Dorothy Stratten

Stratten's body was cremated and the remains interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery in Los Angeles. The remains of Hefner (d. 2017) and Marilyn Monroe (d. 1962), his magazine's first centerfold, are interred there as well.

In the years since its inauspicious debut, They All Laughed has been recognized by filmmakers, critics, and others as being one of Bogdanovich's best pictures. One Day Since Yesterday, a documentary about the making and cultural importance of Bogdanovich's romantic comedy, which includes interviews with the director and his remembrances of Stratten, premiered in 2014.

In December 1988, at age 49, Bogdanovich married Stratten's sister, Louise, who was 20. Bogdanovich had paid for Louise's private schooling and modeling classes following Stratten's death. They divorced in 2001 after being married for 13 years.

Bogdanovich declared bankruptcy in 1985. In the process, he lost his Los Angeles home where Stratten had lived for the last few weeks of her life.

In 1985, when asked again about his relationship with Stratten after the release of The Killing of the Unicorn, Hefner did concede to a crucial detail that lay at the heart of Bogdanovich's allegation. Namely, Hefner admitted that several weeks after Stratten first arrived in Los Angeles, the two had taken a nude soak in the "grotto" Jacuzzi on the Playboy Mansion grounds, the place where Bogdanovich claimed the sexual assault had occurred. In the same interview, while allowing that they had "hugged" in the Jacuzzi, Hefner denied having forced himself on Stratten. Hefner also denied, despite his reputation, that he'd ever so much as made a pass at the young Canadian, suggesting that his sexual interest in Stratten had ended in the Jacuzzi after learning that she expected to become engaged to her boyfriend. (This conversation would have happened approximately two months before Hefner would first meet Snider.)

In August 1984, four years after Stratten's death, the publisher William Morrow released a book by Bogdanovich titled The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten 1960-1980.

In 1983, film critic Vincent Canby wrote "Miss Stratten possessed a charming screen presence and might possibly have become a first-rate comedienne with time and work".

Singer-songwriter Bryan Adams, along with co-writer Jim Valance, wrote the song "The Best Was Yet to Come" as the closing track for Adams' 1983 LP "Cuts Like a Knife" as a dedication to Dorothy Stratten.

Hefner reportedly encouraged Stratten to sever ties with Snider, calling him a "hustler and a pimp." Rosanne Katon and other friends warned Stratten about Snider's behavior. Stratten began an affair with Peter Bogdanovich while he was directing They All Laughed (1981). Snider hired a private detective to follow Stratten. They separated and Stratten moved in with Bogdanovich, planning to file for a divorce from Snider.

In August 1981, one year after Stratten's death, her final film, the romantic comedy They All Laughed, which was written and directed by Bogdanovich, had its US release. After a disappointing limited run in a handful of theaters in the southwest, the upper midwest, and the northeast, the picture was quietly withdrawn.

Upset that what would be his only project with Stratten did not have a nationwide release, and determined that her last screen performance have a chance to be seen by a broader audience, Bogdanovich bought the theatrical rights to the picture. Out of his own pocket, he paid for a re-release of They All Laughed in nearly a dozen large markets across North America beginning in late 1981 and rolling into the following year. Despite generally favorable reviews and strong attendance in some theaters, Bogdanovich ultimately sank more than five million dollars, his entire net worth at the time, into the vanity project to properly promote and distribute the movie and rescue Stratten's film legacy.

In a print article that appeared shortly after the murder, Hefner, who was 33 years older than Stratten, used the word "friendship" to describe his relationship with her and was said to see himself as a "father figure" to the Playmate. The image that Hefner presented to the public as a supportive, benevolent, paternal figure to Stratten was further emphasized the following spring when Playboy published her biography in its May 1981 issue. It was later reported that Hefner had personally supervised the editing of the article.

Stratten's murder was depicted in two films. In the made-for-television Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story (1981), Jamie Lee Curtis portrayed Stratten and Bruce Weitz played Paul Snider. Bob Fosse's feature film Star 80 (1983) starred Mariel Hemingway as Stratten and Eric Roberts as Snider.

On March 22, 1980, Stratten flew to New York City to begin work on what would be her last film project, They All Laughed, a romantic comedy being directed by Bogdanovich. Laughed would be Stratten's fifth movie in a career that had only begun the year before and represented her first substantial role in a big-budget picture, playing the unhappily-married love interest of John Ritter, one of the film's stars. Bogdanovich, who also wrote the screenplay, said in an interview that he had based the backstory of Stratten's character on what he'd learned about her marriage to Snider.

Stratten had spent the first two and a half months of 1980 completing her Playmate of the Year shoot and making her previous movie, Galaxina, in Southern California. With all her work close to home, Snider assumed the role of his wife's chauffeur, as well as her ersatz manager and acting coach. But Snider's near-constant presence, his criticism of and almost daily arguments with his wife caused Stratten so much stress that her co-workers at Playboy and the Galaxina set began to take notice. As the spring of 1980 approached, Snider insisted on accompanying his wife to New York, but Stratten at least recognized the problems he could cause while she was making the most important picture of her young career. Also wanting the freedom to pursue a relationship with Bogdanovich, Stratten convinced Snider to remain in Los Angeles after explaining that the director had decided to close the set of his new film to all but the cast and immediate crew.

