by The Killing of the Unicorn- Dorothy Stratten, 1960-1980 (epub)
The Village Voice piece by Teresa Carpenter, 'Death of a Playmate,' was published in November 1980. It was later syndicated to newspapers all over the world, and helped her win the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism. Although Carpenter had to admit grudgingly that Hefner seemed, from her evidence, to have behaved well personally toward Stratten, she concluded nevertheless that his policies and philosophy had been directly responsible for her torture and murder. At the close of the article, Carpenter printed the press statement I had written, which Playboy would also feature toward the end of its piece:
Dorothy Stratten was as gifted and intelligent an actress as she was beautiful, and she was very beautiful indeed—in every way imaginable— most particularly in her heart. She and I fell in love during our picture, and had planned to be married as soon as her divorce was final. The loss to her mother and father, her sister and brother, to my children, to her friends and to me is larger than we can calculate. But there is no life Dorothy’s touched that has not been changed for the better through knowing her, however briefly. Dorothy looked at the world with love, and believed that all people were good down deep. She was mistaken, but it is among the most generous and noble errors we can make.
The Voice article terrified Hefner. He phoned to ask if I had read it. I told him I hadn’t. The story’s main point, he reported, was that I had been 'in too much of a hurry,' a summation effectively calculated to sting me with his own guilts. He asked for my cooperation on Playboy’s article once more. I refused and we never spoke again.
In December, director Bob Fosse bought the movie rights to the Voice article for $130,000, and wrote his own script. The Ladd Company would produce for distribution by Warner Brothers. Fosse titled the picture after the license plates Snider had specially ordered for the Mercedes that Stratten bought for him: Star 80. When told by New West reporter John Riley of the director’s plans, Hefner grinned and, alluding to Fosse’s reputation as a director of musicals, said: 'Does that mean I get to dance?'
Riley and Bernstein’s article for New West, called 'The Girl Next Door Is Dead,' was paid for, but never published. The authors were told that the Voice had scooped them, even though their piece was more thorough and more detailed, with far more damning documentation on Snider, and the other principals in the drama. After the article was cancelled, negotiations were concluded for Riley’s and Bernstein’s research to be sold to Playboy. The promise of subcredit with Rhodes failed to materialize, and much of their reporting was cut out. Many of the questions they brought up remain unresolved.
The first Playboy article appeared in May 1981, printing without permission several lengthy, if carefully edited, quotes from Stratten’s aborted memoir. In its acknowledgments, the magazine incorrectly listed both the name and date of the copyright. When the Stratten Estate threatened to sue for copyright infringement, Playboy offered $15,000 for retroactive one-time-only rights. Nelly agreed to the settlement. 'They killed my daughter,' she said, 'what more can they do?'
The Playboy article carried family pictures, an in-depth interview with the mother, and excerpts from Dorothy’s seemingly glowing memoir about the Playboy way of life. Hefner, who was known to have personally supervised, edited, and largely written the piece himself, was painted as a concerned father figure, and the barring of Snider from the mansion was stated as occurring months, not days, before the murder. Hefner made a point of prominently quoting a New York gossip columnist’s remark about me, to the effect that Snider had 'shot the wrong person.'
In November 1981, MGM-TV’s Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story aired over the NBC network with Jamie Lee Curtis as Dorothy. At the family’s insistence, the names and relationships of her mother and sister were altered. My name was also changed. The reviews were negative, the ratings unremarkable—it finished twenty-seventh for the week—but several million people were led to believe that what they were seeing was the true story. The film would be rerun in the summer of 1983 and finish fourth for the week. A credit at the end of the show read: 'Technical Advisor: Marc Goldstein.'
