Dorothy Stratten

Dorothy and Snider got married on June 1979 in Las Vegas. As she was rising as a star, their relationship encountered multiple issues. He started to bother her on the sets of the movie ‘Galaxina’ and also found out that she was developing more than a friendly relationship with director Peter Bogdanovich.

Snider’s cocaine addiction worsened and he became increasingly violent and abusive. According to the biopic ‘Star 80’, Snider may have lost Stratten’s hard earned money through failed business attempts and excessive spending.

Stratten tried her best to move away from Snider with support from Hugh Hefner and her friend and Playboy colleague Rosanne Katon. In 1980, Stratten was cast (probably with some help from Hugh Hefner) in a romantic comedy titled ‘They All Laughed’, co-starring Audry Hepburn and Bena Gazzara.

Dorothy was born on 28th February, 1960 at Grace Maternity Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to Dutch immigrants Nelly and Simon Hoogstraten. When she was 3 years old, her father abandoned the family. Her mother remarried, but this marriage was also a failure.

She had a younger brother John Arthur (born in 1961) and a younger step-sister Louis Stratten (born in May 1968). Though she grew up in a noisy neighborhood in Vancouver, she kept away from most of the troubles.Dorothy studied at the Centennial High School in Coquitlam. Nelly Hoogstraten, having been married and divorced twice, barely earned enough by working as a nurse to support her three children and hence had to depend on welfare grants.

While in high school and working at an outlet of the Dairy Queen fast food chain, she met a 26 year old Vancouver promoter and an allegedpimp named Paul Snider and they soon started dating. Snider later asked a professional photographer to take nude pictures of Stratten. Paul then sent those photographs to Playboy Magazine andDorothy immediately asked her mother to sign the consent form for modelling in the US (the Stratten biopic ‘Star 80’ implies that Snider may have forged Stratten’s mother’s signature).

Stratten and Snider flew to Los Angeles in August 1978 and she became one of the contestants of the 25thAnniversary Great Playmate Hunt. Incidentally she changed her surname to Stratten on Snider’s insistence.

She started working as a bunny (club hostess / entertainer) at the Playboy Club in Century City, Los Angeles.

Later sheconsciously tried to move from the Playboy career to an acting career by starring in episodes of the populartelevision series‘Fantasy Island and Buck Rogers’. As she ventured into films, she proved her potential as an actress, particularly noted for comedy roles. Dorothy also became apopular actor in Richard Dawson’s ABC TV Specials, shot at the Playboy Mansion.

Dorothy became Playboy’s Miss August in 1979.

In 1980, it was revealed that Stratten would be declared as the Playmate of the Year by Playboy founder and publisher Hugh M. Hefner.

Film critic Vincent Canby had said that Stratten possessed a great screen presence and would have become a first-grade comedian, had more time and work been allotted to her. She also had a flair for writing good poetry and essays. She also appeared in the Vancouver Canadians’ baseball program, one month before her death.