On Wednesday, April 30, at a luncheon held on the grounds of Hefner's mansion, Stratten was presented to the assembled entertainment press as the 1980 Playmate of the Year. In his introductory remarks, Hefner noted that Stratten was from Canada and had received $200,000 in cash and gifts in addition to the title. In a fleeting comment, Hefner also acknowledged the effect that Stratten's charming combination of beauty, intelligence, and sensitivity had on many who knew her when he said, ". . and she is something rather special. They always are, but Dorothy is really quite unique." After taking the lectern, Stratten thanked Mario Casilli, the photographer who shot both her Playmate of the Month and Year pictorials, several Playboy executives, and finally Hefner, who she declared "has made me probably the happiest girl in the world today."

On the night of July 31, 1980, Snider, by now aware that his estranged wife was living with Bogdanovich, hid among the shadows just outside the director's Los Angeles estate carrying a borrowed handgun, intending to shoot anyone who appeared at the entrance to the property. After several hours of inactivity, Snider grew impatient and left, drove up into the hills overlooking the city and, admitting later to a friend, had thoughts of suicide.

August 13, 1980 marked the two-year anniversary of the day that Stratten had first arrived in Los Angeles to begin her acting and modeling career.

On August 13, 1980, the day before Stratten was murdered, Snider bought a used, 12-gauge, pump action shotgun from a private seller he found in a local classified ad. Later that evening in a conversation with friends, Snider described how he had purchased a gun that day and finished his story by cryptically declaring that he was "going to take up hunting."

In August 1978, she moved to Los Angeles, where she was chosen as a finalist for the 25th Anniversary Great Playmate Hunt. Snider joined her in October, and in June the following year, they married. With her surname shortened to Stratten, she became Playboy's Miss August 1979, and began working as a bunny at the Playboy Club in Century City, Los Angeles. Hugh Hefner had high hopes Stratten could have meaningful crossover success as an actress. She featured in episodes of the television series Buck Rogers and Fantasy Island. She also had small roles in 1979 in Americathon and the roller disco comedy Skatetown, U.S.A., and a lead role in the exploitation film Autumn Born.

The Killing of the Unicorn is by turns a biography of Stratten, a memoir of Bogdanovich's affair with the married Playmate who was half his age, and a scathing, feminist attack on Hefner, his Playboy philosophy and the hedonistic sexual mores he celebrated in his magazine and practiced at his mansion, and the entire Playboy organization. By far the most controversial part of the book is the director's claim that Hefner had sexually assaulted a then eighteen-year-old Stratten in August 1978. According to Bogdanovich's allegation the assault occurred while the two were alone in a secluded area of the Playboy Mansion at the end of Stratten's first day of posing for the magazine's photographer. (Bogdanovich chose to use the word "seduced" to describe Hefner's behavior in the book, however, he originally used the word "raped" in the drafts of his manuscript. Bogdanovich and the publisher made the change after being threatened with a lawsuit by Hefner's lawyers.)

In 1977, Stratten was attending Centennial High School in Coquitlam, British Columbia. Concurrently, she was working part-time at a local Dairy Queen, where she met 26-year-old Vancouver-area club promoter and pimp Paul Snider, who began dating her. Snider later had a photographer take professional nude photos of her which were sent to Playboy magazine in the summer of 1978. She was under the age of 19 (the legal age of majority in British Columbia), so she had to persuade her mother to sign the model release form.

Dorothy Ruth Hoogstraten (February 28, 1960 – August 14, 1980), known professionally as Dorothy Stratten, was a Canadian Playboy Playmate, model, and actress. Stratten was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for August 1979 and Playmate of the Year in 1980. Stratten appeared in three comedy films and in at least two episodes of shows broadcast on US network television. She was murdered at the age of 20 by her estranged husband and manager Paul Snider, who died by suicide on the same day. Her death inspired two motion pictures, the 1981 TV movie Death of a Centerfold and the 1983 theatrical release Star 80, as well as the book The Killing of the Unicorn and the songs "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, "The Best Was Yet to Come" by Bryan Adams and "Cover Girl" by the Canadian rock band Prism.

Stratten was born in Grace Maternity Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, on February 28, 1960, to Simon and Nelly Hoogstraten, who had emigrated from the Netherlands. In 1961, her brother John Arthur was born and, in May 1968, her sister Louise Stratten.

When Stratten arrived at the Playboy Mansion for the 25th Anniversary Playmate Hunt she was very shy and naive. She was very uncomfortable with the casual nudity and sex. Several contemporary playmates including Pamela Bryant, Gail Stanton and Marcy Hanson befriended Stratten and protected her from some of Hefner's friends whom they considered to be predators.