the star of the restaurant
Dorothy Stratten was born Dorothy Ruth Hoogstraten in 1960. The girl lived in Vancouver and did not say that she dreamed of becoming a star. She lived a completely ordinary life and worked as a waitress in one of the establishments of a popular chain of fast food restaurants and soft ice cream. There, she was once seen by Paul Snyder, who was simply a very ambitious person. At the time, he was working as a promoter in one of Vancouver’s nightclubs, but he was sure that his place in Hollywood was to figure out how to get there.
When Paul saw Dorothy in 1978, he was completely blown away by her beauty. Snyder inspired the girl with his ideas and said that she had a grandiose future. And finally convinced that posing naked for a photo shoot will help her build a career in Los Angeles. From that point on, things really took off.
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In 1978, on Snyder’s advice, Dorothy entered the Playboy contest and quickly became a finalist. After magazine founder Hugh Hefner saw her photos, she was invited to the Playboy Mansion for a personal introduction. Already in August 1979, Dorothy received the coveted title of “Girlfriend of the Month”. And two months before that, she married Paul.
Career rise and family breakup
In 1980, Stratten was already Playboy’s Playmate of the Year. Hugh Hefner was a big fan of Stratten, had high hopes for her and predicted a successful film career. However, Dorothy started acting in television series and in 1980 she got a role in Peter Bogdanovich’s film “They All Laughed”, which also starred Audrey Hepburn.
The Oscar-winning director was crazy about Dorothy.
“I loved her dearly and deeply. She was a bit of an inspiration for the film,” he later recalled.
The model’s marriage was already in crisis at that moment. Snyder suspected that Dorothy was having an affair with Bogdanovich and even hired a detective to keep an eye on his wife. At the same time, Paul himself was not characterized by marital fidelity and openly started affairs with other girls. Dorothy’s colleagues were confused when Paul came up to them with kisses – after all, the most beautiful woman from Playboy was waiting for him at home.
In June 1980, Dorothy filed for divorce. At that time, she realized that she had finally outgrown her unhappy husband, for whom she was just a conduit to the world of the rich and famous.
It all came to a head on August 14, 1980. That day, Dorothy met with Paul to discuss the final details of their divorce.
The conversation quickly escalated into a scandal and then into something worse. The press of those years reported that Snyder raped Dorothy and then shot her with a shotgun he had purchased shortly before. Shortly after his wife’s murder, he committed suicide.
The cremation of Stratten’s body and her funeral were eventually arranged by Peter Bogdanovich, who also wrote a farewell letter to his loved ones describing how difficult the loss was. True, on December 30, 1988, 49-year-old Bogdanovich married 20-year-old Louise Stratten, Dorothy’s younger sister, whom he began dating a few years after the model’s death.
“I know it goes like this: a small-town girl gets into Playboy, gets into Hollywood, and her life turns upside down and somehow it leads to her death. But that did not happen in this case. Only the sick person saw his “food stamp” and his connection to power slipping away. And that made him kill her,” Hefner said when Dorothy was killed by Snyder.
The tragic story of Stratten still haunts the mind. In 2022, the crime drama Welcome to the Chippendales was released on Hulu, telling the story of the legendary all-male dance strip Chippendales of the same name, which Snyder co-founded. The role of Dorothy was played by Victoria Beckham’s sister-in-law Nicola Peltz.
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