Toward the end of 1981 and the beginning of 1982, They All Laughed opened to mixed notices in the United States and Europe. I paid $2.8 million to buy back the picture from Time-Life and 20th Century-Fox and to distribute it through my own company. John Ritter had suggested that we dedicate the picture to Dorothy, and a simple card was inserted in each print. If the comedy for us was no longer funny, at least this movie gave people an opportunity to see how Dorothy looked and behaved, how she had dressed and moved and spoken. Despite three top-billed stars—Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara, and John Ritter—most newspapers and magazines around the world ran photos of Dorothy to illustrate their articles. In Newsweek, Jack Kroll concluded his review:
. . . It’s heartbreaking to see the promise of Stratten . . . whose stunning face ironically evokes Stendhal’s line: 'Beauty is . . . a promise of happiness/’
In the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote:
. . . Stratten was indeed something special—a funny, irresistible lady who could convince us she hadn’t the slightest idea of how beautiful she really was.
Stephen Schaefer, in Us magazine, seemed to sum up best most audiences’ reactions to Dorothy:
. . . Stratten’s tragic history makes her every line and appearance an emotionally mixed occasion of helpless joy and sadness. . . .
Although the first Playboy Memorial Tribute ran no naked pictures of Dorothy, subsequent coverage in other issues did. Playboy also sold picture postcards of her naked. They prepared a video-cassette and cable-TV tribute featuring never-before-seen naked footage.
By the spring of 1984, the financial matters of the Stratten Estate were still not settled. Snider’s father, through Snider’s lawyer, Michael Kelly, insisted on a fifty/fifty split, but settled for five thousand dollars and the 'Star 80' Mercedes. Nelly asked for a stipulation that the former Mrs. Snider, Paul’s mother, receive half: Nelly said she was the only member of the Snider family who deserved anything. Almost four years after the murder, the killer’s family had received the value of twenty thousand dollars, while the victim’s family would likely receive, at most, five thousand.
In 1982, Novak and Dilge were associated, respectively, as writer-actor and producer with an independently made little picture they told the press was based on observations made during the Stratten-Bogdanovich affair. Though the film actually had nothing at all to do with either of us, the initial publicity helped the production to obtain distribution. A threatened lawsuit from the Stratten Estate and me dissuaded them from further use of such publicity.
To gain the support of Stratten’s family, in February 1982, Bob Fosse wrote her mother a personal letter offering $25,000 of his own money to prove his good intentions. Nelly asked her lawyers to decline and requested that her name and relationship to Dorothy, and the names and relationships of her two surviving children, be altered for the movie, as they had been for the TV film. The names have been changed (though virtually unmentioned), but the familial relationships remain the same. Eventually a financial settlement was made. Although it credits Carpenter’s Voice article, the Fosse script in no way expounds the same message, and therefore the Playboy organization lent its full cooperation.
Mariel Hemingway plays Dorothy in the Fosse picture, despite the fact that her young boy’s body is the opposite of Stratten’s lean voluptuousness. Her face bears little resemblance either, but she is the correct age. Hemingway had her underdeveloped breasts surgically augmented for the picture, though this does not make her body look any more like Dorothy’s. Jamie Lee Curtis’s TV-Stratten, though in no way resembling Dorothy, occasionally comes near to capturing some of her strength and wit. She is also allowed to yell at Snider and fight with him, while Hemingway’s Dorothy simply goes along, cow-like and dim, manipulated first by Snider, then by my surrogate—the quintessential^ dumb, even listless, blonde.
Choosing to tell his story from Snider’s point of view, Fosse cast a charming, g
ood-looking actor, Eric Roberts, in the role. (The TV film presents him as a cold and unmitigated scoundrel.) Hugh Hefner is played by Academy Award winner Cliff Robertson, well known as a loyal husband and man of integrity. In 1977 Robertson had blown the whistle on the Hollywood/Wall Street scandals involving embezzlements and forgeries at Columbia Pictures. As a result of his honesty, movie politics being what they are, he was blacklisted by producers, and Fosse’s casting gained respect by breaking the blacklist. Robertson had previously played another living figure, John F. Kennedy.
