorothy, and she appeared unconcerned as she reached the top of the tile staircase. I told her that Hefner wanted us to come over there together, but that I had put him off. Without a word, Dorothy continued on through the door into her room, so that I had to raise my voice slightly to say that I still did not want to go there—did she? D.R. called back: 'No, I don’t.'