In 1979, Dorothy Stratten was one of Hollywood's most promising young stars. A year later, she was dead.

Warning: This post deals with domestic violence and murder, and could be triggering for some readers.

Disney's Welcome to Chippendales certainly grabbed our attention in 2022 with its wild plot and nostalgic 1980s elements, but the true crime saga has resurfaced a tragic tale that ran alongside the invention of the club.

Dorothy Stratten, a Playboy playmate who was linked to Chippendales through her husband, Paul Snider, has become a character of intrigue, despite her short appearance on the show. 

While Dorothy is a central character in episode one, the show only just touches on the horrific death of the young woman, the timeline of which has been compressed to keep the focus on Steve Banerjee. 

However, with Nicola Peltz Beckham’s portrayal of the young, beautiful and creative actress, interest in the shocking true story has been renewed.

Here’s everything we know about the life and death of Dorothy Stratten.

Dorothy Stratten and Paul Snider in 1980. Image: Getty.

Paul Snider's 'discovery'.

Paul Snider was a club promoter and a pimp working in Canada in the late 1970s when he stumbled across Dorothy Stratten in 1977. At the time, she was a 17-year-old high school, almost 10 years his junior, working part time at a local Dairy Queen to support her mother.

He took an immediate liking to Stratten and asked her out, with the pair beginning to date shortly after. Snider even took her to her high school prom, however his intentions were a lot more sinister. 

It wasn’t long until he was trying to convince his teenage girlfriend to pose for nude photos, which he secretly planned to send to Playboy. He entered Stratten into the Great Playmate Hunt - a competition to find a new model for the Los Angeles club. At the time Marilyn Grabowski was the magazine’s photo editor, and she remembers seeing Stratten’s photos for the first time.

“She was a total babe in the woods. I cannot remember another playmate being that - I don’t want to say naive...inexperienced, used to her surroundings and not used to thinking that she was really beautiful,” Grabowski said on an episode of 2020.

While she didn’t win the Great Playmate Hunt, with the Playboy team thinking she was a little too young and shy for all the public attention that would come along with it, Stratten did move to Los Angeles to continue working with Playboy. Snider joined her and took credit for all of her success even as her star continued rising without him.

Dorothy caught the eye of Hugh Hefner very quickly. Image: Getty.

A rising star.

Stratten very quickly caught the eye of Playboy founder, Hugh Hefner, who believed she could transition from her work as a Playboy bunny into acting. She began to take on small roles here and there, as the people surrounding her implored her to get rid of Snider.

She did the opposite and agreed to marry him instead.

“I think he really thought, ‘this is mine’,” said Mariel Hemingway, who played Stratten in the 1983 film Star 80. 

“He wanted ownership of her. He wanted to say that he owned something, that he did something… I think he thought he made her.”

However, Stratten was soon introduced to filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, who had recently ended a long-term relationship and had begun hanging out at the Playboy mansion. He quickly fell for her, and wrote her a part in his upcoming film, They All Laughed, which also starred Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara and John Ritter.

Stratten and Bogdonavich fell in love while the film was in production, and when she returned to Los Angeles after filming, Stratten told Snider she wanted to separate, moving in with Bogdanovich shortly after.

"She just had that little flaw that was her flaw: not being able to see the evil in people.”

The death of Dorothy Stratten.

Snider dug in his heels when it came to the separation, struggling with the idea of letting Stratten go. On August 14, 1980, Stratten went over to their house to discuss a settlement with him, despite the discouragement from both Bogdanovich and Hefner.

“Hef and Peter kind of forbid her from going to see him,” said Jenna Keough, a fellow Playmate and a friend of Stratten’s.

“She had to sneak, she had to lie… she misjudged that guy so badly. She just had that little flaw that was her flaw: not being able to see the evil in people.”

Police later determined that upon her arrival, Snider had raped Stratten and shot her in the face, before turning the gun on himself. His housemates found them later on after realising both of their cars were out front of the house, but they hadn’t heard the pair speaking for many hours.

She was 20 years old. 

Dorothy's legacy.

Peter Bogdanovich was rocked by Stratten’s death, and vowed to support her family, claiming they would have been his family if he’d married her.

Eventually, he would marry her younger sister, Louise Stratten. He also wrote a book about Stratten, The Killing of the Unicorn, in which he attributed partial blame for her death to Hefner and the culture of Playboy, which Hefner rejected.

“Dorothy’s tragic death was motivated not in any way by her association with Playboy, but clearly by the breakup of her marriage, because of the affair with Peter Bogdonavich,” Hefner said at a 1985 press conference.

A few films have been made about Stratten’s tragic death, including Star 80, and the television movie Death of a Centrefold. Her death also inspired songs by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Bryan Adams, and Prism.

Feature Image: Getty/Mamamia.

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