Conversely, the character of 'Dorothy’s Mother' is played by Carroll Baker, an actress whose initial screen persona as a sexpot, in Baby Doll, was further emphasized by the title of her autobiography, also Baby Doll, which was published simultaneously with the release of Star 80. Mario Casilli, no longer in the girly-mag business, offered 'in Dorothy’s memory' to assist in getting the nude layouts to look right, and was shocked to find Fosse insisting on the sort of poses to which Dorothy had objected so bitterly. Casilli told Fosse that 'Dorothy didn’t do those kinds of shots,' but Fosse was undeterred, and Hemingway submitted—though no graphic pubic-area shots remain in the completed film.
While neither the TV movie nor the Fosse film conveys the truth, the TV version (directed by Englishwoman Gabrielle Beaumont) is somewhat more accurate in recounting certain incidents. Neither film deals with Dorothy’s passionate reluctance to pose naked. Though the TV version at least gives her a moment’s firm hesitation on the subject, Fosse’s Stratten leaps into the nude scenes with abandon. His picture, though vastly more expensive, better produced, and far more slickly directed, has less than a handful of moments that ring true. It contains not a flicker of authenticity in its depiction of Dorothy’s relationship with me. Fosse leaves out all the laughter and love—how could he have known?
One glaring misconception in his movie concerns drugs. Although Paul Snider admitted over the phone to Molly Bashler, a month before the killing, that he had been heavily into both drink and drugs over the past few months—cocaine in particular—the only mention of drugs in the entire film (there is no drinking) occurs when the Snider character tells the Dr. Cushner character that he thinks I am giving Dorothy cocaine in New York. The doctor stoutly defends us, but the implication remains. The truth is that D.R. and I tried cocaine together a couple of times, but neither of us liked its effects. Snider had given some to Dorothy previously, but she had never enjoyed it. She would not smoke grass with me and lightly discouraged my using it. She said it reminded her too much of Paul. Every time she had tried it with him she had become depressed.
Another major inaccuracy in Star 80 has my character informed, evidently on the day of the murder, that we have been followed by private detectives. In reality, I knew nothing of Goldstein’s activities until late in October, more than two months after the killing. One of the questions Teresa Carpenter asked me in her letter was when I first learned we were being followed in New York and Los Angeles. Ironically, the question itself was the first I had heard of it. Had I known sooner, even as late as August 14, subsequent events might have been different.
Bits of the murder sequence are flashed throughout the Fosse picture, like subliminal coming attractions for the main event. When it finally arrives, the result is anticlimactic: Fosse has 'tastefully' avoided much real violence or even the implication of its true horror. His Snider cries and yells, shoves his Stratten down a couple of times, is going to rape her, but stops himself and cries again instead. When Stratten then tries to console him with a gift of lovemaking, Snider considers it pitying and takes her violently, yet she doesn’t appear terribly upset. The corresponding TV sequence is pure rape, as ugly and brutal as television allows; the murder is quick but savage. Fosse’s Snider seems almost to be committing euthanasia, he is so gentle as he puts the barrel beside her head, and his Stratten barely seems to notice. This is followed by a flash of necrophiliac bondage and intercourse before the Snider suicide.
Bob Fosse’s movie is all rhythm without notes— fancy footwork and weak surmise, based on insufficient research and knowledge, along with a built-in early decision to create an apologia for the killer. The film’s showy mediocrity and repressed misogyny define none of us as much as it does its director and his Playboy collaborators.
When Star 80 opened in November 1983, reactions from the media and the public were widely mixed. Business was good at first in New York, L.A., and one or two other major cities, but fair to poor in more average markets. Some critics raved respectfully, while others savagely denounced the picture. Vincent Canby of The New York Times, who had panned They All Laughed, gave Star 80 an extremely favorable notice. On the other hand, Andrew Sarris of the Voice, who had given our picture an especially glowing review, attacked Star 80. Jack Kroll of Newsweek liked both. None of the press or public, of course, had the faintest idea whether the story being portrayed was moderately accurate, largely true, or mainly false, which left them discussing the merits of the picture’s style and viewpoint. Some called it extremely moral, others extremely exploitative. Some, like Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times, expressed only contempt.
I had been shown the film privately in August, and found myself alternately appalled, disgusted, bored, and bitterly (though often uproariously) amused. It was the blackest of humors that made me laugh: Fosse trying to have it both ways with Hefner’s character, respectable and slightly sinister, at the same time trying to belittle and mock my character, but in such feeble and cowardly terms that only the director emerged pathetic. He had no idea what Dorothy was like, and so portrayed the usual (though more lethargic) dumb blonde of a thousand fictions. The most preposterous and obscene achievement, in light of the known facts, is Fosse’s rendition of the final murderous confrontation. Desperately trying to create moments of sympathy for the killer and irritation with the victim, and thoroughly disregarding the physical evidence in the crime, Fosse reveals his true intentions by softening the circumstances and actions, as one might by altering the church execution of Joan of Arc from burning alive to firing squad.
Did the filmmakers realize at some point that even to suggest the truth would constitute not only the ultimate stag film, but a damning indictment of the fake sexual revolution they and so many others of us have endorsed and exploited? Weren’t Snider’s actions, finally, an imitation of the stag reels and porno magazines he was addicted to? Wasn’t his mind’s eye also photographing himself and the most sensuously proportioned of Playmates as she was forced at gunpoint to strip, then was taped down, raped, sodomized, murdered, and brutalized even after she was dead? The Stratten Extended-Murder reel—ideal for the eighties. But the filmmakers had tidied up Snider’s Act, perhaps to save the face of Man.
After the murder, Hugh Hefner instructed his staff and the other Playmates not to speak to the press about Dorothy. Later, Hefner would not discuss Dorothy in private. He especially wanted no publicity about his relationship with Snider. Although standard mansion policy was to admit as few boyfriends or husbands as possible, Hefner had made a noticeable exception for Snider and allowed him to bring in 'other Dorothys.' Didn’t Hefner figure that the only way to get Dorothy back was to remain friendly with her husband? Didn’t Hefner know the kind of man Snider was, and keep him around as part of a master plan to win Dorothy Stratten for himself?
Public Playboy statements emphasized Hefner’s barring of Snider from the mansion months before the killing. For what reason—except to obscure the fact that Snider had been informed only five days before? The question might easily be asked why more discretion and care had not been taken in such a volatile-situation. Particularly curious is the wisdom of antagonizing an already angry husband who was capable of doing malicious injury to one of Playboy’s major assets: the most popular Playmate in nearly three decades, well on her way to film stardom—a goal that had eluded the hundreds of other Playmates.
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If Hefner had not been brought up in the strict repressive atmosphere of
Puritanism, would he have reacted differently when his girlfriend Mildred broke down from guilt during the Loretta Young movie in the Midwest of the late forties, and the dark stranger made his first appearance to young Hefner? The great resolution of his life had to be never again to allow this brooding shadow to threaten him, and the one certain way was to himself become the dark stranger—in every woman’s life. Thirty years later, in a London theater, he appeared in that form to Dorothy Stratten—but she protected him, as Mildred had not. As he would not protect Dorothy—or any woman.
Wasn’t revenge the grand inspiration for Hefner’s millions of pages of photos and print? Wasn’t he trying to strip every last vestige of secret magic from the one figure in his life who had so humbled him in his own mind? Hadn’t Hefner decided that one way or another he would take every woman he could get, and make all of them show everything to the men of the world? The public image Hefner would strive to uphold was that no woman could keep him long, since he was too much the King of Women for only one to possess. Wasn’t it his goal to prove that he was no pathetic cuckold, but rather the greatest lover who ever lived?
Those close to him speculated that Hefner’s refusal to talk about Dorothy indicated a sudden awareness of his own mortality. But wasn’t it perhaps more a conjecture on his immortal spirit? Hadn’t Shaw and Mozart, like all great artists, damned Don Giovanni/ Don Juan to hell?
In truth, doesn’t Playboy figuratively seduce and rape young women? Live off them? Ridicule their gender? Destroy their lives? And monthly instruct and inspire millions of men to follow the Hefner example? It is no secret that some men surround themselves with women because they love them, some because they use them, and some because they fear and hate them.